Instrumentals and dance?

[JakeF]

Working on my cover bands set list. Trying to focus on the usual crowd pleasers. I recent thread had me curious to instrumentals and dance.

It was mentioned that "Wipeout" actually got the floor moving at a show recently. That and "Tequila" are both possibly useful instrumentals (sales).

Curious if anyone else has any succesfull danceable instrumentals?

 

[jive1]

I've done Pipeline and Walk Don't Run by the Ventures and had it go over well. Although I hate Sleepwalk, people seem to like to slow dance to it.

Blues tunes are usually good for putting in long instrumental breaks, but as far as pure instrumental Hideaway and San HoZay by Freddie King went over well.

Funk tunes are also good for putting in instrumental breaks, and if you're doing it right, you almost have to. The dance floor is filled, and they want to keep funkin it up, so you gotta extend it somehow. The obvious choice is Pick Up the Pieces by AWB, but Sex Machine and any JBs era James Brown tune is a fun one to extend.

I've also done some instrumental versions of Jazz and Swing tunes that went over well on the dance floor for the right gig.

In the Reggae band I used to work with, we always extended songs into 10 minute jams, and they went over well. While my Top 40 cover band gigs would require 40+ tunes, this band got away with 20 or less.

In my Ska/Swing band, we have an instrumental in each set to give my voice a break. One Step Beyond by Madness is a fun one. We do Gonna Make You Sweat as an instrumental, and it's a great dance floor song.

 

[lowfreq33]

A good rule of thumb is that the more interesting a song is to musicians the less likely it will get people dancing. Notice that Wipeout and Tequila are both very simple songs. So you probably should leave YYZ of the list.

 

[pklima]

"Harlem Shake"? It's got some vocal samples, but...

 

[Thomas Kievit]

"Harlem Shake"? It's got some vocal samples, but...

Oh boy, the ''dutch terror'' has been noticed here too

 

[tbirdsp]

Blues tunes are usually good for putting in long instrumental breaks, but as far as pure instrumental Hideaway and San HoZay by Freddie King went over well.

We do both of those Don't know about danceable, but we also do "Cissy Strut" by The Meters and "Skanky" by Buddy Guy.

I guess it's not technically an instrumental, but on a lark we did "Woo Hoo" by The 5,6,7,8's and it went over well. You know, from the Kill Bill movie and Vonage commercials? Pretty similar to Wipeout actually.

 

[longfinger]

- Oye Como Va : great for cha cha dancing

 

[BayStateBass]

I always wanted to try my hand at "Oh Yeah" by Yello.

Not truly and instrumental, but pretty close. Not much going on lyrically, really. I can imagine it might get some booties shaking.

Might be kinda cool.

We do the standard stuff like Wipeout, Sleepwalk, and Pipeline when needed. Out of all of them, Wipout goes over the best because our drummer really lays that thing down and owns it.

None of those three really do anything for me but everyone seems to like them.