Warning. Semi-Long Post and a bit of a rant....
So I’ve been in a successful cover band here in North Florida for about 4 years. 3 weekends a month. Best venues in town. Played private cooperate gigs. Weddings ect. Not our primary job but we made some decent extra money doing it. We regularly had to turn down gigs.
We played a mixture of Rock, Pop, Older Rock (Petty ect), some Sublime. A good mix but definitely Top 40 stuff. Great party band stuff that ladies can dance to and have fun. And we were good at it.
Enter the Corona Shut Down of 2020. My singer and guitarist tell me that they have decided to re-tool the entire setlist while we have this down time. They want to play more obscure music. Stuff they like. (Our drummer is neutral and will play whatever) They want heavier or more alternative stuff. Basically stuff that will clear a dance floor and and a bar in most places. And at the end of the night that one guy will come up and say “I loved your version of (insert some weird B side). Never heard anyone play that before!”
Now I get it. And they have hinted at this before. But I never thought they would actually want to go through with it. So I gracefully left/got fired for telling them it was a bad idea and they will end up losing all the gigs we worked so hard to get and keep.
Once again so called “artistic integrity” creeps up and ruins a great band on a great run. If you want to be “different” and original, then write some songs. Have the courage to put yourself out there and play them for the world. Don’t expect everyone to like them. Play for you. But in my option playing obscure covers is still playing covers. It just different ones that most will not want to hear.
So clearly I’m a little bitter over this. And I am a solid player and I sing pretty well. Lead and harmonies. So I can find another band to join once things return to normal. But wow. Way to bulldoze me out guys. Enjoy empty bars and confused faces when they return to playing.
Am I wrong here??? Geez.
Rant over!
...collecting diamonds on a desert island, in the hope that a passing ship will someday come to the rescue.
There are
NO gigs.
I remember being told a joke, whilst working in Ghana, where two best friends were on their way to buy a lottery ticket together.
Walking to the shop, they got into a disagreement about whether to buy a sports car, or a speedboat, if their lottery ticket won.
Eventually it escalated into a fatal brawl, without them ever buying a lottery ticket (yeah, humour works a little differently over there).
There are
NO gigs.
Bands, and gigs, and audiences are all hypothetical now.
Might as well humour those guys. That way you are at least still in a band, when gigs and audiences become a reality.
When the picture becomes clearer, might be worth putting together a separate band, in the mould of your pre-Covid-19 band.
In the meantime, it's probably best to develop yourself as a solo act, and also form a duet ; because those are the only acts that are going to get indoor gigs, once bars & venues reopen their doors to scaled down audiences, observing social distancing.
