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Orginal band wanting to do covers show, same name?

monkeyfinger

monkeyfinger

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Oct 29, 2001
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#1
My band, Project Alice, does original hard rock in the greater Providence, RI area. There are pretty limited playing opportunities around here. So we thought we would learn a bunch of covers and market ourselves to the covers clubs. (We are good musicians with an excellent lead vocalist, so we feel we would do well in this market.) Our goal is to get more stage time and to build a following following for our original act. As an original act we hope to play better clubs and festivals in our region with a solid fan-base. We do not anticipate getting signed or touring nationally. My feeling is that the type of people who attend original hard rock clubs is not the same as those who attend covers clubs. Therefore we should market ourselves differently as an cover act. Now I think our name is great for an original band, but just a little too obscure for a a cover band. I also think this may be confusing to fans as to which band they are coming to see. What do you think?
 
#2
Interesting question. I can see arguments both ways, but I think the clincher for me is the potential confusion that might be caused by using the same name for both projects: You could wind up with some very unhappy folks who show up expecting to hear the hard-rock band that they liked the last time, only to discover that you're playing covers that night -- or vice-versa.
 
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#4
We do some covers in our original show. We do our own arrangements. We would probably keep with that approach in our cover's project. They would be in our style. We find that the best covers are one's outside our genre that we give a hard-rock flavor, songs like 'Because the Night' and 'Hurt'.

That brings up another point, I think a song like 'Hurt' is great cover for an original band, but would not go over well with the cover crowd.
 
#5
I've always used a different name in my groups. One of my last originals bands played a Halloween gig where we covered Rage Against the Machine's entire first album cover to cover. Our band name was Tame the Hurricane, so for the gig we called ourselves Tame Against the Machine. Kinda hokey, but people seemed to dig the play on it :)
 
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#6
I would use a different name and try my best to treat it as an entirely separate band that just happens to have the same members. I would not want to take any chance of someone hearing the name of my originals band and thinking "isn't that a cover band?" This isn't meant to be an insult to cover bands, but rather a nod to the importance of branding and first impressions (particularly relating to original bands, which are hard enough to market as it is).
 
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#7
monkeyfinger said:
My band, Project Alice, does original hard rock in the greater Providence, RI area. There are pretty limited playing opportunities around here. So we thought we would learn a bunch of covers and market ourselves to the covers clubs. (We are good musicians with an excellent lead vocalist, so we feel we would do well in this market.) Our goal is to get more stage time and to build a following following for our original act. As an original act we hope to play better clubs and festivals in our region with a solid fan-base. We do not anticipate getting signed or touring nationally. My feeling is that the type of people who attend original hard rock clubs is not the same as those who attend covers clubs. Therefore we should market ourselves differently as an cover act. Now I think our name is great for an original band, but just a little too obscure for a a cover band. I also think this may be confusing to fans as to which band they are coming to see. What do you think?
Click to expand...

A cover band called "Project Alice" BETTER be an Alice Cooper tribute.

Right?
 
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#13
That happens a bit in my city. Always a fun, one-off, show with a popular local group covering another artist. Usually out of genre, usually they have a local craft brewery or liquor rep to have a prescence at the venue and sometimes a charity drive too. I think they call them slash shows.

They always mesh their name with the covered artist just so no one is too confused. Like if you guys just loved, I dunno, say The Rammones and you wanted to do a cover show you would go on as "Alice is a punk rocker ". It would be "Alice is a punk rocker/Project Alice is the Rammones Tuesday at whererver" on the flyers and FB event page.
 
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#15
Tough call, because with 2 different names the covers band won't generate much interest in the originals band. But because of the ill will you could generate I think 2 different names is the way to go. Maybe if the names were different but somehow obviously related?
 
#17
HolmeBass said:
Tough call, because with 2 different names the covers band won't generate much interest in the originals band. But because of the ill will you could generate I think 2 different names is the way to go. Maybe if the names were different but somehow obviously related?
Click to expand...
I like this. How about something like "Alice's Other Project," or "The Other Alice Project," or something like that?
 
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