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Songs an 80's cover band should NEVER play?

#61
About Huey Lewis And The News: I always hated them for some reason. Technically great, great singer, but hate them.

Yet so many people like them.

It always reminds me of the scene where Christian Bale ax murders a yuppy while declaring his flame for their music in American Psycho.
 
#63
NickInMesa said:
The Stan Ridgway period Wall Of Voodoo was an awesome, very cool band, with a very original sound.

This was their attempt at a hit without compromising their style and they succeeded.

Although I do love this song, it's not really a crowd pleaser.
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That's the point. I happen to like Wall of Voodoo and Stan's solo stuff. I was in a band that went after stuff like Mexican Radio. We learned that lesson quickly enough, some songs were too quirky for prime time. Oddly enough, we had to kill some good material by bands like the suit and tie version of The Tubes, other fringe acts like Psychedelic Furs, Bram Tchaikovsky... People are funny, they like the fluff and ignore truly superior material.
 
#64
Demon_Hunter said:
Howdy...we're putting together an 80's cover band and would like some advice on what songs this type of band should NEVER play?
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None.

Pick songs you like to play as a group, and as individuals, and which receive favorable response from, or is likely to receive favorable response from the audience. And let that be that.

No need to issue rules and laws that you'll never play x, y, and z. There's plenty of material out there so that you shouldn't have to.
 
#65
By all means don't play [---]!
[---] is OK, but absolutely not [---] unless it'd really work for the gig. An whatever you do, make sure you have [---] on your list even though the last time I heard it I nearly wrecked my mom's K-Car.

Follow these rules and you'll be fine.

Ignore these rules and you'll be fine.
 
#69
capnsandwich said:
Do me and everyone within hearing range of your band a favor and never play anything by Boy George or The Culture Club. Do You Really Want To Hurt Me is a song that should never have been written IMO.
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That's funny! It's this very song that first made me sit up and notice the bass. Culture Club actually had some well-written (and well-produced) songs. Still love "Time (Clock Of The Heart)"...

By the way, the question probably should be "what songs SHOULD we play?", as everyone can probably go on and on about songs they hate simply because they were overplayed at the time (in the 80s). Besides, the fact is that a lot of what people are going to want to hear from an 80s cover band is the cheese we musicians can't stand! I always liked the 80s from a musical standpoint - lots of funky pop, great reggae (in the early 80s, at least), hip-hop, techno, house, acid house and some great fusions (African, Latin, etc.). As with every decade, there was a lot of bad stuff, but I'll take the 80s over the latter 90s and 00s any day.:)
 
#70
bass12 said:
By the way, the question probably should be "what songs SHOULD we play?"
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NO WAY! That might make this tread useful! ;)

By the way, a big +1 on your comments about Culture Club. No matter how much the "rocker" in me acted like he couldn't stand Culture Club during the early years of MTV - yes, I admit I wasn't mature enough to deal with the cross-dressing/gender bending thing and it colored my opinion of the music.

BUT - secretly I really dug Mikey's bass lines and the groove of those tunes in general. "Do you really want to hurt me?" has a great reggae groove - "Church of the Poison Mind" - killer Motown in Manchester thing...

But by all mean - don't play [---]! Everyone will think your a bunch of [---] and stop coming to your shows!
 
#71
One of my bands has done a lot of songs that none of us really like. We do them because they're so wrong, they're right. We're not a commercial band, we definitely don't have to do them. Some of them stay on the list for a while, some don't. Even then, "Working for the Weekend"? Eeww!

KO
 
#77

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