That's the only valid reason to refuse to play a song.
Play the goddamn set or get out!
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Songs you refuse to learn...
- Thread starter glocke1
- Start date
Play the goddamn set or get out!
This is “the correct answer”.
Many of our gigs start when people are eating dinner. So our first set is usually "lighter" stuff. So ymmv.
I don't really agree with this. In the last band I was in, we had a song list of about 175 different songs. That's a lot of songs to learn, and any of them were fair game to be done any time we played. I think If I was on the hook for that many songs, I have earned the right to say "I'm not going to play (insert song title)...". I figure I've been pretty reasonable in the past.
As for my "I'm not playing that" song...it's "Wagon Wheel". That is by far the most boring and stupid song ever written.
BnB
There's a country song waiting to be written, right there...
My blues band wants to drop ZZTop's Francene cos I make it sound disco. Weird thing is, I play the bass line as recorded...
Lead guitar in my band, who picks pretty much all of our material, really wants to cover the Shaman's Harvest cover of Michael Jackson's "Dirty Diana". No.
I'll never refuse to learn one. There are a few that I do argue against strongly as far as playing them in a band setting: Knockin' On Heaven's Door, I Love Rock n Roll, Brown Sugar and Get Lucky are at the top of that list. Most Bon Jovi tunes and various other songs that are just absolutely beat to death are in there as well. But I do know how to play them all and will with a smile if required. I just detest doing so.
buldog5151bass
Kibble, milkbones, and P Basses. And redheads.
You also can pick alternate songs by the same band that get as good a reaction - rather than Brown Sugar or JJF, play Bitch or Monkey Man. You also can break up songs into mini medleys. For example, we have a number of regular fans who want to hear some classic Floyd. So we play a portion of Comfortably Numb into the middle of Money. They love it, and it's short enough not to turn away others.
4 minutes of mind-numbing, generic, paint-by-the-numbers, soul-sucking monotony.
I don't know how this got to be a crowd favorite. Fortunately someone else in every band I've been in has refused to play it. I'd play it, but boy it would be tough.
Preach it, brother. A band I was in tried to make it a rock song by pushing up the tempo. It still sucked. After that I refused to play it anymore.
BnB
I did refuse to play a version of Folsom Prison in a band. They were doing this awful screaming lead when I joined and I kept trying to be tactful about it, but the drummer wouldn't take no for an answer so finally I lost my patience and said, "I'm not doing it, it's the worst version I've ever heard, it sucks and I'm not embarrassing myself. We can either play as recorded or not play it at all." Talk about an awkward silence. I always prefer being tactful, but he just wouldn't take no for an answer.
I play whatever comes up on the tablet on the page my bandleader tells me to swipe too. There's almost always at least a couple tunes at a given gig I've never heard before. It's almost country and rock so it's not a problem, but it's keeps you on your toes, especially when he throws in a pop tune.
That said if we play something once that really doesn't work, the bandleader will often take my advice on the matter after the gig. However, there's no saying no when the audience is waiting.
That said if we play something once that really doesn't work, the bandleader will often take my advice on the matter after the gig. However, there's no saying no when the audience is waiting.
I'm not really a fan of Folsom Prison Blues, however, we used to throw two verses of it into the middle of Blackfoot's "Train Train", played to the chords/rhythm of TT and it always worked great, so I was cool with that.
BnB
That actually sounds cool. A screaming heavy metal lead, not so much.
That's cool. We play Folsom but we put two verses of Pinball Wizard in the middle of it.
I'll learn whatever. What drives me nuts is keeping in a setlist songs that become increasingly uninspired. Cocaine Blues was like that. My last band played it to absolute death, and I couldn't stand it anymore. After somebody made a joke about Johnny Nash instead of Johnny Cash, we replaced CB with I Can See Clearly Now.
