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We simply can't cover current hits
- Thread starter Noshtero
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- cover opportunity
If you're playing the only best 1% of the classic rock era, you're gonna have a hard time dealing with the reality of the 99%. True most current hits are not all time classics, nor is that important. You are an entertainer first and foremost.
If playing some Cake by the Ocean or Exes and Ohs will make your crowd happy and dancing, why not get off your dang high horse and play it with enthusiasm and make them happy?
If playing some Cake by the Ocean or Exes and Ohs will make your crowd happy and dancing, why not get off your dang high horse and play it with enthusiasm and make them happy?
Best post of the thread!! Spot on.
We target ROCK songs by female singers in one the bands I'm in. Few songs to choose from (compared to male vocalists), esp the last 15 years. A lot of Cougar-ville pubs/clubs around that pay good $$$ for solid musicians that can put on an entertaining show.
We skip really pop synth stuff, & deliberately chosen no keyboard player & no backing tracks. Luckily most of the well known older tunes go over a treat, from Motown to 80's, Melissa Etheridge to Pink.
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I came here to suggest exactly these two.
I turned on the radio once last week while my ipod was charging. there was this one song, work work work work work work work work. Wasn't sure exactly what it was about.
"Happy" by Pharrell might be literally the worst song I've ever heard in my life. I cannot fathom why it became a hit. It doesn't seem to appeal to ANYTHING I've ever recognized as a paradigm or meme in music.
The success of that song is so baffling to me, that it has caused me to question my ability to be musically relevant, lol.
If you want to cater to the folks who listen to FM radio in this neck of the woods, praise and worship would be the way to do it. The FM dial beliw 100 is wall to wall p&w, easily twice the number of stations below 100 than above it and those that are not conservative talk are contemporary christian format.
Around here if you want to get paid to play, top 40 country is the only reliable way to do that. We've got a crap ton of world class players and bands in other genres, but very few venues where those performers can get any kind of decent money, but i know quite a few country pickers making their living playing locally. The players of other forms that earn their living at it pretty much do so on the road. We've got several in demand acts from here that aren't country, but they play local a couple times a year if we are lucky. Other than that, they live on the road, and oddly enough, the good paying venues that have live music on a regular basis that is not country, rely on out of town touring bands far more than local bands even when the local bands are much better. Go figure.
This reinforces something I've been thinking lately: It was wonderful being a bass player in the late 70's, when funk came around to the top 40 and a bass player needed chops to pull off cover material. A couple of comments caught my eye:
You need to hand in your musician card right now. Radio-play music is more formulaic, sterile, computer-generated and "corporate" than it's ever been. How many Lady Gagas, Katy Perrys, etc, does the world need, because we got a lot of 'em.
I don't agree with that. If it's not fun, I'm not doing it. Doesn't mean I don't have to take a bite of the sh!t sandwich now and again, even in an original band (we can't like them all), but we can make it as fun as possible. And if the band doesn't have fun, the people surely will not. Audiences and bands are a yin-yang thing; we feed off of one another. Give them a little, so you can take a little. But the one thing about audiences since the beginning of time: they want to dance. Make it funky.
Very mercenary Idea. Lot of truth in it, but that only goes so far. The way I always kept my sanity in the top-40 thing was to rearrange a good number of the songs our way. Everything had a rock feel because that was who we were. Disco, too. People liked it.
The thing about cover audiences is that they want to dance, and only to the stuff they already know. These days, trying to cover a song with layers and layers of synths and computer-generated BS is near impossible. So play it your way. Make is danceable, make it funky, and let it fly.
You are not a jukebox; you can't be. If you try to be, you will fail, and have a bad time doing it; all the musicians have personalities too, and that should not be disregarded. No cover band is without some flavor of personality, and those that try to be jacks-of-all-trades just don't work - because some songs will sound like crap because it's just not "you." And you are sure to alienate someone in the audience who one minute loved you, but the next song hates "that crap." You can be the rockingest band in the world at a biker party, but when you start doing the rap and hip-hop you may be unceremoniously ejected onto you head.
No matter what, never lose the groove. If there is no groove (and this is easy to find these days, given the over-wrought nature of today's production, where awful, self-reflexive, angst-ridden coffee-house music is elevated to super-pop status) , create one.
Always, the groove.
You need to hand in your musician card right now. Radio-play music is more formulaic, sterile, computer-generated and "corporate" than it's ever been. How many Lady Gagas, Katy Perrys, etc, does the world need, because we got a lot of 'em.
I don't agree with that. If it's not fun, I'm not doing it. Doesn't mean I don't have to take a bite of the sh!t sandwich now and again, even in an original band (we can't like them all), but we can make it as fun as possible. And if the band doesn't have fun, the people surely will not. Audiences and bands are a yin-yang thing; we feed off of one another. Give them a little, so you can take a little. But the one thing about audiences since the beginning of time: they want to dance. Make it funky.
Very mercenary Idea. Lot of truth in it, but that only goes so far. The way I always kept my sanity in the top-40 thing was to rearrange a good number of the songs our way. Everything had a rock feel because that was who we were. Disco, too. People liked it.
The thing about cover audiences is that they want to dance, and only to the stuff they already know. These days, trying to cover a song with layers and layers of synths and computer-generated BS is near impossible. So play it your way. Make is danceable, make it funky, and let it fly.
You are not a jukebox; you can't be. If you try to be, you will fail, and have a bad time doing it; all the musicians have personalities too, and that should not be disregarded. No cover band is without some flavor of personality, and those that try to be jacks-of-all-trades just don't work - because some songs will sound like crap because it's just not "you." And you are sure to alienate someone in the audience who one minute loved you, but the next song hates "that crap." You can be the rockingest band in the world at a biker party, but when you start doing the rap and hip-hop you may be unceremoniously ejected onto you head.
No matter what, never lose the groove. If there is no groove (and this is easy to find these days, given the over-wrought nature of today's production, where awful, self-reflexive, angst-ridden coffee-house music is elevated to super-pop status) , create one.
Always, the groove.
Belongs on two or three threads that are running currently...
pfft. Judgmental, much?
I'm not a huge Lady Gaga fan but frankly I'll take her over the Captain and Tennille or Shawn Cassidy any day.
Well, amen to the groove. And I agree that you have to arrange a song to play in a way that works for the actual musicians you have to get across, because it's pretty rare that you're going to nail every detail and nuance of a studio recording. I also agree that it's good for a band to have an identity and be able to brand themselves. Too many cover bands with an "eclectic" mix that's all over the place and nobody really loves it.
For the rest of it, here's the thing; in the world of cover band gigs, the job is to entertain the audience. There's more than one way to skin a cat, of course, but the bottom line is to entertain. If a person's happiness playing depends on their expressing their inner soul or whatever, rather than entertaining the audience, they should go write originals and play a coffeehouse or something. They're in the wrong place. The person who OUGHT to be playing cover gigs is the person who is happy doing the job they're there to do, which is entertain.
I always felt this way to some extent, but it really crystallized in what I call my "Summer of 69 moment." I was in a classic rock trio playing a summer backyard party. I have always HATED that song, long before I started playing music, hated it when I was a teen in the 80s and it came out, hated it ever since. But depending on the crowd, once in a while this trio would dutifully pull it out (this was a group that didn't use set lists). So at this party, we're playing, we've got people up and dancing, and I hear the BL start strumming that D chord... "I bought my first real six-string..." A big crowd of people all start singing along and dancing, girls are bouncing and shimmying and smiling, we're playing along on it, and suddenly I realize that, in spite of myself, I'm having a great time. It wasn't selling out to make a buck, it wasn't gritting our teeth and doing something painful because we had to - I was enjoying myself. Because at heart, what I want to do is entertain, and if I'm doing that, I'm happy.
I am not clear if you are playing in a bar or not but I found that the audience old enough to be in a bar, do not listen to songs from the chart you are referring to. Like someone else said, the 90's stuff seems to be successful IME. A cover band I am in we do 70s/80's/90s covers and that goes over well. If it is a family venue, even the young ones know the tunes.
With the newer pop songs..... I believe timing is key. Play it while it hot. If you can get 2-3 months out of it. It's worth learning.
It's nine o'clock on a Saturday
The regular crowd shuffles in
There's an old man sitting next to me
Makin' love to his tonic and gin
He says, "Son, can you play me a memory
I'm not really sure how it goes
But it's sad and it's sweet and I knew it complete
When I wore a younger man's clothes."
La la la, di da da
La la, di da da da dum
Sing us a song, you're the piano man
Sing us a song tonight
Well, we're all in the mood for a melody
And you've got us feelin' alright
Now John at the bar is a friend of mine
He gets me my drinks for free
And he's quick with a joke or to light up your smoke
But there's someplace that he'd rather be
He says, "Bill, I believe this is killing me."
As the smile ran away from his face
"Well I'm sure that I could be a movie star
If I could get out of this place"
Oh, la la la, di da da
La la, di da da da dum
Now Paul is a real estate novelist
Who never had time for a wife
And he's talkin' with Davy, who's still in the Navy
And probably will be for life
And the waitress is practicing politics
As the businessmen slowly get stoned
Yes, they're sharing a drink they call loneliness
But it's better than drinkin' alone
Sing us a song you're the piano man
Sing us a song tonight
Well we're all in the mood for a melody
And you got us feeling alright
It's a pretty good crowd for a Saturday
And the manager gives me a smile
'Cause he knows that it's me they've been comin' to see
To forget about life for a while
And the piano, it sounds like a carnival
And the microphone smells like a beer
And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar
And say, "Man, what are you doin' here?"
Oh, la la la, di da da
La la, di da da da dum
Sing us a song you're the piano man
Sing us a song tonight
Well we're all in the mood for a melody
And you got us feeling alright
The regular crowd shuffles in
There's an old man sitting next to me
Makin' love to his tonic and gin
He says, "Son, can you play me a memory
I'm not really sure how it goes
But it's sad and it's sweet and I knew it complete
When I wore a younger man's clothes."
La la la, di da da
La la, di da da da dum
Sing us a song, you're the piano man
Sing us a song tonight
Well, we're all in the mood for a melody
And you've got us feelin' alright
Now John at the bar is a friend of mine
He gets me my drinks for free
And he's quick with a joke or to light up your smoke
But there's someplace that he'd rather be
He says, "Bill, I believe this is killing me."
As the smile ran away from his face
"Well I'm sure that I could be a movie star
If I could get out of this place"
Oh, la la la, di da da
La la, di da da da dum
Now Paul is a real estate novelist
Who never had time for a wife
And he's talkin' with Davy, who's still in the Navy
And probably will be for life
And the waitress is practicing politics
As the businessmen slowly get stoned
Yes, they're sharing a drink they call loneliness
But it's better than drinkin' alone
Sing us a song you're the piano man
Sing us a song tonight
Well we're all in the mood for a melody
And you got us feeling alright
It's a pretty good crowd for a Saturday
And the manager gives me a smile
'Cause he knows that it's me they've been comin' to see
To forget about life for a while
And the piano, it sounds like a carnival
And the microphone smells like a beer
And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar
And say, "Man, what are you doin' here?"
Oh, la la la, di da da
La la, di da da da dum
Sing us a song you're the piano man
Sing us a song tonight
Well we're all in the mood for a melody
And you got us feeling alright
It goes both ways when you're in a cover band.
It's all subjective. You're absolutely right.
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Entertainers get their kicks vicariously via their audiences. On a "personal taste" level, I don't like most of the cover band standards I play. I either never liked them or I've heard them one too many times to appreciate them any more. They come on the radio, I change the channel.
But they take on a whole new meaning when people are dancing and singing along and paying me a decent day's wage for my efforts. Suddenly "Summer of 69" "Sweet Home Alabama" et. al. are fun, useful songs.
We're really careful about learning This Year's Flavor of the Month. I call it the "Pumped Up Kicks" syndrome. That song saturated the market so quickly and heavily that every mainstream cover band in town had to learn and play it. After a couple of months it was getting a lukewarm response. After about 5-6 months the audiences were so sick of that song it literally started clearing dance floors and wrinkling people's noses.
I'd like to get more than a few months longevity out of a cover song. We work really hard on the details, and to have a song get a lukewarm response after a few months represents a waste of time for my cover band.
Fortunately, the venues and audiences we play to are just fine with material that has been popular for years and decades. A song that has been popular for the past decade probably isn't going to suddenly start clearing dance floors.
When we do pick up a current tune, I apply a lot of discretion and try to pick something that will still be keeping the party going next year at least.
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Which songs from the last 10-15 years will become the All-Time Classics & played by bands in the future??
