General Music Chat

The real meaning or is this a trick question?

Like D N A = Do Not Argue?

Deoxyribonucleic Acid. The building block of life.

Please don't take off points for spelling.

NO..no..no...I find it's great to do some kickass covers to lure the audience and then throw in your originals in between. That's the formula... You have to get the audience to be able to mouth the words to some of your tuns before you go throwing your own sh*t out there that they never even heard of... that worked great for us in the past....because of that mindset, we got to open up for Zebra, Southside Johnny, Goodrats, Twisted Sister, Ruff Kut, etc... We played heavy metal covers and I wrote 4 of my own tunes and the crowd flipped over them... First get them comfortable with something they already know! If you're just starting out with all originals, good luck building up an audience in a timely manner....

WOW, Crip, You make one helluva point there! I'm gonna try your formula and see if that'll get me onto a higher plain. You're definitely tops in my book! oh....and thanks for staying on topic

NO..no..no...I find it's great to do some kickass covers to lure the audience and then throw in your originals in between. That's the formula... You have to get the audience to be able to mouth the words to some of your tuns before you go throwing your own sh*t out there that they never even heard of....

Anything that has ever been played on the radio, at one time, people... "never even heard of..."

All you're doing is basically saying "Covers are great, but our own music kind of sucks in comparison"

People look forward to the new music from their favorite artists, even if they "never even heard of" them, because they like the artist. They have liked his past music, and look forward to his new stuff.

If you write good music and perform it well, you don't have to "bait and switch" to be successful. Your "formula" is not a formula at all bro. It is the historic blueprint for being a cover band. There's nothing wrong with being a cover band, just like there's nothing wrong with singing Karaoke. But not focusing primarily on original material, will insure that you will ALWAYS be playing other people's music.

Some musicians just want a little cash, and to have fun playing in front of people. There's nothing wrong with that. Just don't delude yourselves, that your "career" will go anywhere like that. It won't. If you're in it for some cash and attention, that's cool, just accept it for what it is though.

It actually worked for quite a few successful bands out there. Many bands started off playing covers to "bait" a following... then they would slowly inject a cover or 2 at each gig... as time went on, they would start playing more and more of their own originals until they finally became an all original band.

I remember when Twisted Sister first came onto the scene... playing Bowie, Nugent, etc... Same with my friends from Zebra, almost all Zeppelin tunes. If you go into the biography of many popular bands out there, they all started off in the beginning playing covers and slowly throwing in their originals. It was actually working fine that way with my old band "Spellbound" until our singer screwed us over big time. I was writing background commercials for some sponsors of my local radio station as well as writing my own tunes that we would play in our mix of covers.

These 2 songs I wrote in the 80's actually made their way to a few radio stations and drew more people to our "Cover" shows... all I'm saying is it worked perfectly for me. I wrote these in '83 and although it sounds kind of corny now, it was accepted enthusiastically by our audience:

Find Your Way
Give Find Your Way a minute to start!

Dreams

I am not saying I have any experience when it comes to being in a band or performing on stage. But I must say I agree with both of you to a certain extent.

I think it probably rocks to do covers, I would, but then again I am not out for the serious part of this. If I was looking into getting into a band and going somewhere with it, I would not do only covers. You can put them in there, but you have to do your own stuff if you ever want to go anywhere. So like you said Crip2Nite, you can mix yourself stuff in between. If you are good the crowd with love you, that will wind up probably being your ticket into the real world of music.

Look, here is another problem, I have watched these cover bands before, some of them screw up the covers so badly that you want to leave. So, maybe some bands are best with their own stuff.

In conclusion, I would say if you are serious about ever making it big in this world, in the music industry, you have got to try and push more of your own stuff.

Brief note: I am not a serious musician in the regards that I want to make it into a band and make millions off of it. I just want a band to jam with and do some local gigs with. I would like to once and a while throw a song or two that I write, or whoever I have in the band would write, in there. But, mainly I would be doing covers. Serious musicians need to show off their own stuff, it is very important.

Oh... How do I go about putting up an avatar??

NO..no..no...I find it's great to do some kickass covers to lure the audience and then throw in your originals in between. That's the formula... You have to get the audience to be able to mouth the words to some of your tuns before you go throwing your own sh*t out there that they never even heard of....

Anything that has ever been played on the radio, at one time, people... "never even heard of..."

All you're doing is basically saying "Covers are great, but our own music kind of sucks in comparison"

People look forward to the new music from their favorite artists, even if they "never even heard of" them, because they like the artist. They have liked his past music, and look forward to his new stuff.

If you write good music and perform it well, you don't have to "bait and switch" to be successful. Your "formula" is not a formula at all bro. It is the historic blueprint for being a cover band. There's nothing wrong with being a cover band, just like there's nothing wrong with singing Karaoke. But not focusing primarily on original material, will insure that you will ALWAYS be playing other people's music.

Some musicians just want a little cash, and to have fun playing in front of people. There's nothing wrong with that. Just don't delude yourselves, that your "career" will go anywhere like that. It won't. If you're in it for some cash and attention, that's cool, just accept it for what it is though.

If you can't stand on your original tunes exclusively, you need to find another field of endeavor or just be a cover band. (I practice what I preach thus I have a day job. lol)

IMO if you feel you have to throw in "covers" and are not 100% confident in 100% of your own material that is self defeatest attitude.

IMO if you plan to go anywhere in this business you better be as good or better then what people have already heard.

I would take it as a wake up call if my band was playing our originals and the crowd only came alive when we played a cover. I would tell the band it's time to write some new tunes or take a new direction or for me to look for a new band.

I will categorically state again this is an extremely competive, cut throat business and 99.99% of us will never go further then playing the local watering hole.

In my defense... I'm 48.... I've had my tours and gigs and parties lol. I just got back into this 100% for the fun of it... My glory days are over. I've experienced the road...the back room orgy's and coke parties... the 20 hour recording sessions... the days of really living like a pauper one week and a king another.. I was just trying to interject my past eperience... Our audience actually came more alive whenever we'd throw one of our originals in there... we loved it...they loved it. I got married 2x's since... have 2 kids, a mortgage, my motorcycles, a full time job... I was just trying to point out the formula that worked for not only my band, but many, many other bands.... especially out here in NY. There were those that would stick with covers only, sound fantastic, get their cash and go home and than there were those that had to make a living playing covers while their originals were in the works... In those days, I'd rather play covers every week and get paid than work in a stinkin' factory....

This was me back then:




(I'm on the far right)



And this is me now.... getting back into it:



Here's my fun band, "PanikAtack" all of us are working fathers that get together once a week and kick some ass... We actually have quite a few gigs lined up and are surprised cause this just started out as a guys "Poker" night:

http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=ginkolink

Crip,

I was not attacking you and you have been far more successful in music then I have ever been or will ever be.

I also believe it is never "over" if you coming up with something people want to hear. The whole age thing is a cop out IMO.

I keep saying over and over and over again. If the band writes killer material it will find an audience and will succeed. Great music is great music, is great music, regardless of who writes it. But that is the key, writing great music.


If your writing original stuff and crowd is digging it, your on to something.

I would rather go out and see a bunch of older guys wailing then a bunch of young guys clamming it up any day.

Take the stuff I have posted. If I were getting hundreds of plays a day, I am on to something. Needless to say I don't, thus I am not waiting for the record contracts to come pouring in or even trying to convince anyone that I am some how good or have any future at all in music.

Wegman, Irminsul, sorry I wasn't online earlier to answer right away.
I'd said:
Talking about intelligence & dyslexia and all . . .
Do you know what "DNA" stands for?
.
It stands for "National Association of Dyslexics."

On ti oesdn't!

Wegman, Irminsul, sorry I wasn't online earlier to answer right away.
I'd said:
Talking about intelligence & dyslexia and all . . .
Do you know what "DNA" stands for?
.
It stands for "National Association of Dyslexics."

Wait a minute, shouldn't it be NAD then? As opposed to DNA...

. . . uhh . . . they're dyslexics, man . . .

. . . uhh . . . they're dyslexics, man . . .

Dyslexics my ass. How do we know all of them twist the letters the same? I could look at DNA and see it as... NDA, or even LCD, or even get the words "I am a dumb f**k" out of that... Lmao.

Ah, whatever.