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Hey folks,

Brief background to this question: I co-founded a local rock cover band with a great drummer about a year ago. It took us a long time to find a singer and bass player, but we finally found two great folks. We've got almost enough songs learned to start booking gigs; I think we've got a show lined up for February if we want it.

Our bass player, who has a lot of gigging experience, suggested that we cultivate some more tunes that people can dance to. Or, like he says, we won't be invited back to some bars if we can't get people buying drinks and dancing on the floor.

Most of our songs are stuff like Creed, Alter Bridge, Stone Temple Pilots, 3 Doors Down, Foo Fighters, etc.

After our last rehearsal we all sat around real casually and they started throwing out a host of dance songs ("party rock", as my bassist likes to call it) for me to look up on YouTube (since I am unfamiliar with a lot of music like this). Some of the suggested music I can dig playing (Poison's "Nothing But A Good Time", Van Halen's "Panama", AC/DC's "Shook Me All Night Long", Def Leppard's "Pour Some Sugar On Me", I can enjoy that stuff).

But some of the suggestions... were songs I actually never want to disgrace my guitar with... Like Alien Ant Farm's "Smooth Criminal"... I think my guitar visibly shuddered when that came over my speakers.

Anyway. I don't want to sound like an elitist snob or anything; I've got no problem learning some dance-rock tunes (I learned Poison's "Nothing But A Good Time" and two Bryan Adams' songs last night). But I've got some standards...

So I was hoping for suggestions from the much-more-experienced-than-me crowd. I figured if maybe I posted this, with an idea of what we're already playing and what I don't mind playing, if people could throw out the tunes that they have personal experience with. If you've covered a good rock song that you know gets people on the floor, by all means - please suggest!

Thanks gang, you guys are the best.

ColorsFade wrote:If you've covered a good rock song that you know gets people on the floor, by all means - please suggest!

Thanks gang, you guys are the best.

I think you musta missed this thread?
http://forum.bandmix.com/viewtopic.php?t=8008

Pour some sugar on me is always a hit with the chicks.

um, forgive me, but I always thought that under enough 'outside' influence, you can pretty much dance to anything...

I know it worked for me overseas in th Navy anyway...

"danced" to Zeppelin 'Black Dog' in a bar in Spain...




Sorry..I have no advice to offer beyond that..

Damn, piperman! That doesn't look like no Guiness! I never figured you for a "when in Rome" kinda guy.

That's a good beer, though.

ColorsFade wrote:But some of the suggestions... were songs I actually never want to disgrace my guitar with... Like Alien Ant Farm's "Smooth Criminal"... I think my guitar visibly shuddered when that came over my speakers.

Anyway. I don't want to sound like an elitist snob or anything; I've got no problem learning some dance-rock tunes (I learned Poison's "Nothing But A Good Time" and two Bryan Adams' songs last night). But I've got some standards...

So I was hoping for suggestions from the much-more-experienced-than-me crowd. I figured if maybe I posted this, with an idea of what we're already playing and what I don't mind playing, if people could throw out the tunes that they have personal experience with. If you've covered a good rock song that you know gets people on the floor, by all means - please suggest!

Thanks gang, you guys are the best.

With all due respect, you will find that playing covers in bars and clubs means playing what the crowd wants to hear, and having to sacrifice, to some degree, your own personal preferences.

And yes, people (chicks) want to dance. The songs you listed are among the usual culprits, and certainly danceable.

What I'm getting at though is that you can be dead-set against a song and plead with the band not to do it, but you can't do that with every song you don't want to play...or you will come off as elitist and cause rifts within the band, to some degree.

In the end, you should compromise, you WILL end up playing songs that you would prefer not to play. I have a laundry list of songs I really don't like playing, but I even have to admit that the crowd does go nuts for those songs.

Whats even more difficult is pretending onstage that I'm enjoying myself while playing the songs. I found that I can overcome that just by focusing more on "performing" than playing, and work on appearing to be the party, because, as the (dance-rock) band, you ARE the party. If you aren't visibly having a great time, neither will the patrons.

One of my personally hated songs is "Born to be Wild"... not really a bad song, just that it's not that interesting to play, and I've played it a thousand times.. I would sometimes rather stab myself in the face with an icepick than play that song again.. but then I play it again.. and the crowd goes friggin ape.

Didn't mean to go off topic, just thought that would help you decide where to set your limits...

Back to your other question, look up other local cover bands, especially the ones playing in the "A" clubs and check out their set lists, most will have their sets or song lists posted on their myspace or website.

Good luck!

Eh, Kramer, I figure that there are plenty of danceable rocking tunes out there to play that you DO like. Yeah, it's nice to have the "Born To Be Wild" in your back pocket if you ever need it to cover a "special" request (i.e. - one that a person slips a cpl bucks in your tip jar for!), but there's really no need to have it on your set list, since it IS so easy to do. Not when there are equally danceable songs by myriad other groups to play, & it really doesn't hurt that much if the audience hasn't heard them before, if they're played well. Hell, play "Rock Me Baby" or "Magic Carpet Ride" by Steppenwolf, & I guarantee that ppl will dance to those, as well, if you play them right.

The beat is what counts the most. Is the tempo a good one for dancing? Is it catchy enough to grab someone's attention? If so, then go for it.

A traditional classic- or heavy metal- or country-rock band can wow the ppl on the dance floor by doing something completely out of their usual context, like slipping in a Bowie or a Monkees or a Phish tune, or "Bang On The Drum All Day," cuz the song itself will grab the ppl by the boo-boos & MAKE them dance in spite of themselves if it's properly presented.

There's just too much good music out there to limit yourself to playing stuff you hate. Finding it, learning it, & presenting it in your own style while keeping the spirit of the thing is the key, though.

Doing this will make your band stand out from the rest of the "cover-clones," cuz your band will indeed BE different, yet entertaining, too.

This sort of thing also gets you more unusual requests, & if you look them up, you may find even more cool stuff to do that you never heard of before, yet audiences just eat up like candy.

philbymon wrote:There's just too much good music out there to limit yourself to playing stuff you hate. Finding it, learning it, & presenting it in your own style while keeping the spirit of the thing is the key, though.

See, that's my philosophy too. And really, it's the philosophy of all our band members. We all believe that. We all believe there are literally hundreds of great songs we wouldn't mind doing. So I don't really see a point to playing something that I don't like.

And I take the same attitude with my band mates. If I suggest a song someone loathes, I move off it right away. There's no sense in any of us playing something we don't like. We're in this for fun; we don't care about the rest of it. We believe (maybe naively so) that if we're genuinely having fun doing what we're doing, that's going to come across. We'll find out I suppose.

But back to the dance tunes... The thing is, I have a really limited musical vocabulary. I grew up with big hair rock, so I'm familiar with stuff like Poison & Def Leppard. But when I got out of high school I picked up a guitar and almost immediately began gravitating toward progressive rock. And as most know, prog rock doesn't get radio play. So I've been in my own musical world for 14+ years... I have no real clue what is popular, and even less idea about what good dance tunes are.

I've had a great time this past year learning a bunch of new songs I've never heard before. I've been exposed to a whole bunch of new music thanks to this cover band. And I haven't liked everything, but I've like way more than I have disliked, and it's been fun learning new songs. So I figure there has to be more music out there, and dance music, that I can dig and get excited to play. And I'm just trying to make use of the resources I have - like this message board - to expose myself to all those tunes, hoping to find a dozen or so rock tunes that you can dance to that I can dig playing

Probably half the songs my band plays live, I wouldnt play if it was my choice, but our audience requests the stuff so I do it.

What I do is turn songs inside out. We are 3 piece bass, drums, guitar and singer. Being the only guitar allows me a lot of space that groups with 2 guitarist just dont have. The bassist and myself throw all kinds of tradeoff riffs and answer call type things to keep things interesting. Yea if I play all these goofy dance songs by the book I would get bored. But as a semi advanced guitarist I find it a challenge to heat up the songs with my own thing. Most of these songs have a really easy framework to work off of. The other night we threw in KC and The Sunshine Bands, Get Down Tonight for the intro I transposed Jeff Becks Freeway Jam main riff over the top and we ended up going into Edgar Winters Frankenstien somehow or the other. I dont think the crowd knew the Beck riff but they knew Frankenstien and were eating it up. Our soundman said afterwards "Damn, Wilder I never know where you guys are going with a song!". On a downer we got requested Claptons Wonderful Tonite so much that we jumped into it. I didnt know that our singer had never played it before and I ussually key off the vocals, needless to say we slaughtered the hell out of the song, which is rare for my group. Lately weve been playing 3-5 songs a night that we either havent played in years or have never played together.

In short if you are going to try to play for the bar/dance circuit I think you better learn all the normal songs that are expected in your area. I play 3-5 times a month these days and all those "pet" songs that I thought people would love cause Im such a monster musician havent exactly worked out that way. Audiences in general are very dumbed down when it comes to music, they want to hear stuff they are familiar with that has a good 4x4 beat to it. On the other hand if you give them basically what they want they will get on board for some of your "pet" songs. You just better be ready to give them enough of what you want to get to do waht you want to do.

This is just the opinion of someone who is out there working the "club/dance' circuit in west tn.

Good Luck with whatever you do, but own the songs you do no matter how boring they may be and you will be successful. If you are a prog player then prog the hell out of the songs you do with inverted chords and weird counter riffs. Its all about projecting some sort of emotion to the audience that makes them see you having fun and then they in turn want to have fun also.

In my area some of the simplest groups are the most successful and some of the most technical play to empty rooms.

Song wise

Brickhouse
Get Down Tonite
Bang a Gong, check out the Powerhouse version with Robert Palmer
Addicted to Love and Simply Irresistable
Wonderful Tonite or Turn The Page for slow numbers
I always forget about INXS, but they had some great songs that are very danceable
Aint To Proud To Beg
Mustang Sally
Sweet Home Alabama
Gimme Three Steps
Suck My Kiss by RHCP, believe it or not we get a great dance response to this song
Crazy Train or Paranoid
Another Thing Comin or Livin After Midnite
Rock n Roll All Nite
Man In The Box
Spoonman
Heard It Thru The Grapevine
Old Time Rock N Roll
Hard To Handle
I feel Good James Brown
Rollercoaster
FreeRide
Higher Ground RHCP
I Love Rock N Roll
You Shook Me All Nite Long
Girls Girls Girls
Pour Some Sugar On Me

I could go on and on, weve played most of these at one time or another and had great success getting people on the dance floor.

Hell pull Louie Louie or Wipeout out of the hat every now and then

jw123 wrote:In short if you are going to try to play for the bar/dance circuit I think you better learn all the normal songs that are expected in your area.

kind of what I was trying to say.

I suck with words anymore.

JW - I'd play all that stuff, too, but I might rotate a few of them & not do them every gig. Once you have a good repertoire, you can do that. When the band has 40-50 songs they've done successfully, it's actually a fun thing to do. Ya know - do Mustang Sally once a month whether it's been requested or not. It would drive me buggy to hafta do it every week, though, esp on Fri/Sat back-to-backs. Just my take on it. "Burning Down The House" would go over just as well or better, imho, & be more fun to play (at least until I get bored with it, then it goes into that "once a month file"). And you don't sound the same at every gig that way, too.

Seems like far too many bands I know, if you see them once this year, you can bet they'll have the same material next year, with maybe three exceptions. I like to keep things fresh by learning new stuff once a month, myself. Best band I was ever in, if you saw us a year later, you'd hear maybe 4-5 of the same songs we played last year, with the exception of the originals, which we played a lot over the 2-3 yrs I was with them. We did often rotate those, as well. We had a lot of our own stuff.

It's nice to have those little nuggets in your back pocket, once in awhile, though, I'll admit.

colors fade!!!!
do you like playing for money or do like playing your kinda music?
witch ever you do is OK by me as long as you enjoy what your doing.
hope you all the best just keep playing

celticpiing.....
if you want you can dance to anything..thank you.

krammerguy..
you are on the money