Music Industry Discussion

It never ceases to amaze me which songs an audience will like and which they won't. I used to play in an all cover band many years ago and my two LEAST favorite songs The Crawl and The Walk were the two MOST requested songs we played. I gave up being picky about cover tunes. If somebody in the band wants to play any cover tune I'll try it and see how the audience responds. You just never know which ones they'll like.

I have played in cover bands for a long time but we always do the songs our own way. Once, we were playing a club in California and we ended the set with "Johnny B. Goode" which I had rearranged with two solos in it. The first solo, I stick to the conventional rock/blues lead scale, but the second one, I had worked out a four finger tapped lead kinda like Eddie Van Halen would have done if covering that song. When we got off stage this guy about 50 or 60 something came up to me and told me he had heard that song from hundreds of bands but that was the best rendition he had heard and handed me a ten and said to have a drink on him. I went up to the bar for the drink and when I got there, this kid in his early twenties said, "Man, you guys rocked out on that Johnny B. Goode." That was one of the best feelings in my life, knowing that people of all ages could appreciate my interpretation of that classic songs. Some great cover songs have been ruined for me by people always asking for the same few songs everytime we play. I thought of writing a song about that called, "Stairway to Freebird on Cocaine.

Odd, I may have one of the only alternate positions on this topic. I happen to be located but a few miles from Chip in Upstate NY but I have had a lifelong dream of building a perfect band from excellent musicians that can cover some of the great clasic rock/prog material from the early days. I am in the dificult process of perfecting sets of Yes, Genesis, King Crimson, Gentle Giant, Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Jethro Tull, Rush. ELP, UK. We plan to build a tribute to classic prog itself and tour with this through an agency signing. We belive in the project although I must say it has been a nightmare to find people who think this way. We plan to showcase our originals that are in the classic prog style from the back of this bill paying band project. This way if the originals do not catch on as quick as we would like we still have a band paying the bills and playing the music we love and are lucky enough to be able to play.
Again I have yet to prove this concept in the real world we have just reformed with a new lineup and the odds are not high that it will succeed but we are trying.

Nothing wrong with Brown Eyed Girl but at some point We feel it is time to try and do something musically worthwhile like the old days and the possibilites that used to exist then. We feel we'd like to make something interesting out of our talents before we are too dam old to do it anymore.
Again, I understand the Mustang Sally thing..........glad it is what you like. I personally have to pursue this band until I can't stand up anymore.
Goo dluck to any musician in this shitty world of entertainment we have now.

R

Chip, I'm currently trying to do exactly what you're saying. I'm trying to put together an oldies rock band just for fun and some extra cash. So far all of us in the band are not "young 'uns". I'm 49 and the others are older. We'll probably do a few recent songs, but mostly stuff from 60's-80's.

I think the only problem would be if you are trying to play in college bars or other bars where the young people go, would they just want to hear oldies? I know they are used to hearing classic rock but not sure if they would want to hear all our music in "their" clubs. So if you did do original or modern stuff then you might have more venues that would want to hire you.

I'll let you know if/when we get to the point where we are looking for venues!

I love Brown-Eyed Girl but it's a little slow for the type of stuff we're going to play. I am trying to concentrate on more hard rock/fast/upbeat songs. Plus I'm the singer so it will mostly be songs from Ronstadt, Heart, Blondie, Benatar, et al. but I told the guys they can do guys' songs, too, if they want.

Suzanne

I happened to land a gig in a working band that is strictly covers and we make darn good money at it. I'm not talking $300 for the band per night--I'm talking $300 per person per night. It's all about the venue. We play corporate parties, weddings, etc.

I got the gig through Band Mix as a matter of fact... But anyway--there were some caveats:
1. Must play electronic drums for volume control
2. Rehearsals are mandatory once a week for 4 hours
3. We play in "stage black" slacks and button-down shirts
4. We show up sober, we leave sober
5. We play as close to the original as possible especially on some key songs where you have to NAIL IT for the crowd to love it

To me, the above is no big deal for the amount of pay I get. Average gig is 3 hours with about 1.5 hours of setup and teardown. Making close to $100 an hour playing music--priceless....