General Music Chat

There will always be a few tunes that go over extra easy, cause they are so greasy. lol

free ride
any Skynard

bang a gong
and a few more.


Lately, we have been practicing some old NAZARETH..............

They may want to dance, but when they heard the souped up version of PLEASE DON'T JUDAS ME, they really start drinking heavy and the rest is history.

The point is do not play dance music to play dance music, play some other music to try and hit the nostalgia nerve and then use it like a jump rope. YOU DO NOT HAVE TO HOKEY POKEY if'n ya don't wanna. LOL

Philby,

Actually if you see us you might not hear any songs that I listed and then again you might hear all of them.

Lately we dont have a real set song list, we ussually start with a Bad Company song, Then we always do Free For All and then Lagrange and then its a real free for all. We start asking what folks want to hear. Sat night our singer asked if I wanted to do some Zep, I said lets do Whole Lotta Love, he said ok and we went into it. When we got to the freaky part we got into this 5 minute funk jam thing before the solo that really let our bassist pull out all the stops. Then we went back into it. I think it was the best thing we did all night. And it was totally unrehearsed, Imean weve played it before, you knowlike 10 yrs ago or something, but sat was the first time we played it in a long time and it went over great. I like changing songs a lot, but if you have certain people that come to see you they will start requesting stuff. So everytime they come they want to hear their song. Oddly st we pulled a couple of old origianal songs out of the hat that we havent played, i think we did Highway Star which isnt regular but is one of my favorites, hell we even did Paranoid.

Im fortunate that the guys I play with and myself have such a long history that there is really no set list. New Years we started doing fake country stuff cause the crowd wanted it, basically we take some rock songs and play them in a country manner. You should hear us messing with Louie Louie or Wild Thing.

When we first got back together we were really trying to play everything by the book and note for note but after the last few gigs My Band Is Doing What It Does Best And That Is Jam. We play familiar stuff but you may never hear the same way again, even by us. It keeps it fun and real for me.

Capt

We do Hair Of The Dog and get the women to sing the SOB part. Its great having 50 women scream that at the top of their lungs. You should try that one sometime, they sing and love to dance to it.

JW - that's beautiful, man!

lol Yeah JW, at the END of the night to be sure.. lol

I still have this impression of this near toothless old hag drunk as she gets singing/screaming "Son OF A BITCH". I can almost smell her breath, RETCH!

Makes me want to run for the door..lol

Well, Cap, that toothless old hag just might bring her very hot daughter or friend the next time she comes to see the band, or she could be on the financial board for some festival that could make your band a lot of money by getting onto that circuit. The point is, the more fun your audience has hearing your band, the better the band's chances of getting more & higher paying gigs. The band that holds onto its "dignity" by playing only stuff that they like, may not get to play much at all, no matter how well they play, if their material doesn't assure that the audience will have a good time. That Alice In Chains cover band will not get the ppl up & dancing, & may just make them so depressed that they buy a bottle to go & shoot themselves in the head when they're done with it.

This doesn't necessarilly mean that the band must play each & every request, though. It just needs to be fun for the audience. Many's the time I've seen a band that had the audience in their pocket completely lose them by playing a poorly chosen request for some persistant drunken jerk. It takes some time to get them back when that happens.

Sometimes you just gotta say no, or we don't know that one.

Philby,

When someone requests something we dont want to play for whatever reason, I just tell them "Man we played that the first set, you must have missed it!"

I try to get people to request a band cause ussually we can do something by the band.

Man In The Box, AIC, is a great dance song. Everyone young and old gets up when we play that one. We also play The Rooster sometimes and everyone gets up and dances and sings to that one also. Just about any popular band has a couple of go to songs that work anywhere. New Years we had folks requesting country and I told the guys lets just do ANother Thing Coming and the folks yelling country were the first folks on the dance floor. I learned something that night, we tryed to really cater to the folks running the show cause they paid us a lot of money for that gig, but in the end we had to go back to doing what we do best to get the crowd going. If you are kinda fake playing music and audience senses it and will leave you.

I dont really consider myself a musician these days cause really if you are being paid to play you should be able to play, and besides this isnt rocket science, we are playing basic 3 chord rock n roll. These days I consider myself more of an Entertainer, thats my job to entertain and audience, if that means playing with my teeth, behind my head, behind my back, lieing on the floor, or jumping on tables then thats what I do. The toothless women if they pay to get in, well then they deserve to be entertained. Theres nothing worse than a picky musician, you know I dont want to play this or that and I dont want to play to this person or that one. Just stay at home and let guys like me who want to do this just for the joy of entertaining do the job that you dont want. If it means playing a dance song or two so what!

Couldn't have said it better, myself, JW. I'm with you 100% on this.

People dance to Man In The Box and Rooster?! Holy shat! What has this world come to?

Philby - I don't play to pick up women. If you play, they will come.. (field of dreams) lol

I am also in trouble with the local town, so politically speaking I don't care.

DIGNITY is playing a tune you don't like and changing it to something you do like. (If you don't like it, change it or just get rid of it)

LOL I hate to say it, but requests are handled with lies.. Even if we know it, we huddle and if we don't wanna, I LIE. (SORRY, I don't know that one)

(f them if they don't like it)

Lords knows we don't play much 1-2 month if we are lucky, but we'll play the most unlikely venues just for shock value and even negative attention can be beneficial.

Yeah, you can dance to about anything. So why don't they? I don't have an answer for that. I do know that slow dance songs get more feet on the floor than any others. No guy can pass up the chance to squeeze up to someone squeezable. If you follow up the slow song with no dead air, they will usually stay on the floor for at least another song. No lie...we played Marvin Gaye's 'Let's Get It On' near the end of a long night once, and kept the dance floor packed with In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida. We were just screwing around because we were out of material. Go figure.