Interesting article in this week’s Seattle alternative paper.
The author of the piece is the frontman for Harvey Danger, which is a very interesting lyrics-based indie rock band whose song “Flagpole Sitta” somehow became a huge hit.
This is typically pronounced “bitter singer, angry that his 15 minutes are up.” :dubious:
No use railing against popular music. It is what it is. He should consider himself lucky that Harvey Danger had 2* marginally big hit songs, which somewhat guarantees that he (at very least) won’t have to get a job at Kinko’s any time soon.
- What, nobody else remembers “Sad Sweetheart of the Rodeo?” Really? Okay, just me.
Have you read the article? I thought it was pretty even-handed, and didn’t detect any bitterness.
There wasn’t any bitterness or even condescension, which surprised me a bit.
What can anyone say about cover bands? A successful one is fun to listen to, gives the audience a good time, anbd makes decent money at a job that’s fun and requires little heavy lifting. It’s easy to laugh at bands like the Beatniks, but if they can make 500 people dance, and make a few dollars in the process, what’s so awful about that?
And while the Beatniks are, apparently, content to remain a cover band for good, I can think of a few cover bands that have gone on to do some great things. There were these 4 guys who used to play the Cavern Club and who stuck mostly to Chuck Berry and Little Richard covers… but eventually, they did some original stuff, too (or so I hear).
What about Harvey Danger’s cover of “Save It For Later” for that movie soundtrack? It was played on MTV, like, three or four times, I think!
That was a very interesting article. In summary, original artists get respect, cover bands get paid.
You take that back! Me First and the Gimme Gimmes are a fantastic band, and they do nothing but covers.
I think it depends more on the nature of the cover band.
Bands like Lounge Against The Machine, Apocalyptica, and others redo songs in new and interesting ways.
He doesn’t mention tribute bands, which are really lame. I mean a band which plays nothing but tunes by one band, and who slavishly try to sound exactly like that band are, by definition, boring. Of course, some bands, and I’m thinking of the recent Doors tour, may be even worse than a tribute band, because at least they aren’t pretending to be the original band with only one original member left.
…to you. For reasons I don’t understand either, some of them are pretty popular. I agree it’s uncreative at best.
Seconding of Gadarene’s comment – Me First are quite the opposite of the opposite of cool.
I like original bands. Like cover bands. They both have their place. The clubs scene around here (central Jersey Shore) has a good mix, but the most popular ones are certainly the cover bands. I have no problem with that, however. The beach bars are filled with tourists, and they’re looking to have fun. Cover bands are fun, simple as that.
As an aside, anyone who thinks that cover bands suck needs to go see The Nerds. If they still feel that way afterwards, they need to have their suckometer adjusted.
I’m in both a cover band and a band that plays 95% original material, and it looks like, if all goes according to plan, I’ll be able to pay all my bills this fall just from the cover band. But I get a different kind of satisfaction from playing original songs. The cover thing is fun, and it’s nice to be an entertainer, but the other band is a completely different animal. That’s why the bit in the article about letting go of “the ‘artist’ thing” bothered me a bit, as if at some point you’re supposed to “grow up” as a musician and realize that it is all about the money, and bands that don’t turn a profit are masturbatory exercises in egomania. I think it’s more along the lines of those of us who have to be creative will do so, money or no.
Having said that, the cover band thing sure does beat the hell out of having a real job.
If you’re doing acoustic gigs, I suppose. My band carries about a ton (2000 US pounds) of gear in and out of the venue for each gig–and many of those gigs are 1-nite stands. Talk about heavy lifting. It’s still fun, however!
To get back on point, playing in a cover band lets you get your chops together without having to be all-out creative on 5 hours of material. It can, as others have said, pay the bills.
Having listened to many an “original” band, more often than not I wish they’d copped a few good tunes from someone else. Many of them are not creative, or melodic, or much of anything. Just because you wrote it yourself doesn’t make it good.
So, copying others is better than giving creativity a shot? I disagree. Even if they suck, I give them props for doing their own material.
Sure, good money can be made by playing “Brown Eyed Girl,” and “Free Bird” all night, but I don’t think you’ll get much respect from true musicians by recycling music that has been done over and over again.
We have tons of excellent bands here in Indy, and I find it terribly sad that they make pennies compared to the lame-ass cover bands. Unfortunately, people would rather hear music they can sing along to rather than open their ears to check out something that they might end up liking a whole lot more.
Yeah, I wish the author had spent some time discussing the issue of cover bands vs. tribute bands vs. reinterpretation. For example, one of my favorite bands, the Walkabouts, has released at least two albums consisting entirely of covers–but they’re interesting songs interpreted in the Walkabouts’ own style. And I’ve seen comments by musicians to the effect that you have to play covers, if only in your practice sessions, because otherwise you go nuts (and go stale) just playing your own music over and over again.
Not all musicians are in it for respect. Some just like to play and make money.
Theadore Sturgeon said that 90% of everything is crap. (I personaly believe that he was an optimist, the number is closer to 99%). At best only one in ten new songs are worth the paper they are written on. (Or only one in ten song writers are worth the effort to let breathe.) You can be excellent performers but not have anyone in the band who can write. If you want to make a living, you do covers. Even the Beatles did covers, and they had TWO of the greatest songwriters that ever lived. Until the band gets good enought that original songwriters want them to premire their song, then they (the band ) have no choice.
Every symphony in the world does mostly covers. The Berlin philharmonic’s version of Beethovens Fifth is different than New York Sympony, which is diferent from the Moscow Sympony, etc, etc, etc,… All of them are artisticly good and worth listening to.
There are a lot of great musicians out there that can not write a lick, but they can play. Oh! man can they play. You want to keep them from expressing themselves artisticaly because they cant write?
Hey, I’ll give them props too. But I’m not going to listen to a bad band on principal.
Two things:
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The one saving grace of the cover band thing in my case (except the money and free alcohol) is that we generally don’t do regular cover band material, which, in some odd way, makes us a little more marketable in some cases, or at least more interesting. Instead of “Brown Eyed Girl” or “Margaritaville”, both of which I will never play on principle, we do songs by the Pixies and Ween. The highlight of this whole endevour was the first time a whole bar-full of people were shouting requests for “Piss Up a Rope.”
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Respect should be a non-issue. If you’re in a cover band, you won’t get it, and if you’re in an original band, you should be driven to play with or without it. Who cares if nobody gets the point as long as you do?
I like good cover bands. These are the ones who stay away from the sentence, “And here’s something we just wrote.” Know your role, cover bands.
Not everybody has to be some cutting edge new act that does things no one’s ever done before.
And Me First and the Gimme Gimmes? Totally rock!