What difference does it make? My band plays Matchbox 20 and Third Eye Blind. We also play Wilson Pickett, the Stones, Tommy Tutone, Fastball, Van Morrison, Steppenwolf, Cracker, Badfinger, and lots of others. Music from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and today. It’s called “versatility.”
Plus, cover bands are where a lot of up-and-coming musicians cut their teeth while learning to play in a band situation and getting experience. And if you’re playing songs that people know and enjoy, you can get a following, get people to listen, then start working in originals. If you’re playing stuff that’s currently popular, you catch people’s ears: “Hey, cool, I know that song! It rocks!”
Two of the bands against whom we competed in the Battle of the Bands I mentioned were original bands. (One did play a cover of “Son of a Preacher Man,” and the other did the “Inspector Gadget” theme.) The crowd liked them, too. But when we played, kids and adults alike were on their feet dancing, singing along, and having a good time. That’s why we won. Plus, thanks to someone seeing us perform, we got booked for a block party this weekend where we’ll make another $400.
If there were no cover bands, we wouldn’t have Hayseed Dixie.
Anyway, I hear too much “original” music that is hackneyed and passionless enough on its own to get too worried about top 40 cover bands strangling the music scene. In other words, 90% of the original stuff sucks anyway, so why would I want to subject myself to more derivative crap?
“Music from the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and today” Mix 102.
Isn’t that a commercial for a radio station?
Look man, i recognize the importance of playing a cover in a set…it gets the audience into it. So there is some value to covers. But bands are covering songs that are already beat into the ground by radio stations, and its not just one band doing it. If your band plays the current popular song by Matchbox 20, there are 1000 other bands playing the current popular song by Matchbox 20, plus the radio is playing the current popular song by Matchbox 20 in a playset that has very few songs included in it already. Monotony is not good for the brain. People are dumb enough as it is.
I’m glad your making money. If I didnt care about what I played i would jump on the coverband thing too.
Ouch!
[hijack] pl, did you hear that RTFirefly is having a shindig at his house Labor Day weekend? (thread in MPSIMS - and fathom) At this point, I plan on attending, and towing Mrs. Spritle and The Littlest Doper[sup]TM[/sup]. If you are planning on attending, perhaps you can bring something with strings, and I’ll bring something with strings, and we can get really drunk and play out of tune, with no rhythm and actual believe that we sound awesome!
[/hijack]
What we have here is a victem of hte romantic notion that the creator is more important than the creation. Really, this is all Wordsworth’s fault–he really pushed the whole idea that art is something that springs full fledged out of the heads of certain special people called “artists” and that what set these people apart from mere mortals was not that they worked at it, or even there creations, but some intrinsic ZING they had in thier souls.
The thing is, Wordsworth lied. Art didn’t even spring full fledged out of his head–he wrote careful poems and spent a good deal of time rewriting nad refinning them. But he liked to think of himself as having some special, etheral quaily, instead of boring old genius, and hey, who can blame him? We all like to think the muse picked us out from all the unwashed heathens.
So anyway, Wordsworth started this romantic idea of the “artist”, Byron made it worse to the point that many people followed the art not for the art’s sake, but as a special way to be closer to that sacred figure, the artist, and in our own century the Beats took that ball and ran with it until the force of the artist’s “vison” and personality totally consumed the actual art itself. What mattered about On hte Road wasn’t what it said; what mattered was that it was written in three sleepless weeks on a single roll of paper in one go as the all-consuming artist vomited up his experiences. It was sincere, not a story, but a perfect pathway through to the brain of an artist, which is a special catagory of person.
I think it was the Beats that transfered this sensibility to music–certainly hte timing is about right. Suddenly it mattered whether or not an artist wrote the song they sang, because we were more concerned with whether or not we were seeing an artist than with the actual work of art we were hearing. Being close to an “artist”–modern day saints–is more important than hearing art.
I hate to (further) burst your bubble, whorehey, but as usual pldennison’s right. I played in a band for six years that did original material with the occasional cover thrown in. Never in all that time did I feel threatened by cover bands. It takes just as much skill to be a good cover band (and by good, I don’t mean note-for-note carbon copies of the sources; it’s hard to make an already great song your own) as a good original band. We used to play covers not to pander to the audience but because they were fun. Unless you’ve got a substantial body of original work built up, playing your same originals night after night tends to squeeze the life out of them; after a while, you’re playing by rote. Even if you have a large storehouse of originals, after rehearsing/recording/playing them to perfection, you start to hate your own songs if that’s all you play. Sometimes during rehearsals we’d play nothing but covers, just because it kept things fresh and enjoyable. And if all you play are originals, covers are new to you, no matter how many times you’ve heard 'em.
Again, to me, it just comes down to having fun while you’re playing, which is the whole point, isn’t it? Unless you’re in it for the money or the chicks, neither of which I saw much of when I was in a band.
Note: The covers we played that got the best response were “Just What I Needed” by The Cars and the theme song from “King Of The Hill”. Also, whenever we played a duff gig, we’d close with a horrible screaming version of “Helter Skelter”. It was so (intentionally) bad, people began to shout for it when we went onstage. Just a helpful tip to those of you in bands.
“If you are planning on attending, perhaps you can bring something with strings, and I’ll bring something with strings, and we can get really drunk and play out of tune, with no rhythm and actual believe that we sound awesome!”
For example, The Beatles. For four years, they were a cover band in Germany. Occasionally, they’d slip in an original song, then go back to playing the Elvis/Chuck Berry/Little Richard standards that the crowd loved.
Hell, even when they were big, they were still a mostly-cover band; their first two albums released in America by Capitol records were at least one-third covers (like “Please Mr. Postman” and “Roll Over Beethoven”). Their albums generally had at least one cover song until, what, Rubber Soul in '66? (Sorry, Phil, I’m better at late Beatles trivia than early Beatles trivia.)
And they weren’t the exception- that was generally the rule. Most of the British invasion bands- like the Rolling Stones, for example- cut their teeth as ‘cover’ bands playing the hits of the '50’s.
Like I said, you’re giving orignal bands too much credit. I’ll see your 1000 MB20 cover bands and raise you 1000 bands writing original material that sounds exactly like MB20 (or Blink, or the Ramones, or Sonic Youth, or Screeching Weasle, or the Sonics, or Bob Marley, or Eminem, or the Misfits, or Pavement, or any band that has a achieved some modicum of popularity.)
Isn’t the proper term “royalty payment” not “cover charge”?
horhay_achoa:
A better analogy would be people taking previosuly performed stories and performing them again on stage. So unless you think Broadway is “weird” I don’t see your point. Some people perfer live but unoriginal to prerecorded but original. If people were buying a bunch of CDs of local bands covering this week’s top 20, then I’d be much more inclined to agree with you.
Why do you play music? Because you enjoy it and have fun or to prove yourself as being a brilliant artist. If it isn’t fun for you then stop playing. If it is fun then you should understand why people play in cover bands, they enjoy it.
By the way, I checked out your band. I’m not trying to start anything but your stuff doesn’t seem all that “original” either. It’s been done. Maybe thats why people arent there for ya. Along the same lines why did you take your bands website out of your profile since starting this thread?
Good point Black455.
I have heard some really bad and unoriginal original bands.
They still seem more musical to me though, but whatever.
I have come to realize through this debate that the reason I said I hate cover bands is because I hate top 40 music, and that is what I think of as “cover band” material. I also realized that there is a cover band that plays near my house that I really like, and they do ALL Dead covers, but that is also different to me because it is hard to copy a dead song exactly. They did each song so many different ways, and the solo sections and improvisation are such an important part of their music that it is nearly impossible to cover a dead song without putting you own touch on it.
Okay, I agree with you here with one caveat. It isn’t only cover bands that are guilty of this. I saw the Eagles in concert a couple of weeks ago and I could have got the same effect if I stayed home and played their CDs. They set a goal many years ago (from what I have since heard) that they wanted their concerts to be exactly like listening to the album. I do hate that, but a cover band wasn’t the guilty party.
PEZ- I was waiting for someone to ask me that. I didn’t think it was fair to have a link to my BANDS web site when voicing my INDIVIDUAL opinion about something.
Also, I didn’t want people who may visit it because of my opinions on this thread to go in with a closed mind. I would much rather see you at show to hear what you think.
Of course, the converse is equally bad- I saw footage of Crosby, Stills, and Nash in a recent concert. They sound nothing like their recordings, and that ain’t really a good thing…
PEZ- No problem. I think I actually owe an apology too. I went back and read my OP again and it comes off a bit harsh. I was just a little angry about the article I had read and it showed…bigtime. I am not usually like that. The article really got under my skin because it was saying NOT to support original music because you could have more fun seeing a cover band. Anyway, if I offended anyone in a cover band I am sorry, that is a choice you make and if I don’t like it I don’t have to come see it, just like if anyone doesn’t like original music they don’t have to support it.
