Need some song suggestions

I’ve got a gig playing in a mardi gras parade at the end of February. The parade is probably 45 minutes long, and I’ve got a talented crew of musicians ready to play; all I need are songs!

The songs need to:

-Be relatively simple. The amount of noise and chaos, likely very cold weather, the precarious fact of playing on the back of a moving flat bed, and the lack of adequate monitors is going to make songs with odd breaks and complicated instrumental parts less than ideal.

-Be relatively popular. The crowd will be incredibly diverse, and I want songs that will be at least sort of familiar to 80% of the crowd.

-Be consistant tempo-wise. Because we’re moving, I don’t want to do songs with sections with big breaks or lulls in energy. I’d hate to move past a section of the crowd and have them wonder what the heck we were doing.

As a guideline, last year songs we did at this gig included The Beatles’ Get Back, Spencer Davis Group’s Gimme Some Lovin’, and Cheap Trick’s I Want You To Want Me, Phish’s Chalk Dust Torture, and a few others.

Any thoughts?

You can’t turn around in New Orleans without hearing some band playing “Mustang Sally.”

I believe Louie, Louie is de rigeur.

Mardi Gras Mambo–dunno who played it.

New Orleans Ladies by Louisiana Leroux

Would “the Battle of New Orleans” work? (Up here in NJ, most people under a certain age don’t know that song, but I wonder if people in New Orleans are more familiar with it?)

I don’t think so. Dunno where the OP’s parade is gonna be, but a story song where the lyrics matter prolly ain’t gonna work on the back of a float in any Mardi Gras parade I’ve ever seen.

Pretty much any of Buddy Holly and the Crickets’ hits.

You don’t say if there are any dancers involved, but if so you want uptempo numbers with lots of moves.

Ooby Dooby
YMCA
Stand (REM)
Rock around the Clock

All That Jazz