Need some song suggestions

Cafe Society
1

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?

2

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

3

I believe Louie, Louie is de rigeur.

4

Mardi Gras Mambo–dunno who played it.

New Orleans Ladies by Louisiana Leroux

5

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?)

6

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.

7

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

8

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

9

All That Jazz