Somebody should take the interwebs away from me at night.

That’s funny you said that cuz we used to do that, covering, Surge, Integration, Brave New World, Stereobomb… It’s really cool to see the reactions of your buddies when you cover the song they wrote, and you do your own take on them. And also Dylan is right it’s way cooler to see a band do a cover of a song out of thier Genre and make it thier own, than to see the song word for word, and note for note.
I always said I would never want to play in a cover band, but I’ve always been about the tribute bands, I think it would be fun as hell to dress up like early Motley Crue, or Misfits, or the Ramones. Maybe even just once or twice a year! The worst part about a cover band is they can rock something good… then 5 minutes later you hear some dog crap like Limp Biskit or “She’s a Brickhouse”…. I know they don’t really like playing that…

Today, anyone with two guitar lessons and a PC can record an album. That is fantastic in some respects because it widens the playing field and opens the door to have much more varied music available. The problem is that “bands” aren’t as ready as they used to be, on the whole. We used to have to cut our teeth for years, building a following, proving that we were worth the investment to record an album. Now everyone can do it, so everyone does. But the supply has become greater than the demand. Bands start out with no name recognition, no following, little or no live experience… but they want gigs – lots of em. So what to do, what to do? Well, they play everywhere, for free… for “exposure”. Then a trend forms. The club owner can get 5 bands in his venue per night, promise them a cut of the door to split amongst them. And they’ll all beg him to let them do it, cause “its all about the music”. But then they find they can’t pull the crowds they expected. So what next? Hey, lets give our music away for free too. And lets encourage people to make copies and share it so we can get all that “exposure”. We’ll make our money back selling tshirts.

All the while, we snarl at those sellouts playing radio hits to packed clubs full of drones.

On an individual level, it makes great sense. But here’s the bigger picture… We aren’t honing our craft anymore – we want to run before we’ve taken a first step. And, we’re devaluing what we do as writers and performers. We’re teaching the general public that we need not be compensated – our music/art is not worth it. Sure, there are success stories. But it seems most of the bands that have had some sort of longevity are those who started with a firm foundation.

Bottom line in all this mess – The best coverbands are those that provide a party and play what people want to hear, and the best original bands are those who bust their behinds and have a product solid enough to capture and hold people’s attention. I guess the point I was trying to make somewhere with this misjointed rant is that a scene needs both to survive and flourish. We certainly have that.

Two more cents.

First, though, I love how this has become a conversation on the merits of cover bands. I’ve played in my share, and I’ve played in original acts. I’ve found that cover bands make more money and get better amenities on the road. I’ve also found that I prefer playing original music.

That said, let’s consider the Beatles. Those guys started out playing mostly covers in small clubs, and it’s clear that they learned from them. Back in those days, just about every band that came up played many cover songs while they worked on their originals and moved up the food chain. (I like Jimi Hendrix’s cover of “Sgt. Pepper” better than the Beatles’ version, by the way.)

Like the Beatles, the Rolling Stones played many many covers — so much Chicago blues. Aretha Franklin’s “Respect” was a cover of Otis Redding’s original. Redding covered the Stones “Satisfaction.”

Someone who is interested in writing her own songs can do no better than dissecting and performing her heroes’ songs. A guitar player friend of mine told me to get a Beatles songbook and a Motown songbook, learn every song — and then I might have some idea about how to write.

I have respect for mostly-cover acts that play their own material in shows. It takes guts, after you’ve played the hits that every fool knows, to then give the crowd something from the band, something that band wanted an audience to hear. Maybe it will suck. Maybe it will be great. As a listener, that’s part of the experience. It’s more interactive, on a certain level.

I’ve known plenty of people in cover bands who love to play those covers. I’ll be thinking: “Good lord, that’s a cheesy song that I absolutely hate, and people are just eating it up.” Then I’ll talk to a band member later, and he’ll say he loves playing it.

I’ve got to go with a cliche here — more power to him. He likes it. His audience likes it. He’s getting paid. He has no angst about it. There’s nothing wrong with it.

That doesn’t mean I have to like the music. But I have to sort of envy someone like that, because I used to get paid good money to smack backbeats on tunes I could not stand, tunes that made me want to open a vein. And here’s someone making good money and actually having a good time up there.

Isn’t that what live music is about?

No, I kind of get what Pete is saying. Another band that utilized an approach of playing obscure covers was Metallica.They used to do it as well back in the day before they were signed to a major label.
They would play cover songs from obscure bands of the New Wave of British Heavy Metal – bands like Diamondhead, Budgie, Angel Witch and others.
And according to interviews I’ve read with James Hetfield in the past, they wouldn’t even announce things like “Hey this is a cover by so and so….”. They would just launch into the song and people could either recognize the cover or think it was one of the band’s own, possibly creating a nice impression on the listener(or fooling them,however you wish to look at it) that the band they were hearing had some seriously good originals.

I kind of thought that a smart approach to doing covers(in a perfect world that is, not one where you have to play “today’s hits” to get booked in a bar and play what the general population wants to hear). Not just playing the most well known songs by people’s favorite bands, but your own favorites of bands people may not be as familiar with.
For instance, if I were watching a punk band do a cover of Sex Pistols’ ‘Anarchy in the UK’ I would find it somewhat yawn inducing.
But if they pulled out a cover of something like Zero Boys’ ‘Civilization’s Dying’ I’d be more impressed.

Another example of using obscure covers – when Nirvana turned legions of their fans onto the genius of Devo by covering ‘Turnaround’ and onto another band called The Vaselines that few had heard of until they included covers of them on their Incesticide album.

I also dig it when band’s cover a song from a completely different genre of music than they normally play and make it their own,sometimes even improving over the original.

Obviously this is not about lounge bands who cover the pop hit parade. Although, sometimes a great song can be so good as to survive almost any degree of cover mutilation (see: Idol, American). And entire reputations are sometimes claimed on performing deserving material that has evaded or slipped from wider awareness; only some of these reputations are fully deserved. And apart from either the strict imitators or self-concious revivalists, there are of course thinly disguised covers masquerading as originals, where the tested nature of the repainted song makes it preferred by used music salesmen (see: Pop, Rock, Country and R&B music, Contemporary).

But there is another valid choice, wherein an honest performer will present a cover song to an audience that mostly won’t recognize it, in order not to deceive or ride coattails, but to share something they know to be worthy of continued celebration. The key, besides the ability of the performer, is judgement. It’s about leading the audience to something they’re likely to like, based not on sales figures, but because it’s been liked by ears one trusts-one’s own. It does carry risks; many musicians are straitjacketed by perceived genre boundaries, and others will go insufferably far in advertising their eclecticism or historical awareness, but still I think there’s an important role for the unfamiliar cover song. Through them, creativity can be expressed through imaginative rearrangement, or genre authenticity expressed by a convincing re-creation. It certainly is a time tested means for young musicians to get better, while their own musical minds mature to an original creative level worth presenting to an audience. After all, a poorly chosen unfamiliar cover can flop just as hard as a bad original .

It certainly worked for a cover band from Liverpool who later did the most of any artists to popularize original material.

Brooks – Great points all around. I’m enjoying your take on the scene here. And if I came across as “Hey hey hey! Wait a minute there…”, it wasn’t my intention.

Well put, and point taken.

Using you guys (and Burning Bridges) was probably poor form as I don’t know either of your bands’ original material very well. I was basing what I wrote largely on the times I’ve seen you guys play. The reality is that you have a huge draw, and a loyal fanbase as well. that fanbase dictates what you guys need to do to get them to come to your shows again and again. Understand, no attempt was made to disparage anything you guys do, mostly I was putting forth the point that it is easy to point to bands that draw crowds and simply shrug and act oblivious as to why they can fill Awful Arthur’s while another band has trouble filling a house party. Clearly, the idea is to please the crowd on hand whether by playing popular covers or by playing the originals they came to hear. I think that jealousy and scene rivalry can sometimes cloud that fact.