On Tuesday this week I talked with a couple of gigging bands in the US who write their own material and who wanted to get more gigs. Two days later here in the UK I bumped into a friend who's a regular local gig-goer.
This guy doesn't play in a band but he enjoys live music and he's out every week watching local bar and pub bands.
Anyhow, he'd been out mid-week to one of his favourite haunts but had a complaint about what he saw.
There was some new Indie band on who he admitted were very good both vocally and musically. But he told me he'd only stayed around 20 minutes. He's never seen them before and didn't know any of their material. He said quite a few people had watched a little of the show and walked out. Nothing wrong with the band at all - apart from lack of familiarity anyone had with what they were playing.
Now you may think that someone really into music generally should stick around and hear something new. Sadly a lot of people won't do that. They want at least something they're familiar with.
As I said to the two bands mentioned at the top of this post, new bands who include some covers in their sets have a far greater chance of band bookings than those trying to get gigs playing just their own material.
Here's a survey I did on it:
Covers for Original Bands
More info on it here:
Covers and Getting Gigs
and Hugh Cornwell's (Stranglers) take as reported on this blog:
Original & Covers in same set
So maybe no need to look down on covers after all?
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2 comments:
Hello, Justin from the band Hung Dynasty here. We're mostly an original band, but we sprinkle our sets with covers. We do, though, perform them our own way (for example, imagine The Gambler by Kenny Rogers performed by a bunch of guys who love Iron Maiden).
They definitely help get the audience involved. They're fun. So why not? Let the covers fly, I say!
Hi Justin - good point about performing covers your own way, putting your own stampo on it. It can be good sport to get creative about other people's material.
Along the lines of your Rogers/Iron Maiden idea my own band does a punky version of "Can't take my eyes of you" (yes really). A re-working can work a treat if you get it right
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