Songs That Bands Always Play Wrong

RocknRollDave

Alright Now is probably one of the biggest candidates (I'm guilty of this one myself), but I'll also put forward the middle section in Are You Gonna Go My Way - i.e. the chords that precede the solo. Seen so many bands play that part wrong.

So....what other songs do us cover bands consistently get wrong?

not_the_dj

The intro to Sex on Fire

RocknRollDave

not_the_dj said:

The intro to Sex on Fire

Yes! I'm almost certainly guilty of this one too....

octatonic

What is 'wrong'?

Because many bands play their own songs a bit differently to how they are in the record.

axisus

octatonic said:

What is 'wrong'?

Because many bands play their own songs a bit differently to how they are in the record.

I agree, it just needs to sound like the song. Your average punter wouldn't have a clue if it was different. 

Guitarse

I must say, I hope I'm not being snobby, but I do cringe a little when I see/hear a band playing things wrong. Some guys were playing 'Happy Hour' by the Housemartins the other night, and played the section before the choruses wrong, putting in a chord that shouldn't be there..

EricTheWeary

I probably play everything wrong.

As a band though we are particularly proud of our drummer for getting the intro to 3 Minute Hero right having seen Gilson Lavis cocking it up on Hootenanny.

John_P

It's usually pretty obvious when someone is playing around with the arrangement or intentionally altering a song to someone just getting it wrong.  
I don't mind  a few mistakes - I'd rather watch someone with a bit of passion and energy make the odd dodgy note than a clinical and boring performance but when people just haven't learnt the parts or got the feel right it can be a bit cringeworthy.

robinbowes

It really grinds my gears when bands play the wrong chords. eg. major instead of minor, or F# instead of D (just because they hear an F#).

By all means play your own interpretation but, unless you're deliberately playing your own arrangement with different harmonic feel, please play the chords right!

R.

Vaiai

Unless it's a tribute band I don't mind if they do some bits different from the original - and as said, the punters don't care - I learn every little part for my covers band but the rest of my band don't and I sometimes wonder why I bother - but it sounds "right" if you get all those little things that make the song - I watched another band do a song we do and they simplified it so much but were having fun and the crowd did not care one jot about the playing!

Major and Minor chords in the wrong place is not "playing it different" it's just wrong tho!

Jimbro66

axisus said:

octatonic said:

What is 'wrong'?

Because many bands play their own songs a bit differently to how they are in the record.

I agree, it just needs to sound like the song. Your average punter wouldn't have a clue if it was different. 

I'm not so sure of that. If listeners are very familiar with a recording they will notice when a cover version differs from the original and it will sound 'wrong' to them even if they don't know why. Wrong in this case being different to what they expect to hear, be it a mistake or an 'interpretation'. Whether they care is another matter.

The most 'wrong' I ever heard was a function band that did Sinatra's My Way using just three chords

octatonic

Jimbro66 said:

axisus said:

octatonic said:

What is 'wrong'?

Because many bands play their own songs a bit differently to how they are in the record.

I agree, it just needs to sound like the song. Your average punter wouldn't have a clue if it was different. 

I'm not so sure of that. If listeners are very familiar with a recording they will notice when a cover version differs from the original and it will sound 'wrong' to them even if they don't know why. Wrong in this case being different to what they expect to hear, be it a mistake or an 'interpretation'. 

It depends how far off base they are.

I've talked about this a bit in my '30 songs in 30 days' thread.
What an audience notices is when a band misses the stops, when people come in at the wrong time- things like that are quite obvious.

If a band consistently gets a few chords wrong but the whole band goes with it, only musicians notice that- especially if it is something like playing an F#m instead of a D major.
The main thing is being consistent with it.

A bir of an aside- check this out- the Bad Plus do a version of "Chariots of Fire" which is very much a major tonality.

They do it by establishing a riff that is very much a minor tonality including lovely atonalities- loads of flat 5's and such.

This is a bit of a masterclass in how tonality is flexible- you can overlay major and minor things and they will work, providing you do it consistently.

mudslide73

I heard SOF while waiting for chips and shuddered at how wrong our version is. We've made it more complicated than theirs and we add a couple of passing chords that just aren't on the record. Also the intro is nowhere near right either. 

Danny1969

Mr Brightside is a common one bands play wrong, and SOF .......... it's often the drums I notice though. When a drummer just plays a straight beat and ignores the beat on the record it's annoying ....... SOF in particular needs the correct beat to work 

not_the_dj

There's covers that I've been playing for years, and I'm sure they've morphed in many ways from how we originally learnt and played them, so it's best to never list to how they "should" be played, and just carry on playing them as we play them.

Danny1969

not_the_dj said:

There's covers that I've been playing for years, and I'm sure they've morphed in many ways from how we originally learnt and played them, so it's best to never list to how they "should" be played, and just carry on playing them as we play them.

Yeah that happens and it's fine until you need a dep .... then you realize the dep doesn't know your version at all but would have been fine on the original arrangement. That's caught a couple of my bands out recently

ICBM

All of them, hopefully.

If there's one thing I hate more than bands trying to play note-perfect covers, it's musos criticising them for not doing.

Play the song, not the record.

stratman3142

Danny1969 said:

not_the_dj said:

There's covers that I've been playing for years, and I'm sure they've morphed in many ways from how we originally learnt and played them, so it's best to never list to how they "should" be played, and just carry on playing them as we play them.

Yeah that happens and it's fine until you need a dep .... then you realize the dep doesn't know your version at all but would have been fine on the original arrangement. That's caught a couple of my bands out recently

Yes that's a bit of a bug bear of mine. When using deps,, playing songs in different styles (or keys) is OK but radically different arrangements/structures can cause confusion. 

Decent players can go with stylistic changes (e.g. if you choose to do a reggae version of a rock song) but messing with the structures (e.g. the lengths and sequence of verse, chorus, break etc) can cause a lot of confusion. However, if you never use deps, I suppose it's not an issue.

richardhomer

I saw a friend's band attempt 'Another Brick in the Wall'. The bass player played all the right notes - largely in the right order - but definitely in the wrong place.... It was amazing how obviously 'wrong' the feel was. I think it's often the 'feel' that goes awry with covers - and is far more noticeable that a slightly wrong chord voicing....

BahHumbug

The 7/8 bit in Times like these.....rendered in 4/4, presumably cos the drummer can't do 7/8.

SOF, as has been mentioned.  Getting everyone to start at the right points needs everyone to have a very good feel for the beat of that intro guitar part.

i saw a band a few weeks ago, doing Sultans of Swing.  The guitarist did a fairly ham fisted attempt at all of Knopfler's original licks.  Then when it got to the arpeggio bit at the end he just strummed some chords very quickly.  Ouch.

BigMonka

ICBM said:

Play the song, not the record.

Ooooh I like that expression!