Covers which get the best crowd reaction?

CaseOfAce

Playing the social clubs with my function band - I have never yet seen an empty dancefloor when we play Wonderful Tonight. Whatever you might think about Eric Clapton and this song - for a certain type of audience it never fails to work.
Also Crazy Little Thing Called Love - the Queen classic that gives your bass player a chance to warm up!

Rocker

Another vote for Wonderful Tonight.

And Black is Black.  Play the opening riff and the floor is full. In a few seconds.

rico

Teenage Dirtbag, Brown Sugar, Sultans of Swing, I Believe in a thing called love. All great fun to play too! 

PolarityMan

jaymenon said:

Angels
Road to Amarillo
Delilah
We Will Rock You
You Give Love A Bad Name
Hey Jude
All Right Now
Sweet Caroline
I Just Called To Say I Love You

Jesus Christ people are idiots. Playing some of those would make me want to top myself.

Rocker

PolarityMan said:

jaymenon said:

Angels
Road to Amarillo
Delilah
We Will Rock You
You Give Love A Bad Name
Hey Jude
All Right Now
Sweet Caroline
I Just Called To Say I Love You

Jesus Christ people are idiots. Playing some of those would make me want to top myself.

Sad to read this my friend.  A lot of musicians, including guitar players, like to give some enjoyment to others by their playing.  You don't have to make a 'statement' every time you pick up your instrument.

pmbomb

-

poopot

Rocker said:

Another vote for Wonderful Tonight.

And Black is Black.  Play the opening riff and the floor is full. In a few seconds.

The floor is full of what? Zimmer frames?

bbill335

we used to do arc angels/doyle bramhall ii's 'shape i'm in', which people really enjoyed without being familiar. it is a pretty straight 12 bar though!

EricTheWeary

bbill335 said:

we used to do arc angels/doyle bramhall ii's 'shape i'm in', which people really enjoyed without being familiar. it is a pretty straight 12 bar though!

It's a song co-written with Marc Benno ( who amongst other things played some of the guitar parts on The Doors' LA Woman album) so it took three people to write a 12 bar and I have a copy of his version somewhere. Which, IIRC, isn't as good. I occasionally dig that first Arcangels album out, it was great stuff.   

EricTheWeary

Rocker said:

PolarityMan said:

jaymenon said:

Angels
Road to Amarillo
Delilah
We Will Rock You
You Give Love A Bad Name
Hey Jude
All Right Now
Sweet Caroline
I Just Called To Say I Love You

Jesus Christ people are idiots. Playing some of those would make me want to top myself.

Sad to read this my friend.  A lot of musicians, including guitar players, like to give some enjoyment to others by their playing.  You don't have to make a 'statement' every time you pick up your instrument.

I think this is part of why I was always a bad band member - being torn between wanting to make a statement and wanting to entertain people and having a resultant inner turmoil. I particularly hated playing weddings ( although why any band I ever played in was asked to do weddings I don't really know) which seemed like some form of subservience whereas I wanted to use cover versions of minor hits from the 1980s to bring down capitalism. 

Bezzer

Rocker said:

PolarityMan said:

Jesus Christ people are idiots. Playing some of those would make me want to top myself.

Sad to read this my friend.  A lot of musicians, including guitar players, like to give some enjoyment to others by their playing.  You don't have to make a 'statement' every time you pick up your instrument.

Ah feck, my irony meter just exploded! 

p90fool

fretmeister said:

p90fool said:

I Will Survive, which luckily is great fun to play. 

The version by Cake though.

Just checked this out, it's terrible, but in a good way!

Stratavarious

poopot said:

Rocker said:

Another vote for Wonderful Tonight.

And Black is Black.  Play the opening riff and the floor is full. In a few seconds.

The floor is full of what? Zimmer frames?

Don’t diss care home gigs! 

poopot

Stratavarious said:

poopot said:

Rocker said:

Another vote for Wonderful Tonight.

And Black is Black.  Play the opening riff and the floor is full. In a few seconds.

The floor is full of what? Zimmer frames?

Don’t diss care home gigs! 

I suppose if you are a resident in a care home getting up and performing such greats as black is black and wonderful tonight for the rest of your housemates is a nice change from the bingo…

mind you, even the folks currently in care homes are prolly too young to really appreciate (or care about) such golden oldies!…

CaseOfAce

Art vs. commerce innit? Same as it ever was. 

Sure you can populate a setlist full of Robben Ford, Alan Holdsworth and  Dream Theatre covers - turn up at the Dog and Duck ready to unleash you and your bandmates quite staggering technical prowess to a doubtless eager, salivating pub regular crowd...and marvel at the tumbleweed blowing across the beer sodden wooden (and empty) dancefloor at the end of the night whilst the landlord ponders why his takings are down that night.

If you want regular bookings on the UK pub rock, social club circuit that generally means playing Mustang, Brown Eyed Alabama with a side helping of Se*x on Brightside 69. And boy you'd better look like you're having fun doing it !! ;-)

(though I must give kudos to the band in a Brixham pub I once saw doing 10CC's Art for Art's sake - that was brilliant - and I'm not being insincere here).

Roland

I can spot two groups here, those who play for a living and those who play for themselves. How many of us are in a third group, we play because we like it, but we want the audience to like it too?

EricTheWeary

Roland said:

I can spot two groups here, those who play for a living and those who play for themselves. How many of us are in a third group, we play because we like it, but we want the audience to like it too?

Doing it for a living may be a bit different but I think people will tend to pick covers they like? If not the whole set at least some of it.   

And for all that this is a bit about clichés there is something about doing less obvious covers and getting a response that way. You just have to work on the assumption that the average punter has a poor attention span and you have to come back in with something they can hum in their  sleep straight after.  

WiresDreamDisasters

Roland said:

I can spot two groups here, those who play for a living and those who play for themselves. How many of us are in a third group, we play because we like it, but we want the audience to like it too?

What about those of us who play for ourselves, have an audience who like it too, and also manage to make some money??

None of the above is mutually exclusive, and these false dichotomies are not useful, and they are the exact trolling behaviour that you always accuse me of.

WiresDreamDisasters

Rocker said:

PolarityMan said:

jaymenon said:

Angels
Road to Amarillo
Delilah
We Will Rock You
You Give Love A Bad Name
Hey Jude
All Right Now
Sweet Caroline
I Just Called To Say I Love You

Jesus Christ people are idiots. Playing some of those would make me want to top myself.

Sad to read this my friend.  A lot of musicians, including guitar players, like to give some enjoyment to others by their playing.  You don't have to make a 'statement' every time you pick up your instrument.

If you're not making a statement with your playing, then you're just making noise. Pretty ironic really, considering your comments on my tone and my playing.

WiresDreamDisasters

CaseOfAce said:

Art vs. commerce innit? Same as it ever was. 

Sure you can populate a setlist full of Robben Ford, Alan Holdsworth and  Dream Theatre covers - turn up at the Dog and Duck ready to unleash you and your bandmates quite staggering technical prowess to a doubtless eager, salivating pub regular crowd...and marvel at the tumbleweed blowing across the beer sodden wooden (and empty) dancefloor at the end of the night whilst the landlord ponders why his takings are down that night.

If you want regular bookings on the UK pub rock, social club circuit that generally means playing Mustang, Brown Eyed Alabama with a side helping of Se*x on Brightside 69. And boy you'd better look like you're having fun doing it !! ;-)

(though I must give kudos to the band in a Brixham pub I once saw doing 10CC's Art for Art's sake - that was brilliant - and I'm not being insincere here).

And this is precisely why the UK scene is so different to the EU scene, and the American scene.

Those other scenes support original music, and they support live music, and they invest in their art.

And people wonder why the UK government doesn't take the arts seriously. I wouldn't either.... if I was in power, there's no way I'd want to spend money funding grandad and his ineffective spineless AC/DC and Guns & Roses covers bands.

Pure vomit.