The most hammered into the ground covers from the last 20 years on your live circuit...

ESBlonde

There seems a tried and tested Friday night pub rock set that is all but expected these days. I have tried to avoid that set and scene but find myself drawn in on Deps often enough to have the material in my head. Still have never played ‘that’ guns n roses song as lead or only guitar!

I do a wide variety of gigs and so the likes of Brown eyed girl, Come up and see me, Sweet caroline and Take it easy are never far from the list. I do make a conscious effort to play different and more engaging stuff like How deep is your love, Southern nights, I’m not in love, It doesn’t matter anymore, Wichita lineman etc. Finding good ‘pop’ up tempo material for a 3 piece that suits my voice is proving difficult, I’ve got a Barry white song already!

Snags

Open_G said:

I wonder if some of the reasons we end up with the same old songs is that they are common ground among the majority of band members, particularly when setting up. 

Possibly, but it's still pretty weak. The band I'm in got together initially to back the singer who had previously been doing solo acoustic gigs. So we basically learnt his set for the first gig (30+ songs with three rehearsals, and none of us are stellar music geniuses) and since then everyone throws in suggestions for new things to learn. Very often not everyone is aware of the song, or even the band, but we go off and listen to it and decide whether or not to give it a go. We've probably added 2-3 songs a month for the past few months, and gradually phased out some of the more Sunday afternoon songs to enable us to do Friday and Saturday nights.

What we do have is four people with minimal ego, a love for music, a willingness to try stuff, and to have bandmates say "I'm not playing that" or "I don't think that will work".

I'm not saying we've got the most unique or avant garde set list; we haven't. But everyone who comes along comments that it's not the same old same old, and they really enjoy hearing the songs we've chosen to do.

26.2

The problem is that a lot of people in covers bands are not really that into music, and don’t know a lot of the good stuff that’s harder to find, but that would go down a storm in front of the right audience. 

I have a covers band and in this one, and a previous iteration, we’ve taken the opposite approach, which is to play the deep cuts that we love. It’s mainly 60’s garage and psych, 70’s quality punk, 80’s postpunk and a bit of other stuff like krautrock, rockabilly. Most of the stuff we play is pretty obscure and the whole band is really into digging out weird and wonderful tracks to try. You couldn’t be in the band unless you really know underground music and understand the subculture. We do chuck in the odd better known track (Echo and The Bunnymen, REM) but we’re not going to be playing a wedding or corporate function with this material. That said, we have done pretty well with this approach - there’s originals nights where we might do a short set, or we can do the whole night with 2 sets. The previous version of the band (2010-2016) played all over the country and the new version is just getting going - we’re 3 gigs in. 

I understand that my band would be a hard sell to a pissed up room full of handbag dancers, but that’s not our audience. I just wanted to mention that all covers bands are not the same and there’s several ways to approach it. 

p90fool

Snags said:

I'm not saying we've got the most unique or avant garde set list; we haven't. But everyone who comes along comments that it's not the same old same old, and they really enjoy hearing the songs we've chosen to do.

This is exactly us too. Miley Cyrus, Hosier and Lady Gaga songs go down a storm in our set - you don't have to play side two of Trout Mask Replica to stand out from the other pub bands.