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There was a light at the end of the tunnel!


bubs_42

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Suffering from some major burn out while working with the band over this past summer. No gigs, same songs over and over, finally I went out and booked some shows, rehearsals are going well and new songs get tossed around every week. FORWARD MOTION! Now, how to get a Cheap Trick Song in there... It can't be an obvious one, but needs to be a good one. 

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California Man always Rawks! i mean with an opening line like, "GOING TO A PARTY!!!!...." Of course at 57, "Meet me on after school"  isn't quite the line it might have been at that time. ;)

 

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That's great, Bubs!  My last band was together for 9 years and we learned and tossed songs constantly.  If we hadn't, it would have been no fun for me.  I think there was only one show that we didn't play at least one new song for, and that was when played on a Friday night and they asked to come back Saturday night.  By that time we had a huge song list, so for the second night we made up three new sets and didn't repeat a single song from the first night.

The 3-4 top bands in my area play about 75% the same set list and have been playing the same songs for YEARS.  Same banter, lots of songs in the same order, etc.  I can't understand why anyone still goes to see them. 

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4 hours ago, tommy p said:

That's great, Bubs!  My last band was together for 9 years and we learned and tossed songs constantly.  If we hadn't, it would have been no fun for me.  I think there was only one show that we didn't play at least one new song for, and that was when played on a Friday night and they asked to come back Saturday night.  By that time we had a huge song list, so for the second night we made up three new sets and didn't repeat a single song from the first night.

The 3-4 top bands in my area play about 75% the same set list and have been playing the same songs for YEARS.  Same banter, lots of songs in the same order, etc.  I can't understand why anyone still goes to see them. 

+1 sounds great, Bubs!

Like tommy p, my cover band has been slugging it out and slogging along for 9 years since 2010 when we played at a pal's 40th BD party. Likewise, we've learned and tossed songs, mostly because of the poor reception they got at shows. Although having gone thru 3 singers in that time, some songs had to be jettisoned because the new singer just couldn't handle them. Lost some good ones! We played a back-to-back, 2 nights show a few years back, playing at a bar, (the only bar in the immediate area)  during the NHRA Finals. Good sized, rowdy crowd. Unlike tommy p's situation, we only had enough material for adding maybe 3 different songs to the 2nd show. We just changed the order around and made sure to put the one's that got a great reaction in the middle set after the booze had been flowing but before everyone got good and shnockered.

Only at the end of our not-so-illustrious career have we made a concerted effort to add a lot of songs. we've added 5 in the last year. Sadly, for this band, that's pretty good. :P

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17 minutes ago, tommy p said:

That's great, Bubs!  My last band was together for 9 years and we learned and tossed songs constantly.  If we hadn't, it would have been no fun for me.  I think there was only one show that we didn't play at least one new song for, and that was when played on a Friday night and they asked to come back Saturday night.  By that time we had a huge song list, so for the second night we made up three new sets and didn't repeat a single song from the first night.

The 3-4 top bands in my area play about 75% the same set list and have been playing the same songs for YEARS.  Same banter, lots of songs in the same order, etc.  I can't understand why anyone still goes to see them. 

That would be great, we NEED new songs. We HAVE to put new songs in each set for an upcoming show, it will be our third time in there, they pay us well and the people come out. 

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8 minutes ago, Biz Prof said:

One of my band's setlists begins with Hello There. I've rarely heard a cover band do that tune, and it's a great way to start a set.

I've pitched that idea to every band I've ever been in.  Unsuccessfully. 🙄

Until now!  I have a Cheap Trick tribute band so of course, that's a given.  I'm pretty happy about that.

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I did play "Need a little girl (just like you)" by Rick Derringer in a band once, it was fun to play. The song is written by Rick Nielsen.

I guess I am personally still stuck in those band problems you had.
Band A: a blues rock band, together since 2013, we started as a 4-piece, guitar/voc, bass, drums, hammond/keys, doing covers at first but started to do own songs, two years ago the guitarist had a cycling accident and we stopped rehearsing regularly. The women of the other players did socialize a lot too. Suddenly the guitarist leaves his girlfriend (not in a nice way) and marries quickly a woman 20 years younger than the rest. She didn't socialize with the others at all, and so the relationship between the bandmembers also slowly turns sour. I went with the guitar player as the others built a distance to me. The guitar player and me parted with the other two last November. In came a new drummer who is about 10 years younger than me. He plays well, but he comes from 90's hardrock/metal, knows nothing about the 60's/70's music and doesn't seem interested in traditional blues. The guitar player is stuck in his vision to play SRV/Hendrix style music. His written songs are 12-bar blues in his simplest form, basically the same song over and over with just different lyrics. My attempts to make the songs a bit more interesting by adding chords and bridges find positive reactions with the drummer, but not with the guitarist. Many rehearsals get cancelled recently, often just hours before. We didn't play many gigs this year, we still have one gig to play in two weeks. We kicked out many songs from the setlist since we departed with drums and keys, but only added very few new songs
Band B: a cover band, I have the feeling the band members don't fit well together musically, but they're nice people. Their setlist is horrible, almost like the cliché setlist for all rock cover bands in Germany. I always try to convince the others that we might be best in what we do if we do songs we listened to ourselves in the 80's, but by trying to do different songs, not the ones that everybody does. I play second guitar in that band. The bass player is almost 25 years younger than me and plays horrible. I helped out in this band as a bassplayer on a few occasions before I joined the band. Their bassplayer doesn't know what to play in every song, the others want to keep him still. Every song sounds bad, even the bad songs. And some of them are simple to play. We once tried to play "Sledgehammer" by Peter Gabriel, sounded bad. Once the bassplayer was on vacation and I played bass on rehearsal. The song went well, but as soon as he was with us again it was bad again. Imagine this with all other songs. No gigs since I joined about a year ago.
Band C: we just found together a few months ago over a "local musicians" Facebook group. We seem to have similar interests in music. So far, we're only guitar (me), bass and drums. We have met two times so far, but meet only sporadically. I wish there was a keyboard player who'd join us and bring in some nice additional chording (a bit more in a jazzy/funky vein). When we jam I feel like I am totally out of ideas, and that is how I feel in all bands. When I play at home and play stuff I like, I can come up with some ideas that I like to work on, but recording takes some time and I would prefer to record with a loud amp, so far I use Guitar Rig for recording. It is nice, but not as nice as a real amp. Sounds depressing enough? :)

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Lots of Good Choices "High Roller", "Oh Caroline", and "Big Eyes".   I like the heavier Cheap Trick so "Hot Love" or "He's A Whore" might be too obvious. 

As BTMN would say "RAWK"!

Hamerica

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4 hours ago, Ed Rechts said:

Don't overlook "Way of the World",  "Love Comes Tumblin" or "Reach Out" if you have keys or an Echo/Looper setup.

Those songs absolutely thump, but your singer has gotta nail it.

Great choices!  My CT tribute band does Way of the World and I love Reach Out.

I once saw a band open their show with Love Comes Tumblin' and as big a CT fan as I am, I couldn't place it!  I thought it was a great song and I knew I remembered it from somewhere, but I guess it was so strange to hear someone actually doing it I was disoriented.  @serial or @cmatthes might have been at the show - the band was Vollmer at Jaxx in Springfield, VA and I think they were opening for Kix.

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Downed

But you have to have the singer to pull it off. The rest of the band isn't overly challenged. My favorite CT song.

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12 hours ago, tommy p said:

Great choices!  My CT tribute band does Way of the World and I love Reach Out.

I once saw a band open their show with Love Comes Tumblin' and as big a CT fan as I am, I couldn't place it!  I thought it was a great song and I knew I remembered it from somewhere, but I guess it was so strange to hear someone actually doing it I was disoriented.  @serial or @cmatthes might have been at the show - the band was Vollmer at Jaxx in Springfield, VA and I think they were opening for Kix.

I think I was there with Turdus, the former bass player.  I think Ed Rechts is right...the bass player was a douche!  :D

So bad that somebody Sharpied his image out of the photo hanging on JAXX' wall of fame...I think I need to grab a beer with that dude soon...

 Where_is_Wango.jpg

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