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Our Guitarist has Finally seen the Light!!


skidder652003
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A revelation! Saints be Praised!
After last nights gig, driving home, our solo obsessed axe meister turns to me and said
"you know what? Its great when there's loads of girls dancing isn't it? Ive got a great idea (!)
Why don't we do more rock stuff that people like to dance to? You know, not cheesy stuff but classic rock with a great groove.?"
I roll my eyes and say "thats a great idea" whilst silently offering thanks to our lord Jesus for delivering the 6 string buffon into grace.
So, with that in mind, and hopefully after the Otter Ale has worn off and he still thinks the same way,
anyone got some ideas? Nothing cheesy please, you know "get it on", "long train running", "play that funky......." yuuurk!
I was thinking, to start things off, "sufragette city, blockbuster, slightly less done to death stuff but its gotta groove! Thanks for any ideas guys!

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Depends who you want to dance.

If you build your set around early-70's Bowie then very few people under 40 will even recognise the songs, let alone dance to them.

The reason the "cheesy" songs win out is because younger punters still recognise them and will dance to them. Our set normally climaxes with a bunch of deliberate crowd-pleasers:[list]
[*]Long Train Running
[*]Let's Dance
[*]Spirit In The Sky
[*]Brown Sugar
[/list]
All songs that will be instantly recognised (within the first two bars) by any punter aged 18-60. This is not a coincidence, :D

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I'm with Happy Jack on this one.

I reckon you'll need a bit of a band meeting about this, otherwise you'll all end up disagreeing about what you as a band are aiming to play. If you decide that you want to see people dance, then you'll need to be playing songs they can dance to and they recognise. Nothing wrong at all in playing "cheesy" songs (you suggest Blockbuster...) if the band and the audience enjoy them. Personally speaking, I'd far rather see people having a good time to Long Train Runnin than decide to go to the loo because you're playing a guitar-solo-heavy hunk of out-there axe-heavy rock. But that's just me.

So, don't be afraid to embrace "cheesiness". If you make an effort and play these songs really well, that will set you apart from a lot of other bands. I remember playing a pub gig and going to the loo in the break. In the gents a guy said that he thought the band was really good because "they played Go your own way really well". He hadn't realised I was the bassist.

Loads of groove-based dance songs out there. Choose the ones that most people will know, play them well and enjoy people enjoying your performance. To me, that's a good night out.

Edited by solo4652
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Hush - Deep Purple/Kula Shaker
Sure Hard to Handle Now - The Black Crowes
Black Betty - Ram Jam
Word Up - (the GUN version)
Sweet Home Alabama - Lynryd Skynrd

All songs with a groove, that can be made as "rock" as required.

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If this will help. . . .

We do mainly Classic Rock and usually, these work a treat:

Hard to Handle - Black Crowes version
Caroline
Thunderbird by ZZ Top (most people have never heard it but it gets them going)
also Sharp dressed man.
Sweet Home and Gimme 3 Steps - Skynyrd
Stick together - Roxy
I want to break free - Queen.
Teenage Kicks
I believe in a thing called love - Darkness
Whole lotta Rosie normally works but not always - + others I have forgotten
but there are two sure fire winners - Old as the hills. . . .

Johnny be good and Route 66, never fails.

:)

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Our guitarist loses interest very quickly unless he's playing rock solos. That's when I start to lose interest. I'm much more oriented towards crowd-pleasing groove dance music. These are some of the songs we've come up with in an attempt to keep him, me and the audience awake:

Bohemian like you
20th century boy
Inhaler (Miles Kane)
Come closer (Miles Kane)
Hands up (Reef)
Lonely boy
Blues hand me down (Vintage Trouble)
She sells sanctuary
Moses (Coldplay)
Green Onions, if you have a keys player


Steve

Edited by solo4652
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You can play anything with a groove, as long as you play it tight and well!

We've been throwing in some fairly obscure (not to music lovers, but to many of the general public) songs recently, like:

(a Kiss cover)
[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcKOulyIAmQ"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YcKOulyIAmQ[/url]

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z78PjvfCVTQ"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z78PjvfCVTQ[/url]

and people love it as much as the more mainstream stuff we play.

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Nine Inch Nails - Closer ;) maybe not family friendly but it always gets the girls dancing :P

We covered it for a few sets last year and it went down well, it's a very good song for adapting to your own style. We don't use synths or electronics (yet, I'm trying to convince the rest of them), so the synth basslines I was playing live with a wah pedal and finger picking on the neck, then whacking the distortion on and playing the bridge pickup with a pick.

Maroon 5 (I think) covered it acoustically at some point; well worth a listen.

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[quote name='FlatEric' timestamp='1339398921' post='1687759']
Johnny be good and Route 66, never fails.

:)
[/quote]

I love the original version of Route 66. OK, not a wild dancing tune but a definite toe-tapper. We've played it this way a few times (though not so well!) and it got a good reaction with people saying we'd done a good job re-arranging it. :lol:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kLUYf6cekMA

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All the way from memphis, contraband version to please your 6 string bloke, or mott if you prefer.

You wont like this, but, once pissed, everybody likes participating so they can shout out the chorus . So old rockers done up, such as great balls of fire - Feelgoodxs style, or Wooly Bully, Blockbuster, Cum on feel the noise, that sort of thing are always crowd pleasers late on.

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[size=4][font=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Primal Scream 'Rocks' that'll get them off their arses.

The Black crowes 'Hard to Handle'.[/font][/size]

[size=4][font=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]The Spin doctors [color=#000000]'Little Miss Can't Be Wrong'[/color][/font][/size]

[color=#000000][font=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]The Red Hot Chilli Peppers ' Give it Away' [/font][/color]

[color=#000000][font=arial, helvetica, sans-serif]Or Reef .....Remember them?[/font][/color]

[url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2--ersHZzto"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2--ersHZzto[/url]

Edited by gjones
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Lenny Kravitz - Are you gonna go my way
Bad Company - Cant get enough
Cult - Lilk Devil or She Sells Sanctuary
Nicklebacks version of Saturday Nights alright for fighting

Havent got out with my lot yet, but the stuff they were doing with the previous line-up was going down a storm. We do the classic rock thang so Black Crowes, Rainbow, Whitesnake, UFO etc etc

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thanks guys, lots of good choices, especially like the primal scream stuff, very dancey yet rocky (just watched the sreamadelica making of as well!)
Chilli peppers also tick right boxes.
Anyone do rocked up versions of disco numbers? I always fancied some high camp rock up of
a) Born to be alive [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UaJAnnipkY"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UaJAnnipkY[/url]
B) yoyu make me feel mighty real [url="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkrKYvJpxcg"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vkrKYvJpxcg[/url]

oooo get her!

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