Let's Define "Cover Band"

[KevB]

Isn't Bowie singing bv's on the Mott version? If he was around in the studio maybe he could have just guided them through it personally on the day? I'm not suggesting this actually happened but it would be a way of them picking it up without referring to a recorded demo.

[TimR]

[quote name='stingrayPete1977' timestamp='1469612105' post='3099673']
I just don't see the 'released' part as relevant?
[/quote]

It's the only relevant part.

The whole idea of a cover band is to play tunes that the audience knows.

[EssentialTension]

[quote name='TimR' timestamp='1469613670' post='3099692']

The whole idea of a cover band is to play tunes that the audience knows.

[/quote]

No.

That's maybe one kind of so-called cover band but it's by no means the nature or point of all such so-called cover bands or all such so-called covers.

It's completely feasible and reasonable to cover a song whether or not the audience will know it.

You can actually have an audience going 'That's a good song, who did you say wrote that?'.

Or more likely, they won't care who wrote it as long as it's got a proper tune, a hook or two, and maybe it makes you want to dance or at least tap a foot.

[RockfordStone]

[quote name='EssentialTension' timestamp='1469615718' post='3099701']
It's completely feasible and reasonable to cover a song whether or not the audience will know it.

You can actually have an audience going 'That's a good song, who did you say wrote that?'.
[/quote]

you can but you can't make a set out of songs like that. no bar/club/venue is going to hire a band that only plays b-sides and demo's that no one has heard of.

unless you are doing it for a bit of fun (where you can cover anything and should probably keep it in the basement ) the whole point IMO of being in a "covers" band is to entertain people, most likely for money. on the whole, that type of venue or crowd wants to hear what they know, not be educated about a demo that madonna recorded in her bathroom on a tape recorder.

Edited July 27, 2016 by RockfordStone

[4stringslow]

[quote name='TimR' timestamp='1469613670' post='3099692']
It's the only relevant part.

The whole idea of a cover band is to play tunes that the audience knows.
[/quote]

Not really. It could be, but It's a narrower definition. A cover band plays music it didn't originate. There may be many reasons, they may only play a particular genre, they may play only a particular artists' songs, etc, but the common factor is that they didn't write the songs being played. Everything else is a variation on that theme.

[TimR]

[quote name='4stringslow' timestamp='1469616774' post='3099711']


Not really. It could be, but It's a narrower definition. A cover band plays music it didn't originate. There may be many reasons, they may only play a particular genre, they may play only a particular artists' songs, etc, but the common factor is that they didn't write the songs being played. Everything else is a variation on that theme.
[/quote]

No the common factor is the song has been recorded by someone else. Lots of originals bands don't write their own songs.

[4stringslow]

Ok, but if we go with that, what's the definition of an originals band? Did they write their own songs or not? How can the punters tell?

Edited July 27, 2016 by 4stringslow

[TimR]

[quote name='4stringslow' timestamp='1469620043' post='3099743']
Ok, but if we go with that, what's the definition of an originals band? Did they write their own songs or not?
[/quote]

No. They play music that hasn't been recorded by someone else. It's original and new.

[4stringslow]

But not theirs . . . which I suspect might surprise many fans of original bands.

So now we need a term for original bands that write and perform their own material.

[Skol303]

There's some version of Godwin's Law at work on this forum... in that [i]"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving The Beatles and/or getting paid to play approaches 1".[/i]

Meanwhile, there's some actual music to be listened to [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/288906-july-composition-challenge-voting/"][b]right here[/b][/url].

But don't mind me. As you were.

[TimR]

[quote name='4stringslow' timestamp='1469620254' post='3099748']
But not theirs . . . which I suspect might surprise many fans of original bands.

So now we need a term for original bands that write and perform their own material.
[/quote]

That's essentially singer/songwriter since everything other than melody and lyrics is just padding.

[tauzero]

[quote name='4stringslow' timestamp='1469616774' post='3099711']
Not really. It could be, but It's a narrower definition. A cover band plays music it didn't originate.
[/quote]

I'd suggest that they play music that they neither originated nor performed the first release of (so Elvis and the Three Degrees, for example, aren't cover acts). If you wrote it and performed the first release of it, it's an original, and if you wrote it, someone else released it first so you got the royalties and then released it yourself and got even more, it's having your cake and eating it.

[FinnDave]

[quote name='EssentialTension' timestamp='1469615718' post='3099701']
No.

That's maybe one kind of so-called cover band but it's by no means the nature or point of all such so-called cover bands or all such so-called covers.

It's completely feasible and reasonable to cover a song whether or not the audience will know it.

You can actually have an audience going 'That's a good song, who did you say wrote that?'.

Or more likely, they won't care who wrote it as long as it's got a proper tune, a hook or two, and maybe it makes you want to dance or at least tap a foot.
[/quote]

Agreed, one of our most popular songs is a version of Elvin Bishop's 'My Dog', which few people know. Especially as we play it in a different style and have re-written some of the words to suit a British audience. But it's definitely a cover.

[rushbo]

Hey everybody, it's a nice sunny day and as we've been stuck in here for ages, how about we go down to the park! I've got a football and a couple of Frisbees! Later, we could get ice cream!

[tauzero]

Are they original Frisbees?

[skankdelvar]

While it is natural for us as producers of music to delve into issues of composition, recording and performance we might also consider the issue of covers as perceived by the audience (whether in a live or a recorded context).

The whole point of cover bands is to supply their consumers with musical 'familiarity'. It therefore follows that an audience's recognition of a song stems from an earlier exposure to that which they [i]perceive[/i] as the original performance. Example: 99% of casual listeners would say that 'Hanging On The Telephone' is a Blondie song. When we play it, they will almost certainly superimpose a recollection of the pulchritudinous Ms Debbie Harry.

Were one's front-man correctly to introduce Hanging On The Telephone as 'A song by The Nerves' some beetle-browed inebriate would doubtless later accost him to 'put him right', possibly involving a punch up the bracket.

The vast majority of audiences (or 'civilians' as we might dub them) will unhesitatingly (if sometimes erroneously) confer original performance status on that specific version of a song which is the first to achieve mass popular dissemination and through which outcome the song will arrived at the audience's ears.

Perhaps they've got it right. They're the customers.

[RockfordStone]

[quote name='Skol303' timestamp='1469620607' post='3099751']
There's some version of Godwin's Law at work on this forum... in that [i]"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving The Beatles and/or getting paid to play approaches 1".[/i]

Meanwhile, there's some actual music to be listened to [url="http://basschat.co.uk/topic/288906-july-composition-challenge-voting/"][b]right here[/b][/url].

But don't mind me. As you were.
[/quote]
are they covers?
can you confirm that they were indeed written and recorded by the same artist?

if they are covers, does it make them any less relevant than the originals....
should we be paying to listen to them, or are they done for fun...

you can't just come here and post stuff without context....

Edited July 27, 2016 by RockfordStone

[EssentialTension]

[quote name='RockfordStone' timestamp='1469616170' post='3099707']
you can but you can't make a set out of songs like that. no bar/club/venue is going to hire a band that only plays b-sides and demo's that no one has heard of.

unless you are doing it for a bit of fun (where you can cover anything and should probably keep it in the basement ) the whole point IMO of being in a "covers" band is to entertain people, most likely for money. on the whole, that type of venue or crowd wants to hear what they know, not be educated about a demo that madonna recorded in her bathroom on a tape recorder.
[/quote]

I'll just stick to my previous comments.

[EssentialTension]

[quote name='FinnDave' timestamp='1469622262' post='3099770']
Agreed, one of our most popular songs is a version of Elvin Bishop's 'My Dog', which few people know. Especially as we play it in a different style and have re-written some of the words to suit a British audience. But it's definitely a cover.
[/quote]

I didn't know that one either. Just checked it out on YouTube. Very good.

I often find it quite shocking the way blues/rock bands (for want of a better term) draw on such a limited range of songs that have been done to death when there is a massive catalogue of uncovered music to be, well, uncovered ... and in my experience audiences are receptive.

[FinnDave]

[quote name='EssentialTension' timestamp='1469627156' post='3099837']
I didn't know that one either. Just checked it out on YouTube. Very good.
[/quote]

You found the song or our version of it on YT? The only one of us playing it seems to be several years old, in fact from our first gig, 3 weeks after the band was formed.

[EssentialTension]

[quote name='FinnDave' timestamp='1469627618' post='3099844']
You found the song or our version of it on YT? The only one of us playing it seems to be several years old, in fact from our first gig, 3 weeks after the band was formed.
[/quote]

Elvin Bishop version. I'll look for you, what are you called?

[FinnDave]

[quote name='EssentialTension' timestamp='1469627727' post='3099845']
Elvin Bishop version. I'll look for you, what are you called?
[/quote]

We're The Wirebirds, there is a more recent live audio of it here: https://www.lemonrock.com/thewirebirds?page=mp3s but I'm not aware of any decent video.

[tauzero]

[quote name='skankdelvar' timestamp='1469623431' post='3099795']
Were one's front-man correctly to introduce Hanging On The Telephone as 'A song by The Nerves' some beetle-browed inebriate would doubtless later accost him to 'put him right', possibly involving a punch up the bracket.

The vast majority of audiences (or 'civilians' as we might dub them) will unhesitatingly (if sometimes erroneously) confer original performance status on that specific version of a song which is the first to achieve mass popular dissemination and through which outcome the song will arrived at the audience's ears.

Perhaps they've got it right. They're the customers.
[/quote]

But there's additional complexity from doing covers of covers - if one were to do a cover of Joe Cocker's rendition of "With a little help from my friends" instead of the Beatles' far inferior original version of the song, would one introduce it as being by one or the other of the aforementioned artistes, when the Beatles wrote it but Mr Cocker performed the only listenable version, and both are quite well-known? Also cf. "Valerie", where Amyl Winecellar's version and the Zutons' original were, in terms of musical ages, contemporaneous - which one does one say one is performing when one's own version falls halfway between the two?

We do "Summertime Blues", but the Oo's rendition of that song rather than Eddie Cochrane's original. It gets randomly introduced as "by the Who", "originally by Eddie Cochrane", no mention of who originally did it at all, and no mention of anything whatsoever to do with the song - depends on what Mrs Zero feels like saying on the night.

[Skol303]

[quote name='RockfordStone' timestamp='1469623822' post='3099802']
are they covers?
can you confirm that they were indeed written and recorded by the same artist?

if they are covers, does it make them any less relevant than the originals....
should we be paying to listen to them, or are they done for fun...

you can't just come here and post stuff without context....
[/quote]



[i]"should we be paying to listen to them"[/i]... of course! Cheques and postal orders to Skol Industries at the usual address.

*Do postal orders even exist nowadays? *Googles* Yep, turns out they do.

[EssentialTension]

What appears to the audience as being covered is often in their imagination, based of course on their own experiences.

I was recently in a band that performed a version of Jambalaya - a song which I have always associated with Hank Williams who wrote and recorded it around 1952.

But our singer and many audience members experienced it as a Carpenters' song.

Our version was like neither Williams nor Carpenters.

And so, The Carpenters, what an excellent covers band they were.