Why covers bands play Mustang Sally...

[NJE]

I used to have a very big chip on my shoulder about this song after playing it for so many years. I vowed after finishing in a previous band I wouldn’t play it again.

 

My current band were asked to play it as a request at a wedding as the bride and her friends love it, so we happily obliged and it has been in the set ever since.

 

We do a good job of it I think, we have a great drummer and guitarist which makes a difference to giving it a good feel. Everyone has a sing along even drunk lads in their 20s when we play a pub, so I have learned to just roll with it and not take everything too seriously. I have no musical credibility, I’m in my 40s playing covers in pubs for £40 a night 😄.

[TimR]

To summarise the video - 

Two guys are trying to pick songs for their set list. We've all been there, hundreds of songs are suggested but each time the song is discounted because; they don't have a keyboard player, the drum part is too difficult, the singer can't do the high parts, the backing singer plays bass so cant do anything complex...

 

In the end, the only song suitable for the band is...

[chris_b]

5 hours ago, NJE said:

. . . .  I have no musical credibility.  . . .

 

You do. You really do. . . . if you and the band play your best and the audience likes what you do.

[Lozz196]

Agree, musical credibility for me is playing well, if audiences enjoy what’s being played that adds more credibility.

[Mickeyboro]

We use it for audience participation purposes when appropriate. If we deploy it, then the evening has been a good one. Certain people don’t approve, but you can’t please everyone!

[Phil Starr]

A hit tune is always great art: "it speaks to the souls of a million strangers"

 

Not my words but the words of his Jazz tutor Ted Dunbar to a young Nile Rogers. Nile was complaining about having to play Sugar, Sugar by the Archies in his covers band, the rest is history. Without that advice he might have gone on to be an obscure jazz guitarist playing to six people admiring chord sequences in downtown bars and unknown to the world. I can't tell you how many wonderful nights I've had dancing to Chic or indeed Mustang Sally as a teenager or how many rooms full of people joyfully singing "ride sally ride" I've played to. It may not be music you listen to often but there is often something joyous about music touching the souls of millions.

 

If you are a covers band you aren't creating art you are copting it and hoping to give people a good night out basking in the glory of other people's creativity. You don't have to play any particular song or style of music to do this but are you really so good you can look down on people who do. Anyway Tommy Cogbill is one of my favourite bassists

[MacDaddy]

7 minutes ago, Phil Starr said:

A hit tune is always great art: "it speaks to the souls of a million strangers"

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Downunderwonder]

I could swear there's a Bflat in that riff the YouTube guy ripped out with his AI.