February 15th – For those who didn't work out who sang the
lyrics I posted on Feb 13th… Cliff Richard – ‘Move It’; and y’r rubbish…
If I try and remember, through the mist of my present dotage
to a time when I was gigging in bands five and six nights a week, I can run
back through most of the stuff we used to play. Amongst a sprinkling of our own
stuff were covers of popular songs, hits mostly, as well as the most popular tracks from one band or another’s back catalogue. This was
because, back in the day (?) the people who came to listen to us also wanted to
dance (as opposed to mosh) and most of our own compositions were dance-challenging
to say the least. This was the late 60’s early 70’s; a time of Hendrix, of
Cream and of the 25-minute solo in the middle of a 40-minute song… Now although
you could get away with a bit of flexible programming, if the band misread the
audience on just how much they’d tolerate they’d be staring at a dance floor
that was something akin to the Serengeti at mid point in the dry season, and if
that happened? Well, put it this way, the management relied on the punters dancing
so they would get hot; and? Buy drinks! Correct. Your contract at any
particular venue would be short-lived if the bar takings dropped by anything
more than 1% of average so, 70% covers it was, and danceable ones to boot…which
we disliked doing for one main reason.
The strangle-hold that having to play
other people’s music put on delivering your own compositions meant you became
just another cover band, one of the thousands out there so, if an agent was in
the gig (and we’re talking about a time when A&R men from the agencies and
record labels actually shifted their arse from behind the lap-top and office
desk and went out to the places where real people congregated in order to
listen to live music and sign up bands) so, if an agent was in the gig you’d be
unable to convince them that your music-writing credentials marked you out as
the next best thing if everyone on the dance floor just wanted to hear you play
‘Knock On Wood’ or ‘All Right Now’.
Nothing against those tunes, but when
every other band is playing the same stuff…? Well we knew we’d never get a
recording contract if we continued to regurgitate the same stuff everybody else
was regurgitating; we’d just get lumped in with the crowd of also rans… Strange
the way the world turns...read on.
On this day in 1969, a Florida
Got to admit, never thought I’d see
it. That a band would prefer to be someone else rather than be themselves, the
absolute reverse to the vibe I went through. But in the end folk will pay to
watch these copycats because the performer is dead, vis-à-vis Elvis Presley,
Johnny Cash, Buddy Holly, Roy Orbison, Free, and the recordings of their faves
that they've collected cherish and play daily just isn’t enough; or they
weren't around when the original performers were active, vis-à-vis Queen, Led
Zeppelin, Bowie as Ziggy Stardust, ABBA, or the original performers are either
too old, too bored, too infrequent or too expensive to be seen on tour any more,
vis-à-vis Pink Floyd, Neil Young, Elton John, Rolling Stones – Rolling Stones last
tour; £1,300 a pop, you have got to be fuckin’ jokin’, Mr Jagger. So for all
those followers of the original bands the tribute show is the only way folk can
get to ‘see them’ on a relatively frequent, relatively affordable basis.
Now, although some of these tribute
bands are very good imitations of the real thing, they're not my scene. I
believe each band belongs to its life-time and to the time in my life so, when
I think on the fact that I missed Buddy Holly or AC/DC or Rainbow live then I
just accept that as a FOL. Some folk aren't prepared to do that now though and
that’s why the tribute band scene and circuit is doing so well, in many cases
better than the original; don’t quite understand that but what do I know?
One thing I would say in an effort to
shed this image you must have of me being a miserable old shit is that, in the
case of tribute bands recreating deceased performers, it offers a chance for
their fans to reconnect. To see a sell-out crowd of 60+ year-olds boppin’ in
their bath chairs to an Elvis tribute, their heads filled with the memory of a
time when they were young, a time when both performer and fan were at their
fittest and best, to a time when they believed that anything was
possible…that’s no bad thing. Not too much of that about nowadays.
No comments:
Post a Comment