"Cover"ing the Wednesday Lunch Report 2/22/12

[gitman001]

Hey All,

Wednesdays mean a morning off for me so i figured i would step up today. Lunch will be a BLT for me and my wife and steak and melon for the little one.

Covering all kinds of ground

Most of you know that i spend most weekends playing locally in a party band called "The Stares". We play everything from Stones to Lady Gaga and have a blast doing it. Now i know that playing other peoples music is not for everyone, but at this point in my life it is the perfect outlet to keep the chops up and to genuinely have fun exploring the guitar. And of course it doesn't hurt to have some extra cash in the pocket at the end of the weekend to reinvest back into new gear!

I enjoy the challenge of finding great tunes and making them work in a 4 piece rock band. We played halloween this past year and a few weeks before i suggested we do Thriller…. here is what we came up with

[youtube]1LJK_NflUlA[/youtube]


G&L

Do you enjoy playing other peoples tunes on your G&L? When you play those tunes do you strive to play like the recording or do you put your own spin on it?

Personally, i do not play many lines like they are heard on recordings….Why? I think guitarists are constantly evolving and when someone lays down a line it is a moment in time that defines where they are at, at that specific moment. To constantly recreate that moment over and over again just doesn't make sense to me. There is no evolution, no growth. Anyone whom i listen to, or admire as a player, is constantly pushing themselves forward, not living in a past moment. That isn't to say that those lines don't have a lot to teach other players. Learning a specific line is a great tool to becoming a better player - but once it is learned it's time to move forward

Non G&L

If you could pick a defining song to cover yourself what would it be? I would love to do a version Castles Made of Sand by Hendrix. The new generation needs to hear that song. One of my all time favs…..

Have a great day Everyone

Scott

[willross]

Great Q's. When I do "covers", I try to stay close if not verbatim. Otherwise, I call them "renditions"... A defining song: Josh White - Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out.


Cheers,

Will

[darwinohm]

Scott, thanks for stepping up today. Lunch was a piece of leftover pizza.

I am a member of a cover band and our crowds love the music. We try to make cover songs better than they were. That of course is subjective but we are all different. We do cover songs from the 60 and 50s. There are some classics which are pretty much played the way they were, as they are simple and stellar as they were done. Others can be made much more fun. it is fun being a bassist on the old rock stuff.

I do guitar work and one of my favorites to play is Wildwood Flower. I am amazed by some of new guitarist that cannot play clean and sound good. I listened to over half of your song ( takes a long rime to download) and you guys are rally tight and well rehearsed. Shamefully I do not know the song but from the title, I have to believe it was a MJ.song. He had amazing talent, it is just that I would not have paid a dime to see him. I am in a rut! The song is very driving.

If you ever get down this way you are welcome to test drive the Bigsby Z-3 or anything else on the wall. It would be great to hear them played by someone who could make them cook. The SC-2 Sparkler you are playing really does the job!-- -- Darwin

[louis cyfer]

cover of thriller. the whole band is great, the singer is wicked on this song. this is really a 3 piece cover and very impressive the way you have made it full by suggesting the different instrumentations with the guitar chords. i agree with you, the song itself is the progression and the main melody, have fun with the rest as long as it is recognizable.
i hate it when bands play covers exactly. i can listen to the original then. if i were running a bar and the band played covers exactly, i would just plug in a juke box. i want to hear people to make it their own.

[glvourot]

Sounds great and I really like your SC-2, they are my favorite G&L guitar. I play bass in a band. We play our own songs and we plan on doing a cover or two but we have to decide which ones we all like.

[sickbutnottired]

Great questions - Scott.

First off, your thriller cover is killer. Couldn't resist. Like other commenters noted, the groove and drive is great--as a group. I really liked how you brought it in and hit the hook. Also I agree with Louis, your singer is really good, I remember saying the same thing on a Zep cover a while back.

I like to play and learn covers. In my last group, we learned them pretty much like the recordings. Then as we got comfortable changed them up quite a bit.

If I was going to do a definitive cover it would either be: She's a Rainbow, by the Stones, or "The Orange Blossom Special".

[louis cyfer]

i don't know abut a defining cover, but back in the day we used to do cliffs or dover, and i always enjoyed that very much, a lot of fun to play. lazy and still got the blues are 2 others i liked to do. oh, and eugene's trickbag from the end of crossroads.

[Kit]

I play in a hobby band and all but 2 of the songs we play are covers. We don't try to play songs exactly like the record because of limitations of instrumentation, personnel, etc. We do usually play the songs as close to the feel of the originals as we can though.

I sometimes do play around with songs to see if it takes me in another direction. Almost 10 years ago, upon getting a digital 8-track, I recorded this version of the old Yardbirds song "For Your Love". I mixed in the riff and themes from 2 other songs into the thing and came up with this. See if you can figure out what the other tunes/riffs are. For those who have heard this before, excuse me for posting this probably for the n-th time here.

Kit

[zombywoof]

Great Q's. When I do "covers", I try to stay close if not verbatim. Otherwise, I call them "renditions"... A defining song: Josh White - Nobody Knows You When You're Down and Out.
Will

That one has been in my seltlist since the 1960s although I got my version from Bessie Smith. I still love playing it. I sometimes throw it in a medley with Brother Can You Spare a Dime.

[zombywoof]

I played with the same band from 1966 up to the late 1970s. After that I could never seem to settle in with another band so have just contented myself with sitting in and backing singers.

I love playing other folk's tunes - I do alot of arrangements of stuff from the 1920s and 1930s. I never try and play anything note for note. But then again, I can never seem to play the same song the same way twice in a row.

Not sure about a "defining" or "signature" tune but it would probably be something like Tommy Johnson's Big Road Blues.

[Michael-GnL-Michael]

Kit- the first riff sounds familiar but I don't know from what. I could not detect a 2nd riff so I might even be referring to the 2nd by missing the first?

Gitman- The singer is never on camera in your videos. I did enjoy your version of Thriller. I never bought any MJ music but that is a catchy tune and the way you did it retained enough of it for me to enjoy that aspect as well.

I do not like cover bands that play the songs exactly like the original. I do like key riffs included though. But the band has to have it together enough to do their own take otherwise it sounds like a jam. There is a difference. New takes on some songs should never ever be done again like Little Wing. SRV's version is often mistaken as the original and everyone is doing SRV. There have been a few good takes which is more than enough, (The Corrs, Sting and SRV).

No time to think of a song for me. I have not thought of this previously.

[Miles Smiles]

Gitman- The singer is never on camera in your videos.

And the guitar is louder than him, poor guy.

But beside that, it's great.

[JagInTheBag]

My favorite rendition of Spanish Castle Magic,

[youtube]cFiy4am8iFo[/youtube]

[Kit]

Kit- the first riff sounds familiar but I don't know from what. I could not detect a 2nd riff so I might even be referring to the 2nd by missing the first?

From the way I play you probably can't recognize the melody anyway. Here's some hints if you feel like playing along. The first riff is just a few seconds long, it came in twice in this recording, once at around 1:10 and then again at 3:15 until the fadeout at the end. "Yardbirds" is the clue to this one. The second thing is actually the melody of a song that I overlaid over the end from around 2:50 to the end of the song. This is the melody played up in the upper registers on what sounds like an acoustic, but was actually played on an electric guitar through an acoustic guitar emulation. For this tune you have to look back at "The Threepenny Opera."

Kit

[JagInTheBag]

Kit- the first riff sounds familiar but I don't know from what. I could not detect a 2nd riff so I might even be referring to the 2nd by missing the first?

From the way I play you probably can't recognize the melody anyway. Here's some hints if you feel like playing along. The first riff is just a few seconds long, it came in twice in this recording, once at around 1:10 and then again at 3:15 until the fadeout at the end. "Yardbirds" is the clue to this one. The second thing is actually the melody of a song that I overlaid over the end from around 2:50 to the end of the song. This is the melody played up in the upper registers on what sounds like an acoustic, but was actually played on an electric guitar through an acoustic guitar emulation. For this tune you have to look back at "The Threepenny Opera."

Kit

Heart Full of Soul

[JagInTheBag]

And my favorite "cover" of Dazed and Confused:

[youtube]58mQvW0ROag[/youtube]

[suave eddie]

RE: The subject of cover tunes.............Now for something completely different....

I think I may have posted this before, but do search on Youtube for The Leningrad Cowboys.....
They are a Finnish band of serious musicians bordering on musical parody, many times performing with the Soviet Red Army Choir.
Be sure to check out their versions of "These Boots", "Born to be Wild", Stairway to Heaven", Putting on the Ritz" among countless other covers.

Here's a quick sample--Not everyone's cup of tea, but definitely unique.

[youtube]0lNFRLrP014[/youtube]

Here's one of my favorite covers--The Pahanui Brothers with Ry Cooder and David Lindley covering a John Lennon tune:
[youtube]MoU3bueKppw[/youtube]


It's interesting when a cover becomes more popular than the original. Mention "Proud Mary" and most people think of Tina Turner, not CCR. Same with "All Along the Watchtower" which became Hendrix's song, not Dylan's.
A whole generation thinks "Hard to Handle" is a Black Crowes song and probably never heard the awesome original by Otis Redding.

I saw Bob Dylan in concert a couple of years ago, and he dug deep into his catalog. I didn't recognize many of the old songs he did until maybe a third of the way through, he did them so differently from the original versions.

[louis cyfer]

And my favorite "cover" of Dazed and Confused:

[youtube]58mQvW0ROag[/youtube]

interesting. they break into paranoid towards the end for a few seconds (4:32). that guitar player is gonna hurt his ankles with the guitar. i never understood how someone could play a guitar well when they can literally step over it, but that is obviously not a concern for this guy. not a very good singer, but i really like the drummer and the bass player.

[louis cyfer]

RE: The subject of cover tunes.............Now for something completely different....

I think I may have posted this before, but do search on Youtube for The Leningrad Cowboys.....
They are a Finnish band of serious musicians bordering on musical parody, many times performing with the Soviet Red Army Choir.
Be sure to check out their versions of "These Boots", "Born to be Wild", Stairway to Heaven", Putting on the Ritz" among countless other covers.

Here's a quick sample--Not everyone's cup of tea, but definitely unique.

[youtube]0lNFRLrP014[/youtube]

Here's one of my favorite covers--The Pahanui Brothers with Ry Cooder and David Lindley covering a John Lennon tune:
[youtube]MoU3bueKppw[/youtube]


It's interesting when a cover becomes more popular than the original. Mention "Proud Mary" and most people think of Tina Turner, not CCR. Same with "All Along the Watchtower" which became Hendrix's song, not Dylan's.
A whole generation thinks "Hard to Handle" is a Black Crowes song and probably never heard the awesome original by Otis Redding.

I saw Bob Dylan in concert a couple of years ago, and he dug deep into his catalog. I didn't recognize many of the old songs he did until maybe a third of the way through, he did them so differently from the original versions.

wow, i love both of those. the leningrad cowboys break into the song Эй, ухнем, a great tune on its own as well.

[JagInTheBag]

And my favorite "cover" of Dazed and Confused:

[youtube]58mQvW0ROag[/youtube]

interesting. they break into paranoid towards the end for a few seconds (4:32). that guitar player is gonna hurt his ankles with the guitar. i never understood how someone could play a guitar well when they can literally step over it, but that is obviously not a concern for this guy. not a very good singer, but i really like the drummer and the bass player.

"That guitar player" is Jimmy Page- the year the 'birds broke up. The next year he was playing the same song with Robert Plant on vocals...

[Kit]

One of the most recent news items in the pop music world involves this group named Walk Off The Earth that did a video with 5 people playing a single guitar and covering a songs by a singer/songwriter named Gotye. They had over 20 millions hits on Youtube. Here's their appearance on Ellen Degeneres:

[youtube]rpEZHgvNE7w[/youtube]

I first heard this over a month ago and found out the original song was a huge hit in Australia, something like #1 on the pop charts for 8 weeks. Because of the Walk Off The Earth video cover now the Gotye songs is becoming a hit here in the US, it is the now the number 1 song on the Alternative chart. Here's a video of Gotye with Kimbra in a studio version:

[youtube]6YzGOq42zLk[/youtube]

Kit

[louis cyfer]

And my favorite "cover" of Dazed and Confused:

[youtube]58mQvW0ROag[/youtube]

interesting. they break into paranoid towards the end for a few seconds (4:32). that guitar player is gonna hurt his ankles with the guitar. i never understood how someone could play a guitar well when they can literally step over it, but that is obviously not a concern for this guy. not a very good singer, but i really like the drummer and the bass player.

"That guitar player" is Jimmy Page- the year the 'birds broke up. The next year he was playing the same song with Robert Plant on vocals...

that makes sense now why i didn't care for his playing much. who are the drummer and bass player, they are very good.

[JagInTheBag]

Yardbirds Drummer- Jim McCarty, Bass Player Chris Dreja (Paul Samwell-Smith was the original Bassist)

Guitarist who played in the Yardbirds:

(Anthony) Top Topham, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page

The vocalist you don't like, Keith Relf.

[louis cyfer]

Yardbirds Drummer- Jim McCarty, Bass Player Chris Dreja (Paul Samwell-Smith was the original Bassist)

Guitarist who played in the Yardbirds:

(Anthony) Top Topham, Eric Clapton, Jeff Beck, Jimmy Page

The vocalist you don't like, Keith Relf.

so the birds did have good guitar players. looks like when they got page, they went "if this is the best we can do now, we better break up"

[louis cyfer]

[youtube]os22fsgGZR4[/youtube]

here is the singer visible. another mj song in the second half.

[zapcosongs]

Just checking in. Lots going on. Great report. Liked the Thriller cover a lot. I couldn't really appreciate the vocals. Would have been perfect for me as an instrumental number, but I'd like to hear a better mix. Great guitar tone! Is there anything an SC-2 cannot cover (except Louis' whole abdomen)? Ha!

Regarding playing other folks' tunes, dunno. Don't do it. I (almost) exclusively play my brother's and my songs. But I play only for myself right now, so who the heck cares? I can tell you I am no fun to jam with whatsoever!

If I were to cover someone badly as a self-defining tune, it might well be something by Gordon Lightfoot. "If You Could Read My Mind" or better yet, "Carefree Highway." Maybe Zevon's "Reconsider Me."

Fantastic LR today. Thanks! - ed

[Michael-GnL-Michael]

[youtube]os22fsgGZR4[/youtube]

here is the singer visible. another mj song in the second half.

If you are going to film your practice sessions the singer ought to take advantage of it. No one else has such an important role as frontman. It does not matter who the actual leader is, the vocalist is the one that people spend the most time looking at. Not that I am suggesting this is representative of his typical stage presence in this video but he needs to practice being interesting as an object on stage. You are performers. Some people can be stiffs on stage but not the vocalist. He needs to know whether he is too subtle if he moves at all.

I remember seeing a band that brought out a female singer for a couple of songs. During the performance, she made some gestures like pointing at the audience when the words got to "you." Her gestures were too small for a stage. They came off like something you might do looking at yourself in a 12" mirror. Obviously, she had watched herself pretending to sing looking in a bathroom mirror. She also needed to loosen up.

The position where you have this camera is good. It is placed where the audience might view the band. Too close and you might not have a chance to recognize whether you are not enough of a showman. IMO, the three playing instruments can get by with what has been shown. The singer seems like he is just phoning in his vocals. He could do an equal performance while sitting on the toilet. I don't think you should only focus on the music during practice. You should focus on the whole performance. The big dudes choreograph their set leaving a little room to improvise.

[JagInTheBag]

@Kit this is the video I first experienced this song:

[youtube]8UVNT4wvIGY[/youtube]


Good to know the song still hangs together, even without the interesting visuals.

P.S. This man has a huge mouth.

[louis cyfer]

@Kit this is the video I first experienced this song:

[youtube]8UVNT4wvIGY[/youtube]


Good to know the song still hangs together, even without the interesting visuals.

P.S. This man has a huge mouth.

huge mouth indeed. interestingly i have only noticed that quality on girls before his voice reminds me of sting a lot.

[Michael-GnL-Michael]

@Kit this is the video I first experienced this song:

[youtube]8UVNT4wvIGY[/youtube]


Good to know the song still hangs together, even without the interesting visuals.

P.S. This man has a huge mouth.

I don't know whether or not I would have noticed his mouth had you not pointed it out but I kept going back to it as I scanned the rest of the screen. Off the top of my head Steven Tyler, Mick Jagger, David Bowie and Peter Frampton have large mouths. The visuals are marginally interesting to me............maybe only because I draw and paint and it is just natural to follow the lines. I may, again, be more aware of the other singers' mouths because I have seen caricatures done of them exaggerating this feature. Frampton exposed this aspect when he used a talk box. I had never heard of this song, the YouTube video or the singer. I kind of like the song.

[Miles Smiles]

One of the most recent news items in the pop music world involves this group named Walk Off The Earth that did a video with 5 people playing a single guitar and covering a songs by a singer/songwriter named Gotye. They had over 20 millions hits on Youtube.

At the moment they are at almost 60 millions, uploaded one month ago
and it's stil increasing rapidly: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9NF2edxy-M

BTW, I like the cover more than the original, the same with the other cover's they did, especially this one, much better than the original version:
[youtube]tJ8nkJ1_Ee0[/youtube]

[gitman001]

Hey All,

Thanks for all the replies and participation yesterday. It was a long night of teaching so not much time to get back on the board….

Will - I like the idea of calling them "renditions"… I don't know if i can convince the other members to refer to us as a "Rendition Party Band"

Darwin - I would love to take you up on that offer someday, it's too bad i'm not a hugh Vikings fan - It would be easier to convince the wife to take a road trip to Minnesota. Maybe i need to temp her with shopping! I guess we could hit the mall of America (and American Guitar and Band)

Louie - Thanks for the compliments. It did take a little while for me to find voicings that sounded full enough to carry the song with the 3 of us. It would be awesome if any of the local bar managers had your mentality, we'd be working 4 nights a week!

glvourot - Thanks, the SC-2 is certainly getting the most playing time lately. Good luck deciding on a tune…

SBNT - Great stones song… That piano part would sound great on guitar! Start transcribing.

Kit - I haven't had a chance to check out the tune, i will see if i can get it. I have seen that Walk Off The Earth cover. Brilliant. I would like to know more about them but there isn't much info on them anywhere. They strike me as studied musicians.

Zoomby - Do you do your arrangements from charts or from the early recordings? It would cool to hear some of your work

Michael - Thanks, I do know where you are coming from… Here is a little back story on the Vids. About a year and a half ago we went from a 5 piece to a 4 piece band. The other guitar player just wasn't pulling his weight. A few months later i bought a HD video camera and thought "heck why not record this stuff to see what it sounds like as a 4 piece?" That is around the same time we got the lights also. So we had never given a lot of thought into actually performing into the camera. I think it would do us a lot of good. But most of the recordings are of new songs that we have worked on at that specific rehearsal - i post them for the other guys so we can make sure we have the right structure when the weekend rolls around. Most times the singer is off camera cause he has his laptop beside him making sure he has the words right! We try and learn at least 1 new tune for every gig, man i am glad i am not a singer.. too much work!

Jag - That is a killer Spanish Castle and i usually don't like Santana. It was cool

Eddie - thanks for the posts, i have never seen Dylan that must have been a great show

Zapco - Love Gordo's stuff. Beautiful song.

have a great day everyone

Scott