Set List Help Needed

[jazzmanb]

Some Pearl jam/nirvana/faith no more type stuff to bridge the eras perhaps ?

Some Stranglers with your keyboard guy ?

[dmccombe7]

Dakota - Stereophonics seems to go down well

Another song that always goes well is ELO - Living Thing

Slightly older but Get It On by either T.Rex or Power Station.

Sex On Fire - Kings of Leon

Dancing with Myself - Billy Idol

I'll just keep firing them in and you can decide for yourself what'll work for your band.

Dave

 

[Phil Starr]

Thanks Dave, the more the merrier, I' having fun listening to a lot of these. We tried a couple of ELO and they didn't work too well for us (I don't think their heart was in it), Get It On is already one we do. hardly Rock but it'd be fun to have a little Glam section to the set for functions which someone suggested earlier.

[krispn]

I'll say if you consider songs filler just replace them with better songs! I've had this conversation in bands before...if you're deciding the set then there should be no filler. Compromising to accommodate all members ....that's different. First rule of a great cover band: No filler, all killer! Be good band name that too though its always so objective

 

[dmccombe7]

10 hours ago, Phil Starr said:

Thanks Dave, the more the merrier, I' having fun listening to a lot of these. We tried a couple of ELO and they didn't work too well for us (I don't think their heart was in it), Get It On is already one we do. hardly Rock but it'd be fun to have a little Glam section to the set for functions which someone suggested earlier.

Power Station Get It On is quite a powerful version i always thought rather than the Glam TRex version. I used to combine some of John Taylors basslines into our TRex version in a TRex cover band. I've found a few Glam Rock songs always go down a treat.

Our encore was actually Bay City Rollers Shang-a-Lang. Don't laugh as it really surprised me how many people love that song (crtain age group of course LOL)

[Phil Starr]

10 hours ago, krispn said:

I'll say if you consider songs filler just replace them with better songs! I've had this conversation in bands before...if you're deciding the set then there should be no filler. Compromising to accommodate all members ....that's different. First rule of a great cover band: No filler, all killer! Be good band name that too though its always so objective

 

Ha ha, you all know what I mean though. And you are spot on, the ones I think are fillers are probably another band members killers. In our case we've only just started gigging and a lot of songs remain from that original 'what do we all know' set list. Inevitably they are also in the 'bingo' list too. 

[dmccombe7]

What's the Bingo list. Not heard that before. 

Dave

[dmccombe7]

Have you considered something from Status Quo ?

If the singer can handle it what about The Darkness - i can only remember their Christmas hit tho ?

How about some of this :-

 

[Lozz196]

I`ve always thought that if doing covers then it has to be a song that was a hit - no matter how good a song is, if an album track not many people have heard, aside from fans of the band of course, then there`s a possibility of it falling flat. You can do good versions of songs too, I saw a band on Fri do a great version of No Woman no Cry, but it was nothing like the original. Likewise they did a ska version of Centrefold, really worked well.

[dmccombe7]

2 hours ago, Lozz196 said:

I`ve always thought that if doing covers then it has to be a song that was a hit - no matter how good a song is, if an album track not many people have heard, aside from fans of the band of course, then there`s a possibility of it falling flat. You can do good versions of songs too, I saw a band on Fri do a great version of No Woman no Cry, but it was nothing like the original. Likewise they did a ska version of Centrefold, really worked well.

I'll agree with that. Has to be a well known song by the general public. I've been in bands that tried the obscure covers and people just don't know or appreciate them and it doesn't happen in the gig. You end up changing your set.

If you look at most long running cover bands they'll more than likely be doing well known covers.

Dave

[mrtcat]

2 hours ago, Lozz196 said:

I`ve always thought that if doing covers then it has to be a song that was a hit - no matter how good a song is, if an album track not many people have heard, aside from fans of the band of course, then there`s a possibility of it falling flat. You can do good versions of songs too, I saw a band on Fri do a great version of No Woman no Cry, but it was nothing like the original. Likewise they did a ska version of Centrefold, really worked well.

This is exactly how I see it too. Especially in a Classic Rock covers band where the average punter is expecting the usual suspects. Like ive said previously, I've heard lots of bands say we're going to do some of the less frequently covered classic rock songs but ultimately they have to concede and fill tye set list with the same songs everyone else does. Sadly that's what people want.

[Phil Starr]

Cover Band Bingo, someone else put that up earlier in the thread. It's at the top of this page.

I kind of agree, punters generally want to sing along or dance and they'll only do that if there is a degree of familiarity. There have to be moments in the gig where there is 'whoah, I love this song' which means the odd classic song.

Equally though you need variety, and a bit of personality from the band. I certainly played in one band which gradually weeded out everything but the usual suspects. The audience reaction was interesting, they lost interest halfway through the set. There were no highs or lows and they'd heard all the songs several times before that month in all probability. We'd played a more varied set a couple of months before and got a great reaction. I love pizza but I wouldn't want to eat it every day and by the time we came back from Italy I'd happily give it a miss for six months.

Classic Rock though covers 20-30 years where it was the dominant musical genre, depending upon how wide your definition of rock is. For most of that time hundreds of songs charted every year and the music moved on year by year so even within the genre you can be quite distinctive. There's also the risk of narrowing down our already diminishing audiences, if all covers bands end up with the same core set then you'll only go out once a year to see them, and it won't matter which one. There's no need for that to happen with so much back catalogue to choose from.

I've just spent an hour going through local bands set lists for example. Only found one band that plays Final Countdown, hardly a less well known song. Most of them do Long Train Running and All Right Now seems to be compulsory, including for us.