NWB - Community Blog

oh boy buddy holley johhnny b goode arghhhhhhhhhh no more

oh my god,we play 2 of them already,iam leaving the rooom, eeeek !

Hey Joe.

Love to hear the Hendrix version, hate to play it and hate pub band covers of it!

ThinLizzy's, Whisky in the F--kin ( Giro )
I actually left a band,Partly because of this
song. They just couldn't put it to bed. Or Mollies
god damn chamber.Aaaaaaaaaagh!

Brown eye'd girl n Dance the night away I s'pose !!!!

born to be wild....definately

my top 10 "switch brian to autopilot" songs

1. wishing well
2. alright now
3. paranoid
4. smoke on the water
5. summer of 69
6. mustang sally
7, american pie
8. sex on fire
9. still got the blues
10. teenage kicks.....(why is this so popular even the original was piss poor!)

Same as Dan almost, apart from the obvious yawn inducing garbage

1. wishing well
2. alright now
3. Anything by Clapton
4. Anything by Hendrix
5. summer of 69
6. mustang sally
7, Rock and fucking shitty roll - Led Balloon
8.Whole lotta screaming fucking noisy shite Rosie
9. Any set filling, 12 bar, monotonous bollocks
10. Can't get enough

At any jam night, in every town, by every band.................... pass the anti-depressants!!

hehe... happy that sex on fire is the only one mentioned -so far - that occasionally hits our setlist... phew!

Most of the songs that people will list here are songs I've never played. With the exception of a good number of thin lizzy songs which I will never play again.

Horsie play mainly chart stuff. When I play actual rock stuff I try to keep away from the traditional crowd pleaser choices.

I have honestly never played any of those at a gig...
..yes I DO gig, not very often admitted but I do.

Those songs do go down well with the punters though...
...that's probably why we end-up empting places...

Smoke on the water

Rockin in the free world

The Boys are back in town

Sex on fire

and anything with monotonous tuneless (20 minute boring solos in them )

Nellie The Elephant.....and I'm being deadly serious

Being The frontman of a Free/Bad co tribute band,Obviously I have to do, Cant get enough, Wishing well, and Alright now.I totally agree that they've been absolutely killed.But most punters dont recognise many more of the Paul Rodgers stuff.This is the downside of doing Tributes,and I do have to give it to the Punters.If you do it well.They'll rock for you.

"# Posted by UkePunk - 17/11/2011, 23:26 (GMT)

Nellie The Elephant.....and I'm being deadly serious"

I'm guessing the Toy Dolls version.....?

I recall a Billy Joel tribute that wouldn't play Uptown Girl or Tell Her About It. They had a brief shelf life.

Can't Get Enough.

I bloody can. And I have. But they still make me play it. I do it worse and worse with every passing gig in the hope they will be so embarrassed by it it will get dropped but it seems to amuse them......bastards.

gotta be smoke on the water for me, good song ruined by probably each and every one of us at some point (if not then certainly most of us)

I positively will not have anything to do with Stairway to Heaven.
I also wont learn any Metallica songs (although we are forced to play Sandman at certain venues)

Our singer refuses point blank to sing All Right Now. If we are ever trying to wind him up I start to play the bass solo which works a treat. But any other Free/Bad Company songs seem to be fine.

Drummer hates Deep Purple/Whitesnake - but again Smoke on the Water is obligatory in certain places.

As for Sex on F~ing Fire (and to a lesser extent Valerie) we know we cant get away with not playing them we know they will just mither until we do.
Theres not much else on our setlist that I dont like playing - we have a fairly amiable veto system - but I do agree that some of our tunes are played by everyone, so we know they have to be played well, and the odder songs played even better.

mustang fckin sally i hate playing, i would rather eat my own shit than play that turd of a song. lol

sex on fire
riot
cant get enough
69
all great song BUT DONE TO DEATH hence the hate i feel

as for most of the others i dont agree.
what i do say IS, if ya cant sing it LEAVE IT ALONE FFS [acdc ect]

as for Nellie The Elephant, i love it, but dont gig it. YET

thinking back a few years ago we did a song called battleship chains, i can play that bugger on bass, guitar drums, and sing it which SAYS IT MUST BE SHIT LOL

songs come and go, classics never die. love m, hate um, whatever,. thats what the punters want.

THIS IS THE ENTERTAINMENT BUSINESS at the end of the day.
whatever song you do, enjoy um.

keep rockin dudes

den

1. sex on fire
2. dakota
3. chasing cars
4. my sharona
5. alright now
6. mustang sally
7. summer of 69
8. I predict a riot
9. wishing well
10. whiskey in the jar (Lizzy version)

you hum it ..I'll play it !!..he who pays the piper picks the tune...you pay..I play.. sorry guys, but if the paying punter picks the choon... unless you are a tribute band playing choons you adore then you gotta throw in some crowd pleasing pap! unless you only wanna play stuff you like and open your bedroom to like minded joes..grit your teeth.. pump out the power chords ..and get on with it... G'NITE (insert venue) !!!!..now.. wheres me dosh?

KEV.(aka captain cynical)

Public gets what the public wants, there's no song I won't play and sometime you just have to grin a bear it, especially if your the drummer at regular jam nights. That's why I call them my auto pilot songs.

I think it's all relative. Whatever! is my first covers band. Everything up until that point was original material.

So the songs we cover (if any still remain from the setlist when I joined 6 years ago, I'm sure they do) I have only been playing for 6 years maximum, give or take a few breaks.

I play some of them with a grimace......but I would never say I hate a song enough to stop playing it. If I'd been playing the same songs for 10, 15, 20 years like some of you old duffers, I may feel different ;o)

We used to throw in Cant Get Enough Of Your Love and I enojyed it. But then I'd never played it before and it was something different for us.

Asa

PS - Agreed with TJKB the public gets what the public wants.

@Bad Horsie (Mick)

However it comes out mate!
I used to play it when I started doing this stuff on my own but now were a threesome its never been attempted thankfully.
It went down well at Pudstock in Rammy a couple of years back. A few hundred drunken revellers doing the whoooooooooooooah..bit before the chorus was a massive buzz but apart from that I hate it and its a real arse to play on the uke.

Led Zep - Love the band but your singer won't do it justice. If you have to sing it an octave lower or change the key then there's enough clues there for you not to do it again ......EVER. There's not ecen a tribute band that I've seen do Zep right.

Brown Eyed Girl/Wonderful tonight etc. No reason needs to be given here.

Whole Lotta Rosie .If your not a trib act then your version sucks.


I was in Villamoura with Mrs51 a couple of weeks ago. We watched several live bands and she commented "Why do they all play Sex on fire, Mustang Sally, Wonderwall, token Killers song, and they all play them in the same point in their sets".

"Musicians union love, union rules is rules. There must be a rep in. Can't go upsetting them can we".

I've just had a thought. The people on this website fall loosely into 3 categories:

1. Those who play for the love
2. Those who play for the money
3. Those who play their own material.

If you play for the love, you should not be playing songs you don't like. Stop moaning!

If you play for the money, you should be more professional and play what the public wants to hear. You're getting paid for priviledge. Stop moaning!

If you play original material and you hate what you're playing, you're doing it wrong! Stop moaning!

Very simplistic view admittedly.

Al - technically, you're doing both - but I shall forgive you. Because it's you. And because of all the other good things you do for the community ;o)

Queen crazy little thing called love - This is usually introduced as "We're going to do a song by Queen, one of the greatest rock bands of all time" - conning me into thinking a rock song is coming.

I like 'Whiskey in the jar' !!! ;-)
but never, ever want to play these again, sorry about the capitals, I just cut and pasted

GIMME SOME LOVIN'... THUNDER
DOWN PAYMENT BLUES... AC/DC
STRANGE KIND OF WOMAN... DEEP PURPLE
RUNNING WILD... AIRBOURNE
NO MATTER WHAT... BAD FINGER
IN A BROKEN DREAM... PYTHON LEE JACKSON
SIN CITY... AC/DC
KEEP THE FAITH... BON JOVI
FIRE AND RAIN... BADLANDS
TIME IS RUNNING OUT... MUSE
WASTED YEARS... IRON MAIDEN ..............Tex Piss, lol ;-)

"unless you are a tribute band playing choons you adore "................. Duke Bocks

Not totally true....

I hate with a passion "Can't Hurry Love" and "Two Hearts" but you are correct that as a Genesis and Phil Collins tribute band we HAVE to play them... :-(

Just not for much longer ;-)

Actually I did meet Phil at the MEN in 2004 and even he said that he could live without playing CHL and even "Groovy" ever again but his crowd would feel cheated if he didn't.

Best wishes

John

@ AL, ill have your cut then matey LMAO

Get your motor runnin.........

Crikey it must get draughty up on a cross at this time of year.

@ST - I'm in all 3 catagories and I ain't moaning.

It's just that if bands were barred from playing certain songs then I may start to like them again! :) Some venues even have a list (the big pub in Stockport springs to mind and I'm sure that Hark to Towler did as well) of songs which are barred from the venue - unless played in an original/different style.

One thing that nobody has mentioned is.....

Lots of people like Sex On Fire ect... but how many people are actually put off by hearing this song? I know that it is impossible to please everyone but nobody has implied that there is any middle ground.

My outlook is simple (The Cottonhouse Shakers) - play popular songs that are NOT in the NWB top 20 set list tunes and don't play many obscure numbers. If drunken people want Sex On Fire at the end of the night then I ain't risking losing the other half of the audience......I may be tempted to learn it in a swing style though if people pester me enough! LOL

@John - Can't hurry love - that damn song! I hate playing it with The Soultrain too. It is a floor filler though (as you know) so I've no problem playing it.....I just wish that they wouldn't! haha

awww Al...

.. head out on the highway??

Just realised that Can't Hurry Love is not in the set for tomorrows gig! Yay!!!

Listen to the wind......and piss....lol

We do we always get dragged into it...............

All of CH shakers choices and that boring Johnny B Good,i think ive heard every genre play that one,this blog should give you all a sneakin suspicion that we DONT want to hear it.
Aprat from that ,any 5 minute folky/bluesy tuneless dirges,usually played by self indulgent sit down merchants...T

@ Cottonhouse........Same here.....worse luck :-(

Never mind only three times after this one....Thank God. ;-)

It is indeed a floorfiller so who the fugg am I to argue with the masses..........

Best wishes

John

@AlyerSteppenwolfPal... Aint nothing gonna make it happen?

@Al - hahaahahahahaha

@Wick, roflmfao, thought you'd missed it ;-)

We're not quite as old as some of the 'veterans' on here so we've not really reached that point with any song. Yet.

Though, having said that, we played 500 miles by the proclaimers once. And once was enough.

We do a fair few of the ones mentioned above though :s

Jeez, some of you guys must be on a whole lot more money than the 'Hearts ever get if you think you've got to play stuff you loathe cos the crowd expect it. 'He who pays the piper...' Well, start paying more than 40 or 50 quid for a 6or7 hour shift and I'll think about it.

Sure, if you're doing Butlins-type shows for real money, like, say, The Kasuals do, then you've got to do that thing and deliver what's expected, but at the level most of us are working it's pin money, pretty much, and we don't have to do the Human Jukebox thing.

We're in a pretty luxurious position, we amateurs, in that we don't have to play stuff we don't like in order to put food on the table and pay the rent. You pay, I play is fine if you're getting a wage out of it, but if you're on this site I suspect you aren't ...

Give the people what they want when they want it and they wants it all the time, in the words of The Great Bootsy.

Play what you wanna play as well as you are able, deliver it with some vim and vigour and, more often than not the crowd'll dig it anyway and if they don't, well, there'll be another one along in a minute.

We used to do a lot of songs we didn't like just to keep the punters happy. It is about entertaining the punters, isn't it?

We now vary our set and I don't think we have one song that we don't like playing - result!

At a couple of gigs we put request sheets on tables for the second set. We were very surprised at the songs requested. Not one "Sex on teenage kicks" and a few that we have now added to our set.

Of course, there are venues and landlords who expect certain songs and if you want the gig you know the score.

Don

We won't play Sex on Fire, Teenage Kicks and anything by Steps

C'mon Don, you don't really mean that about Steps.

OK, it's a fair cop, guvnor. We do the same Steps songs that Boneshaker do - they sound so good with the Hammond :)

Haha .. Rumbled.

heres one i detest with a homidicidal passion "sweet 'ome ala-fuckin-bama" - Arse biscuits thats what that is!!!

Ok, AYP- I was kind of responding to some of the comments rather than your initial blog, which is probably bad chatroom manners on my part and for that please accept my apologies

Ah, yes - digression is the very soul of intercourse, i have always thought. However...

Mustang Sally - only any good with horns, backing singers and, ideally, Wilson Pickett

Peaceful, Sickly Feeling by The Fucking Eagles

Sweet Home Alabama 'cos it's DUMB (and we're not from Alabama,are we?)

Anything by The Beatles unless you're brilliant

That's about it, really, and I've probably done all of the above in the last six months. Singer calls it off and starts to play, whadya gonna do, go on strike? Anyhow, I'm only the bass player, what the fuck do I know?

Shug

the next time i see someone play the smoke on the water riff with a plec i may well throw my shoes at them pmsl, stick your pleccy away for that bit you chump.

if i hear someone do an ace version of stairlift to heaven in a pub, i may well eat my socks

what pisses me off more is not that the songs are overdone, its when people play them lazy/with no feel/on autopilot/like a twat etc