On being a human jukebox

So, I’ve never really been in a cover band. Sure, I’ve learned a few tunes here and there for fun, and as a kid just starting out on bass, I’d plunk along with the radio or with records (yes, vinyl records). But I’ve never actually been a member of a band that played covers exclusively. And that whole “practicing” thing never appealed to me either, so I haven’t really just jammed on tunes for the sake of moving my hands, either.

Once, back when I was just out of high school, a couple of my friends and I got together a couple times to work out some covers, with the intent to “play out” (back when that was a big deal). I remember that one of the tunes was “Pour Some Sugar On Me” (hey, it was a current song at the time!) Another was “Rock and Roll All Night (and Party Every Day).” Yeah… I hated that. Aside from not being all that good at bass at the time, I really didn’t know the KISS tune (never been into KISS, myself) and it was somewhat humbling and rather annoying. I had trouble picking up the tunes, got frustrated, and certainly frustrated my friends. So it didn’t last long, and back I went to concentrating on songwriting and just having to be able to play the stuff we wrote.

In later days, I thought a cover tune or two might punch up our live show, so those of us in Ransomed Soul learned the first bit of “Carry On Wayward Son.” Realizing that with a power trio we wouldn’t be able to cover the organ parts, we ended up just doing the beginning section of the song – and then transitioning into one of our songs that happened to be in the same key. It was sorta fun, and it perked up the audience, but we really didn’t spend much time on it.

That same Kansas song showed up again in Second Story – and having a keyboard player this time around, we actually “learned” the whole song. Well, okay, we got really close – a lot of the details were played in “shorthand” rather than learning it note-by-note. But the audiences dug it and felt that it did the original song justice. I don’t know why, but we just figured it out one night at rehearsal when we didn’t feel like running our originals. Oh yeah, early on, before the band had enough material to fill a show, we also did “I Don’t Wanna Wait” by Paula Cole pretty well.

And of course, Second Story recorded a Queensrÿche song for a tribute album (which, unfortunately, was never released due to gross mismanagement at the “label” putting it out – a diversion for another day). But that track was not a dead-on cover; the band agreed that the essence of a good “tribute” track was to put our own stamp on their song rather than re-performing it like a jukebox. So again, we really spent more time re-arranging to our taste rather than playing a note-for-note cover. (The track totally kicks ass, by the way.)

I guess I’m only thinking about all of this because coming up at the end of the month is “Beardstock,” a musical/food/festivities weekend for the fans of the band Spock’s Beard. And I’ve (foolishly?) offered to play bass and sing on a fair number of tunes for a couple of impromptu “bands.” And it’s a pretty new experience for me – this time I have no choice but to figure out what so-and-so played, trying to remember the changes in prog songs I’ve never heard before… It’s certainly going to be an experience. But it’s an experience that most players have very early in their playing career – here I am, 20 years deep into playing, and I’m practically a cover song virgin! And the type of music fans at this party are going to know if I don’t play Geddy’s parts note-perfect. I guess the hardest part is going to be not worrying about that – and just enjoying the jams. And at least nowadays (unlike when I was a beginner) I’ve got the chops.

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