Cover Band

A garage rock band is nothing more than some guys and gals who live in the neighborhood and know some musical instrument and enjoy the same music played on the radio and like to get together and try and duplicate that sound.

If they get good, they might go on to great fame and fortune, but that is for another story.

A garage rock band has to first find a place to make their noise. A room is usually too small to cram the drums in, so it is the basement or the garage. Both spaces have wonderful acoustics and lack enough electricity.

In the maze of extension cords and feeding back microphones, with the smell of oil and the moldy dampness, this rag tag group searches for songs they all know. Once a list is made, each has to find enough chords and note they can play. It is a learning experience.

They may be good enough for the police to come by, but proud parents wanting to show off the skills of their children who couldn’t get a place on the team or be invited to join a fraternity, find events that will accept their sound for free.

Birthday parties, pool parties, bar mitzvahs, school dances, battle of the bands…. It is all a progression.

Each show will get better and better due to practice and bonding together.

To be popular they play dance music heard on the radio and records, but styles change. Players who could reproduce English pop couldn’t fill the sound of horns in funky town. Kids would come and go as the garage band morphed into different forms and configurations.

Some breakaways consider themselves composers but without proper promotion and airplay to convince the kids this was the new sound, they fade away or become local celebrities.

The garage bands that want to take the cover to other’s songs decide on one group and pantomime them.

Tribute bands are cover bands that dress and act and play like what they have seen in concert and YouTube videos of bands that made the Big Time. The audience knows what to expect when they see the promotion for a ‘Grateful Dead tribute band’ or a ‘Pink Floyd tribute band’ or a ‘Kiss tribute band’ or a ‘Captain and Tennille tribute band’. Of course they will never measure up to the original but people like to relive when the music was.

After awhile the drummer decides to get a job at the car wash, the bass player gets caught embezzling from his day job at the bank, the keyboard player impregnates his girlfriend, the singer dies of a bad dose, and the guitar player decides to produce instead of the road.

What about those BIG cover bands?

An orchestra is a large instrumental ensemble typical of classical music, which mixes instruments from different families, including bowed string instruments such as violin, viola, cello, and double bass, as well as brass, woodwinds, and percussion instruments, each grouped in sections. Other instruments such as the piano and celesta may sometimes appear in a fifth keyboard section or may stand alone, as may the concert harp and, for performances of some modern compositions, electronic instruments.

A full-size orchestra may sometimes be called a symphony orchestra or philharmonic orchestra. The actual number of musicians employed in a given performance may vary from seventy to over one hundred musicians, depending on the work being played and the size of the venue. The term chamber orchestra (and sometimes concert orchestra) usually refers to smaller-sized ensembles of about fifty musicians or fewer. Orchestras that specialize in the Baroque music of, for example, Johann Sebastian Bach and George Frideric Handel, or Classical repertoire, such as that of Haydn and Mozart, tend to be smaller than orchestras performing a Romantic music repertoire such as the symphonies of Johannes Brahms. The typical orchestra grew in size throughout the 18th and 19th centuries, reaching a peak with the large orchestras (of as many as 120 players) called for in the works of Richard Wagner, and later, Gustav Mahler.

Orchestras are usually led by a conductor who directs the performance with movements of the hands and arms, often made easier for the musicians to see by use of a conductor’s baton. The conductor unifies the orchestra, sets the tempo and shapes the sound of the ensemble. The conductor also prepares the orchestra by leading rehearsals before the public concert, in which the conductor provides instructions to the musicians on their interpretation of the music being performed.

The leader of the first violin section, commonly called the concertmaster, also plays an important role in leading the musicians. In the Baroque music era (1600–1750), orchestras were often led by the concertmaster or by a chord-playing musician performing the basso continuo parts on a harpsichord or pipe organ, a tradition that some 20th century and 21st century early music ensembles continue. Orchestras play a wide range of repertoire, including symphonies, opera and ballet overtures, concertos for solo instruments, and as pit ensembles for operas, ballets, and some types of musical theatre (e.g., Gilbert and Sullivan operettas).

Amateur orchestras include those made up of students from an elementary school or a high school, youth orchestras, and community orchestras; the latter two typically being made up of amateur musicians from a particular city or region.

This cover band usually comes out dressed to the nines sitting in a semi-circle seated with music stands facing the audience. The maestro stands with his back to the audience (how rude?) and waves all the players to reproduce what is written on the pages in front of them. If the audience approves with applaud, he turns around and takes a bow (as if he did anything more than keep time) then points out the band’s caste system. No one ever introduces the oboe player.

When you buy a ticket, know what you are about to listen to.