You know, in the legal arena, a common objection made by the liars, er, lawyers, is "Calls for conclusion". Which is liar-ese for "I know what someone else is thinking".

Nobody knows what the audience wants. You CAN know what every other band in your city plays and follow suit. So to that point, let me ask you this by way of example.

I used to have a friend, let's call him Dave (since that's his name) who would book these bar level gigs playing "that list" and then start assailing everybody he knew on social media to drive 50 minutes to that bar level gig to hear him play "that list". I finally once asked him "Dave (since that's his name), why would I drive WAY across town to see you play Learn To Fly, Everlong, Wonder Wall, American Band and the same 45 songs the band that is playing in the bar at my corner is going to play? I mean MAYBE to hit on that cute wife of yours, but we all know THAT is a dead end!" And we had a laugh and let it go, but that is at the root of the topic.

On the rare occasions I go out, I go to songwriter night. Mustang Sally is Mustang Sally no matter who plays it, and which, by the way was originally called Mustang Mama. Unless Wilson Pickett comes back from the grave to give it one last go for me, I am not interested.

Music is an art form, folks, not a sporting event. There are no runs, points or goals here that define a clear cut winner. You want to play covers and never even TRY to write a song, to express your thoughts and feelings to your audience, you forge ahead, do what you love, and love what you do. I am currently in a GREAT Southside Johnny tribute band, and I pretty much don't like it at all. We do what we do at a very high level, but the applause we get when we finish Without Love (Did you know that was an Aretha Franklin song originally?), I Played The Fool or The Fever isn't as rewarding to me as 6 people offering up polite golf clap applause after hearing a song I wrote if only because they appreciate that I am trying.

I mean, do you want to debate who the winner was in an art contest between Van Gogh and Rembrandt? Monet didn't invent the canals of Venice. He only painted what he saw. Thus, Le Grand Canal is actually a cover painting, right? I prefer Bob Ross and his happy little clouds because he created his own scenes.

Much like all these services that are the rage with the millennials that send you food with instructions to cook them. That is cover band cooking. You are just the hands cooking someone else's recipe (playing someone else's song). When I cook, I come up with my own meal ideas (I write my own recipes). And if I had 35 more recipes I'd put out a "Single Guy Cooking" cookbook. The rules are that you NEVER make a meal that will take longer to clean up after than it takes to eat, and you never use more spices than the number that Paul Simon names in Scarborough Fair.

I find it sadly ironic and funny that people who claim they do it for art then brag about how much money they make. What a contradiction. Money is NOT the way you keep score in art. It IS, however, why I play anymore, and the only reason I am in this band I am in. This isn't my art. It's Southside Johnny's art, and his whole catalogue is covers anyway. Solomon Burke is a favorite of his, and even the stuff not covered from other people was written by Steve Van Zandt. So I don't delude myself into thinking this band is more than what it is, a really good copy band that targets the outdoor festival season. The music is not challenging, not meaningful and not rewarding, but my days of dreaming that I will be the next Diane Warren are long over. So I just take the money and go home.