PG Music Home Forums General Discussion Off-Topic Cover Bands?

Having played in cover bands for over 50 years, I had some great (and not so great) times. What were your favorite cover songs to do, and which songs did you hate with a passion?


Favorites:

American Girl (Petty)
Long Train Runnin'

Least Favorites:

Brown-Eyed Girl
Margaritaville


Regards,

Bob

No Margaritaville... such sacrilege...your Florida passport and Conch Republic passport will be revoked...lol


Least Favorites:
Mustang Sally
Stormy Monday

Favorites: Big Joe Tuner OKE SHE MOKE SHE POP

Well, I'm from the country baby, just blowed into your great big town
Well, I'm from the country baby, just blowed up into your great big town
Don't try to hind-side me baby, 'cause I know what you've been putting down

Well, you know I know you baby, you're from Oke-She-Moke-She-Pop
Yes, you know I know you baby, you from Oke-She-Moke-She-Pop
Well, it ain't no city, honey, just a little old whistle stop

Oh, now you remember, please don't hold me so tight
Say, now you remember, baby, please don't hold me so tight
You know we standing on the corner and it might not look just right

Been a long time, since I carried your books to school
Yeah, it's been a long time, baby, since I carried your books to school
We used to have so much fun riding home on grandpa's mule

Now, jump into my Roadmaster baby, this time we're ain't going to ride in class
Yes, jump into my Roadmaster baby, this time ain't going to ride to class
We gonna talk about the future and forget about the past

Gonna run smooth, baby, V-8 too


Writer/s: LOU WILLIE TURNER

Least favorites? Here we go again

Anything by Skynard.
Anything by Kiss.
Mustang Sally
Brown Eyed Girl
You Can Leave Your Hat On
Come Sail Away
Some Kinda Wonderful
Margararitaville
That stupid cheeseburger song Buffet does. (His ONLY good song was Come Monday.)
Werewolves of London

Let's do it the fast way. Go to a bar with a cover band. Whatever they play, that's on my list.

I go see songwriters. I prefer 60 minutes of mediocre originals to 3 sets of perfectly executed covers.

The basic idea of cover bands came up o Facebook when I mentioned one of those places that send you food ready to cook. I said that those places are the cover bands of food. They portion it out, they match the menu items, they parcook anything that needs to me started, and you just be their hands and finish the job. In other words, you are "cover cooking". It takes far less skill to stand by the stove and follow instructions to copy someone else's recipe. Real cooks create their own dishes.

(Aaaaaaand..... go!)

Favorites:

My Way - always our last song
David's Mood

Shout

Least favorite

The Chicken Dance

After decades in a bluegrass band playing mostly traditional music (covers of a sort) I can definitively say by far my absolute least favorite was Orange Blossom Special. At a club once I saw a BG band with a sign stating:
"Requests $1 ... Orange Blossom Special $10"

Rocky Top is a close second.

Likely nobody here would have heard of our favs.

Bud

Why not give us a try. Maybe we have heard of your favorites.

Least favourite - Everything in the book entitled "101 Hits For Buskers".

Favourite - Mary Jane's Last Dance.

ROG.

Never really did the cover band thing, so have not really got sick of any, but I do have favorites we used to do sometimes.

First one that jumps into my head is Walk This Way .. easy tune and seems to be pretty accepted even when the band has fun with it. I've played bass, keys and guitar on it in various bands.

Throw a funk thumb/pop bass in, a little syncopated drums and have fun .. crowd seemed to still like it many different ways so it didn't old so fast.

Leilani and I are a semi-cover duo. We cover some songs as close to the original as possible, most of them we put our own twist on, and some are completely reimagined.

Most of my favorites are usually the newest ones we've learned because there is still a lot of adventure in them, trying things out on an improvised solo, putting some twists on the melody, etc.

We just learned "Tennessee Whiskey", "You Might Think", "You Make Me Feel Like A Natural Woman", "Call Me" (Blondie), and "Addicted To Love" so they are my current favorites, but as soon as we learn the next song, they will be moved to semi-favorites.

I only have one least favorite, "Yakety Sax". We only play it when requested. However once the music starts, and put the sax in my mouth and take the first deep breath, I forget that I've played it too many times and have fun performing it, in spite of myself.

"Mustang Sally", "Brown Eyed Girl", "Sweet Caroline", etc. are the musical equivalent to junk food to me. Not much nourishment, but a lot of fun to play.

We play some more interesting songs as well, see http://www.nortonmusic.com/cats/songlist.html and what we play is determined by who we have in front of us.

I just like to play music. Playing "Yakety Sax" is still way better than any day job I can think of.

Insights and incites by Notes

Semi-cover? What is that? A song is either cover or original, and I know you don't write because you have said so. Even "your own twist" doesn't change that a song is a cover.

I played in copy bands for decades too. I loved playing in a band, the travel with people I liked. On stage was boring as hell unless we played originals. The first really good band I was in had a solid 6-7 originals that we could play with the people on the stage (some required another guitar, some required more horns, etc) and when we did those originals that the leader had written THAT made me feel like I was doing what I wanted to do. Then came the Bryan Adams and it was back to the doldrums. After that was the Motown band and we did 4 original songs that I wrote. A lot of people validate and rationalize the fact that they can't write by saying "The crowd only wants to hear songs they know." And I throw down the BS card as I yell TRUMP and win the trick, because not one time did anybody sit down off the dance floor when that band broke into an original. 3 were uptempo and nobody knew the weren't obscure Temptations or Isley Brothers songs. The 4th was a ballad and the guys who would only dance slow would immediately hit the dance floor, so again I call BS that originals won't go over. Every band I was ever in worked toward the goal of putting out a CD, and I am NOT going to put out a CD of Temps covers.

I simply dislike covers and cover bands, and I don't support them. I WILL buy a CD from every band (especially the locals) I see that has one for sale, but only if there are no covers on it. I don't want to read YOUR copy of War and Peace. I can read Tolstoy's original.

But that's me, the songwriter wannabe, to whom money means absolutely nothing. I have no desire to be the richest corpse in the graveyard. I am much happier playing an hour of original music to 20 people who understand what songwriting means than a night of copy for people who are just there to drink and act stupid because they drank too much.

My first band was The Lost Lads. I was 15, and we played a lot of frat parties at Rutgers/Camden. Both guitarists played through the same amp.

We were the scourge of South Jersey!


Regards,

Bob

Be careful what you ask for. If one of your original tunes becomes popular you will be playing it for the rest of your life.

I would rather listen to the piano player play covers in a bar than the juke box.

We have always played a mix of covers and originals. We played what people wanted to listen too because that what we got paid to do.

I know it is a PITA to play Mustang Sally because I have played it a thousand times. But if that is what makes the people you work for happy then that is what you play.

If you are so tired of playing what people want to hear then stay off the stage until you get so famous you only are ask to play your own stuff.

If Mark Knopfier will play Restless Farewell by Bob Dylan and dozens of other cover tunes why would I be to good to play them?

Arrogant self absorbed musicians are way to prevalent and seriously irritate me.

Billy

IMO a cover band is a band who tries to replicate a particular recording.

To reinterpret a recording is an entirely different thing to me.

Would you call a famous band reinterpreting a song a cover band? When the Beatles did a Motown or Buck Owens song did you think they are a cover band? When the Stones did "Harlem Suffle" or "King Bee" did that make them a cover band? When Aretha Franklin did "See Saw", "Respect", or "A Change Is Gonna Come" is she a cover artist? When Tom Jones did "I Who Have Nothing" or "Kiss" was he a cover artist? When Hendrix or anyone else did a Bob Dylan song did that make them cover artists? Zeppelin re-doing many songs by blues artists? Mac Rice did "Mustang Sally" first, does that make the Rascals or Wilson Pickett cover artists? Talking heads doing "Take Me To the River? UB40 doing "Red Red Wine"? Linda Ronstadt doing Warren Zevon, Buddy Holly, and quite a few others' songs? Or are Diana Krall, Stan Getz, Oscar Peterson, Eliane Elias, and hundreds of other jazz artists doing standards all cover artists? What about all the people who sang the songs penned in the Brill Building?

Go to secondhandsongs.com, and you find millions of people who are famous for doing songs that were done before them. So I guess if we take that as the definition of a cover song, then Sinatra, The Animals, Elvis Presley, Dusty Springfield, Sonny Stitt, Herb Ellis, Oscar Peterson trio, Stan Getz Quartet, The Temptations, The Supremes, Vanilla Fudge, Eric Clapton, and thousands of other famous people are simply cover artists or cover bands.

There is a difference between covering a tune and reinterpreting a tune. Unfortunately, the abuse of the term is blurring the difference to some people. I guess that't the evolution of language, but where there is a difference, the same term shouldn't apply.

No, we don't write songs.

Yes we cover some songs.

Yes we reinterpret others.

Call us what you want, we've been a duo since 1985, were never out of work until COVID came along, paid off the mortgage, traveled to 6 out of 7 continents on vacations, and never needed a day job.

Whatever you call it, is OK. I call it success.

Insights and incites by Notes

You missed Sinatra. That is usually at the top of the list people who don't write cite.

When the Beatles started, yes they did covers. They also wrote half of the material on the first couple of albums. Covering A song doesn't make you a cover band. Doing nothing BUT cover songs, ever, makes you a copy band. No matter what you do to those songs, they are covers.

That doesn't matter to you. It matters to me. Whatever.

Somehow this oft-recurring topic always brings to mind artists who used to play The Enormodome and now play 200 seat venues justifying their aging and fading popularity with the old "we want to play more intimate venues" chestnut. (That really means "I can't sell out a 20,000 seat venue anymore". Someone is going to immediately tell me how the Eagles are still popular, I'm sure.) The same kind of spin makes bands who never broke out of their home town remind us "EVERY band is local somewhere". And if you stop your logic right there, yep, they are. Van Halen was "local" in LA. As were the Beach Boys. And if you want to conveniently leave out the part where they also ended up doing year long world tours, do so if it makes you feel better than you never got out of <insert town here>.

There was a guy here who was the leader of Cleveland's "native son" hero band. Nobody outside of Cleveland, Dallas and St Louis knew who they were. And even in Dallas and St Louis they had very limited popularity. I used to travel a lot for work and every city I went had a Tower Records store. (Yes, I am that old). I would go into those record stores and ask if they EVER sold a unit from that band. The most I ever found was one store that had sold less than 10 copies. And that was Dallas where the guy's ego allowed him to lie to himself and thing he was a somebody there. He didn't like me until the day he died because I called him out a few times. His keyboard player (and my friend) was a strong writer, and one night, likely after too many beers, I pointed out that the only songs that charted even on the Cleveland charts were written by the keyboard player. I for some reason felt the need to punctuate that by adding "You aren't even the best writer in your own band." Soon after that I was escorted from the backstage area.

Unpleasant truths are never well received.

Perception of success is what it is and it is different for everybody. And as we age, the bar moves closer and closer toward the floor so it's easier to clear. The excuses and justifications start because nobody wants to admit they did not reach their goals. I have heard more people than I can count tell me how "I made a living playing music..." Was that your goal? Just making a living? You didn't embark on your journey of a performing art with a desire to be a major success? To be someone that everybody in the world knows? To have so many gold records that you have to add a room or buy a bigger house to hold them? Does anybody set out on a labor of love like music with a goal of "making a living"?

I started music because I wanted to conquer the world. I wanted my own band plane to go from city to city and do a concert every 3rd day for the 5 months per year I wasn't in the studio recording the album for the next tour to be in support of and drive record sales. I never even got CLOSE to any of that. If that was a ladder I never even got see the bottom rung. I played in 37 states and a bunch of places in Ontario, but never did "IT". Lots of fun people along the way, but never even close to a star. I never even fronted band that stayed together all that long (because I am as close to impossible to work for as anybody you can imagine. Several eastern European leaders during WWII come to mind...)

Playing covers to me is like buying prepared meals from Freshly and calling it cooking.

My second band was The Rainy Days Blues Band!

Butterfield, Mayall, Musselwhite, Blues Project.....

We did the whole blues thang - Fedoras, dark shades. We were dangerous, man!

We worked a lot, and in some very interesting places. We had a crazy manager who booked us into any place that would pay. Band Managers are a subject all their own.

Regards,

Bob

That's ambitious to cover those guitar players. And I hope you had a good harp player because that's 2 of the best. Mike Bloomfield was almost the perfect guitar player. His tone, his touch. We lost him way too soon. I had more to learn from him. 100% blues man. And Alvin Lee! I opened for him once and sat there spellbound by things he was doing. Memphis Charlie Musselwhite is a masterful harp player, and Mayall... fuggedaboutit!! That album with Clapton and McVie was crazy good. I think I wore 2 copies of that album out. Now, digital files live forever but I will always have some form of that album to listen to. Still called The Beano album.

My first band that played gigs was "The Sands Of Time" and the word Time had an hourglass as the I on the bass drum head. From there was The TryTones. That band never left the basement, though the drummer had a hot sister who dated Gene Schwartz, brother of Glenn Schwartz, first of the James Gang, the Pacific Gas & Electric. He used to come to hear that little trio rehearse and showed me a lot about how to play big for a trio. He abruptly left The James Gang, and Cleveland, because he was AWOL from the Army and had to keep moving. Eventually, after finding religion and wanting to do the right thing, he turned himself in. The Army gave him a general discharge, and he went on his way. He died in Dec of 2018.

I toured the country in a rock band, and was the opening act for the stars of the day while their hits were #1 on Billboard. Almost got there ourselves, but the contract the record company offered was so bad our manager tried to make it better for us, and Motown looked elsewhere for someone to exploit.

It would have been nice, but it didn't happen.

I've played concert halls, cruise ships, singles bars, yacht clubs, country clubs, dive bars, show bars, supper clubs, and just about anywhere a musician can play.

I've never written a song that I've liked, but I've improvised solos since I was a little kid. I think I'm very good at that and my audience seems to agree. That's the output of my spontaneous creativity. It's my bliss.

I've written quite a few styles for Band-in-a-Box. Unlike trying to write songs, there are no lyrics to get in the way. Whenever I try to write a song, the words seem either corny or copied to me. So writing styles gets me to write music without words.

I don't care that I didn't write the songs that I sing/play in my duo.

• When I was playing classical I didn't care that Beethoven and Tchaikovsky wrote the songs.
• When I was in a jazz band I didn't care that the songs were written by Rodgers & Hart, Charlie Parker, Miles Davis or Harold Arlen.
• When I was in a blues band I didn't care that the songs were written by Willie Dixon, Otis Rush, Jimmy Reed or Louis Jordan.
• So playing pop music why should I care that the songs were written by Barry Mann, Jeff Barry, Doc Pomus, Ellie Greenwich, Carole King, Burt Bacharach, Paul McCartney, or Elton John?

Some people write well, some people play well, some people do both, some people do neither. There are those who look down on people who don't write their own songs, but that's not my problem.

I play quite well and sing well too. Like Frank Sinatra, Tony Bennett, Elvis Presley, Stan Getz, Lester Young, Sweets Edison, Tom Jones, Etta James, Aretha Franklin, Diana Ross, Whitney Houston, Three Dog Night, The Temptations, The 4 Tops, Joe Cocker, and so many others, I'll just have fun interpreting songs other people write.

After all, a race car driver doesn't have to build his own car.

Other than two 'day jobs' I had while investigating what it was to be 'normal' I've made a living doing and nothing but music. I haven't made a career of being a wage slave to some faceless corporation but instead, I'm living my life on my own terms.

Other than those two short 'day jobs', I wake up in the morning, go to bed at night, and in between do what I want to do and what I love to do. Now that I'm older, I realize that living a happy, fun-filled life is the true meaning of success.

Insights and incites by Notes

Notes, it would be hard for me to say that any of the above didn't sound like a great recipe. Having fun and success and providing quality entertainment with well known songs certainly has benefits. A lot of people would envy such a lifestyle.

The fact is, it's a lot more difficult to emulate/interpret a lot of various artists than to just do your own material.

Having done both covers and original stuff, I stand by that assertion. To cover songs by the Beatles, then do a George Jones, then some Fleetwood, requires a different level of talent and experience.

Notes has a songlist that spans 6 decades, and that didn't happen by osmosis. It is the result of hard work, practice and rehearsal.

Regards,

Bob

And if you had gotten "there", what would you have been playing? I didn't think Motown signed cover bands.

A band I was in was once offered a gig at The Front Row, a venue in the round I have mentioned several times. I refused to play it. I am NOT going to open for a major star and play copy music. I would have been embarrassed to a degree I can't even explain to play a real concert and play bar music.

Does a race car driver have to know how to build a car? Nope! But wouldn't it be beneficial or him to know HOW to build a car so he can diagnose how it feels when he is driving it? By the inverse logic, the guys building the engine don't have to know how to drive 220 mph. But it would be an accomplishment to know how to do so.

I got into this to become a huge star. I didn't even become a small twinkle. I failed miserably. I believe it takes a different kind of skill to write songs than to play them. I never wanted to be one or the other. I wanted to be both. The list of people who didn't write is of no value to me. All I can say is that as huge a star as Anne Murray was, I can say I am a better songwriter than Anne Murray, because she never wrote a song. Ronstadt wrote 3, none by herself. Stevie Nicks biggest hits were co-written (wink wink) by Petty and Henley. Prince essentially wrote Stand Back but didn't push for credit.

The bottom line is that I never got a song onto a radio station, even college radio, and I am going to die musically unfulfilled because of that. That was my goal, to have songs on the radio so everybody in America could hear MY SONGS, MY STORIES, as they drove home from work. That goal got lower and lower. It moved to strong rotation on college stations. Then just ONE college station. The closest I have come is Graham played on one his show. I failed, and I know it, and I just have to live with it. And eventually die with it, because obviously it isn't going to happen now that I stopped trying. Even knowing that there are millions of people like me who dreamed about being a huge star, but the odds of that happening are less than winning the lottery. And winning the lottery doesn't require any talent.

Add to all of that failure having to live with the demoralizing pain of knowing my father died (in 1991) disappointed in who and what I became... Well, life has been a challenge.

You know how I know Eddie doesn't know much about Motown? <grin>

Motown was a music manufacturing machine.
That had a house band, house writers, vocal teachers, 'dress' teachers, classes on how to handle yourself in public, etc etc.

They use the original house/studio for the museum but at one time Barry Gordy owned a couple of city blocks of houses for rooming, grooming and creating music, etc.

You know how many Motown bands performed songs they didn't write?

As many as how tired I am of hearing that?

Do you think Notes would have been interested in being signed by Motown to teach people how to dress? He's a performer, in a band recruited because of their music, not some college QB who is drafted and then moved to wide receiver....

I am not a chef in a restaurant. That doesn't mean I can't cook.
I am not a carpenter. That doesn't mean I can't build things with wood.
I am not a welder. That doesn't mean I don't know how to weld.

Just because you don't doesn't mean you can't. And if you truly can't that doesn't mean you shouldn't try to learn how.

I dreamed about being both, but if I had to choose between either famous performer or famous writer, I would take writer every time. Diane Warren sings like an air raid siren but she is the best pop music writer ever. Sales says so. Bacharach can't sing at all. How did his writing career go?

I want to be Diane Warren.
I want to be Burt Bacharach.
I want to be Jim Steinman. (RIP Jim.)
I want to be Todd Rundgren.
I want to be David Foster. Sting. Brian Wilson. Carole King. Smokey Robinson.

How many of you saw Jersey Boys? There was a scene in that play where Bob Gaudio sat Frankie Valli down and told him that he was never really all that comfortable on stage or on tour anyway, so Frankie should get some new guys, bill the act as Frankie Valli and the 4 seasons, and Gaudio would keep writing his hits.

That's where I wanted to be. Bob Gaudio, not Frankie Valli.

There's a band called Animals As Leaders fronted by some speedburner guitar guy named Misha Mansour. What he does is very impressive, but it's muscle memory and nothing more. You play those scales that fast long enough and it will become easy for you. Writing is not muscle memory. Writing is English literacy, musical knowledge and storytelling all in one.

Why does everybody want to tell me how wrong I am because I have way more respect for the people who write the songs than the people who just play them? You are free to play Margaritaville and Brown Eyed Girl EVERY night to get paid. I have told you many times that money means nothing to me. (Do you not believe that?) I want to die the day I can't afford to pay for breakfast. I have no concerns with an illness sending me to bankruptcy. I don't care about saving for the future (which might be as short as 1 day). For what? All the expensive travel I do? I barely leave my yard! I have no interest in going to remote corners of the world to be bored out of my mind. A tank of gas lasts me 15-17 days. I don't even HAVE a savings account. I am a consumer. I spend, not save. Save money? To give to nobody when I die? I have no interest in being the richest corpse in the graveyard.

The "Don't know what I'd do with myself if I retired" is pretty much whistling in the graveyard BS. I absolutely LOVE my life. I don't have to do ANYTHING. EVER. 2-3 days can go by when I know I don't have to go anywhere and I don't even put pants on. The argument made by musicians that "I have no bosses." is also a load of crap. Um, yeah you do. The people who make you play Margaritaville and Brown Eyed Girl are your bosses. You play a gig in a big club and you have 400-500 bosses. When you don't have bosses is when you say "I play what I want to play." I am my boss. Nobody else. If you don't like what I write, get the f*** (I censored that) out. Audiences are NOT my friends. They are faceless people in chairs who paid the venue to be entertained and that is their job. To sit there, buy drinks, and be entertained.

If I wrote something good enough that Underwood or Clarkson wanted to sing it, I would just give them the song with the only stipulation being that my name is listed as the writer. (And in essence THEY are doing a cover!) They can keep the money the song earns. Once again, and I don't know why I have to keep saying this, I don't care AT ALL about money. I have enough. What I don't have is a legacy. I care about people knowing my name for my songwriting prowess. I know they never will, but I tried. To say "I can't" about ANYTHING... wow. "Can't" and "don't" are not the same thing. To say "I can't write" is not the same as "I never tried to write". And neither of those is the same as "I CAN write but I choose not to." (Is this where you tell me again that Sinatra didn't write? What arrogance to ever compare yourself to Sinatra.) I respect people who tried and failed WAY more than those who never tried. I have faced the slow death of silence after doing an original before (too often), but I also got applause for them too. It's so much fun to hear people talk out of both sides of their mouth when they say "I don't play music just for money" or "I'd do this for free". And then they say "If you don't play what the crowd wants you won't get booked." Well, if you don't do it for money, so what? Those 2 things are 180 degrees opposed. You can get booked to play original music. Just not at the same places. And for way less money. (But, you don't PLAY because of money, right, so...)

If anybody will get the analogy here, know that when I get a new video game I play it on expert mode first. I don't want to do things I know I can do. I want to be challenged. Mustang Sally was never challenging.

I was responding to that part of your previous post.
Writing was not a prerequisite for Motown. Performing was.
Apparently Notes is/was pretty good at the performance side.
That's all

<< If anybody will get the analogy here, know that when I get a new video game I play it on expert mode first. I don't want to do things I know I can do. I want to be challenged. Mustang Sally was never challenging." >>

So What did you do for your songwriting dream today? "Just because you don't doesn't mean you can't." But it does have a 100% failure rate....

<< "I respect people who tried and failed WAY more than those who never tried." >>

But you also seem to respect people who tried and failed but didn't give up and quit even WAY, WAY more.
Diane Warren, Burt Bacharach, Jim Steinman, Todd Rundgren, David Foster. Sting, Brian Wilson, Carole King and Smokey Robinson to name a few.

You only have to get it right once:

"What if you had to decide between the lure of country stardom — and your heart? Billy Ray Cyrus was once faced with that choice. In 1992, his song "Achy Breaky Heart" took him on what he calls a "rocket ride" — and made him $40 million in one year."
ABC News PrimeTime

Most people associate "Achy Breaky Heart" with Billy Ray Cyrus and not the actual songwriter, Don Von Tress. Mr. Tress has 3 song credits (actually two, "Achy Breaky Heart" was first recorded and released with the title, "Don't Tell My Heart". My recommendation is if you get a song recorded by Underwood or Clarkson, take the money.

My songwriting dream died a painful death some time ago. To continue with that futility would be akin to nechrophilia. I just don't have the talent.

Truthfully Charlie, if I had some kind of windfall from whatever source, most of it would get donated to animal rescues anyway. I'd buy a modest newer house in a better neighborhood and an old Jeep Wrangler to beat the rest of the way to death, but that's about it. I grew up really poor so I don't know about handling real money. And since I trust nobody...

I'd WRITE that Achy song. I wouldn't be caught dead on a stage performing it. One band wanted to do it as a goof and I said "Go ahead, but I'll be offstage." I won't play a song that panders to people with an 87 IQ.

" I won't play a song that panders to people with an 87 IQ."

LOL, You'll have to tell that to someone with a shorter memory than I have! Next you'll say you won't play a song with 'COWBELL'


"Well I've been so downhearted ever since my cow been gone
I'll be so udderly lonesome till my cow comes home" (Eddie1261)12/6/20 "BIG BLACK DOG

"We wrote the lyrics together, but Eddie must take the credit (blame?) for the pun in verse three." (Rog)

What are you talking about? That was f****** brilliant!!!!

Exactly! My point exactly...

Your own work has put to rest all the I've got no talent talk.

Not many people in Motown wrote their own songs. I'd guess 90% or more of their hits were written by staff writers.

Besides, we would have been what eventually became Rare Earth, and they did plenty of Motown covers (Get Ready immediately comes to mind).

I'm sorry you didn't make the big time, and sorry that you are bitter about it. To be fair, with so many musicians out there, the odds are stacked against us.

I was talking to Tom Scott one day when we were playing at the Hyatt of the Palm Beaches. He said (and I'll paraphrase) that there is a sax player somewhere like Valparaiso, Indiana that could put him (Tom) in his back pocket. But I (Tom) was in the right place at the right time, I had the right connections, I showed up on time, I showed up straight, and I could do the job,

That kind of honesty impressed me, and I have a respect for Mr. Scott for that.

IMO the ultimate success in life is to live a happy life. I'm sure others disagree and that's OK.

Insights and incites by Notes

Much like your encounter with Tom Scott, when I was in LA I answered an audition ad for a 4 piece lounge band looking for a sax player. As I stop and think now, it's more like WHY did I answer an ad in LOS ANGELES for a sax player. I got there 45 minutes early and was handed a number. I was number 94. 93 other people wanted that gig SO BADLY that they got there earlier for the audition than I did. As I sat there trying not to pee myself from nerves and shrinking self esteem, I looked across the room and thought I saw Lon Price. I went over and said hello and asked if he was Lon Price. He said "Yes. I am. Nice to meet you." (Polite!) And I asked him "Why are you HERE? You play with Al Jarreau." His reply makes more sense to me now than it did then, but he said "Yeah I do. When Al PLAYS. It's not like he tours all year. I have bills to pay just like you do." And as a starstruck nobody I thought "That's the guy who played that solo on We're In This Love Together and we are vying for the SAME GIG???

To bring the story home, that was something like I had never seen before. It was in a movie theater. Down front was about 6 people behind a mixer and a CD player. We were all waiting in another part of the building so we could not hear what went on before us. I walked out and there were 6 folders on the table next to me. They said "Pick up a folder and tell us what number it is." I picked on up and said "I have number 5." They said "Take the music out of the folder and put it on the stand. When the click track starts, turn the blank first page and pick it up on bar 5."

It was the worst nightmare I had ever lived through. It was in Ab, a HORRIBLE key for me, and I had no time to look it over. It was 2 bars of click track and I had to start playing this 2 minute piece with a key change. That was as embarrassed as I have ever been with a sax in my mouth. I actually can't believe I could play that bad, but that was 2 minutes of living proof. I came out from the torture chamber and as I was putting my horn back a guy a few numbers later asked "How'd it go?" My reply was "After that, I will NEVER do this kind of audition again. I was shocked they didn't stop me halfway through and ask me to leave. Wow."

I don't know who got the gig but it wasn't me, OR Lon. I mean, if Lon Price is not good enough... I ran into him in a bar on Ventura Blvd a few weeks later and we talked for about 10 minutes and he just said "That's the scene out here. They want you to be a great sight reader more than they even care about your actual playing. I don't know which chart you picked but I guarantee you after years of this that they were ALL equally challenging." Then he gave me some tips about how to practice, the most helpful one was to learn EVERY song in EVERY key. And if one particular thing challenges you, work on that the most. To not avoid weaknesses, rather play to overcome them.

I wish I had listened... LOL

Wow, nice story.....

Notes, you still have a chance to be in Rare Earth!! They have 1 date booked this year in September. And I'm sure you know the songs. LOL!!

I played in a number of cover bands.....


Least favorite song had to be Sweet Home Alabama and Free Bird. But we'd play them anyway.

However, we played what the people wanted to hear and played it with a fun attitude.

Songs that I liked to play.... just about all of them. Including the ones we didn't want to play.

One band I was in was essentially a non-commercial indulgence band. We played a lot of the Outlaws ( Green Grass, Girl From Ohio, Knoxville girl, Ghost riders) as well as Marshall Tucker and Charlie Daniels. But most of it was stuff from the albums that wasn't necessarily hits, recognizable to anyone but fans, and mostly non-danceable stuff. That band was fun because we learned a lot of really intricate stuff but it didn't fare well commercially. Go listen to CDB Saddle Tramp for an idea of what a night with us was like. We rarely got invited back to civilian dance clubs. We were good but nobody cared to come see us because they couldn't dance to our music....and we were too blind to see beyond what we wanted to play. It broke up because we couldn't get booked after a while. Lesson learned.

Every band from that point forward was commercially viable and we played a lot...and made a fair living from it. A house band was the last band I was in and that gig was 2.5 years in length. That was one tight band. Boredom started to creep in. It went down in flames in the end.... I had left and a few months later I heard about the disaster.

Nah, I'm happier where I am now.

Rare Earth was called The Sunliners or something like that, and they were Berry Gordy's second choice to be the first all-white band to record on a Motown label.

It wasn't a racist thing, strictly business. Bob Seger had a #1 hit on Detroit Radio, something Motown had 'owned' for a long time and it was a matter of giving the audience what they seemed to be asking for.

We were The Nomads and were Berry's first choice. (At the time I thought is name was Barry and people were just using a Midwest pronunciation.)

The contract they offered us was 2 cents per recorded song on vinyl. Out of those royalties they would deduct inflated recording costs, inflated distribution costs and inflated promotion costs. Plus they wanted to own the publishing rights to anything we wrote, and a Motown 'ghostwriter' who did nothing at all would be listed as a writer and get half the songwriter royalties. In addition, they wanted to own the name, so they could hire and fire and run up to 4 bands with the same name on tour. Motown didn't own the name The Sunliners, but they did own the name Rare Earth.

Our manager figured we'd have to sell over a million LPs our first time out to end up not owing Motown any money. It was a bad offer. When our manager held out for a better deal, they quit talking to us and went to the Sunliners. I don't know what they settled for.

But it was nice playing as the opening act for the Motown Review, before that we had opened for The Association, The Four Seasons and other groups that had current Top10 Billboard Hits plus we opened for other acts that were not in the top 10 but still big like The Kingsmen, The Shirelles, The McCoys, and others.

There were a lot of mind-altering substances, a lot of beautiful women, and a lot of money going around for a few years.

When Motown dropped us, the band members started fighting, and we broke up. I guess it was the realization that if we didn't have an 'in' in the business already, we were bound to be just another exploited group of musicians. We didn't know or were not related to the right people in the recording biz.

I have no regrets, it was fun playing for huge crowds, being treated as peers by the top names in the business, and enjoying the fringe benefits.

BTW, Eddie. I have a customer who uses my styles (and PG styles) with Band-in-a-Box to send songwriting demos to Nashville. He chose Country Music because the Nashville stars generally don't write their own songs. He had had a number of them get published and a few bought by major acts. He sent me a few demos, I could hear my styles plus some additional instruments (mostly flat-top guitar) and some nice singers. It may be too late for you to be a teenage idol, but not to be a songwriter.

Notes

Then when Motown fell through,

Minor factual inaccuracy there. After Rare Earth signed, and they were already Rare Earth (changed from The Sunliners because the old name was not "hip" with bands like Iron Butterfly around), Motown needed a name for their all white artist label. Gil Bridges said "How about Rare Earth?" so they named the label Rare Earth.

Gil Bridges is still playing with them. 2 of them are permanently retired with no intention of ever playing again. 3 are dead. Bridges is 71 (I am a month from 70!!) but he look s like he is 117.

Rare Earth is also NOT represented in the Motown Hall of Fame, and were not invited to be on the 25th Anniversary show. (They WERE invited to be on the 50th year show.)

They lost me when they put a 21 minute version of Get Ready on a whole album side, justifying it because Iron Butterfly did it with In A Gadda Da Vida. Never liked Rare Earth, Vanilla Fudge or any white band trying to be black. But I was already a horn band guy, with Chicago, TOP, Lighthouse and BS&T on my list of faves of the time. Lighthouse, those crazy Canadians, ROCKED. Great horn players and huge arrangements.

This is a deviation from Bob's original question about favorite/least favorite cover songs... but since the thread has already become a discussion about whether or not playing cover songs is the devil's work, here are my personal thoughts. I present this not as universal truth, just as my opinion.


My personal preference is playing cover songs as closely as possible to the original. Yes, I know you can always listen to the original... but there's a reason why classic rock stations still have enough of an audience to make money: people's memories are tied to those songs.

It gets more complicated when you realize that their memory isn't just tied to the lyrics or the chords... some people actually get upset if you "mess up" the song by playing it differently than they remember it. This includes not just note for note reproduction of solos and harmonies... it extends to the signature sound of the amp, guitar, microphone and effects.

Which brings me to the reason WHY I like playing cover songs: I find it to be more challenging than writing my own songs or playing my own version of a cover. Here's an analogy:

If somebody commissioned me to give a speech, the easiest thing for me would be to give a speech on a topic I know, in my own language. But... if the requirement was that I had to give the speech on a topic with which I am not familiar, and in a language I don't know... that would ramp up the difficulty of the project considerably. The more requirements a project has, the harder it is to meet them, and the more likely it is that you will be judged. Its hard to make a scrap part when the blueprint has no tolerances. And the original recording is the standard by which the success of my re-creation will be judged

Jamming is the equivalent of playing in my own musical language. Playing something that Jimi Hendrix or Eric Johnson or Stevie Ray Vaughan would play requires me to learn something I didn't previously know. I have to play in THEIR musical language.

Playing one guitar through one amp with one pedal board allows me to reproduce a limited variety of sounds... but modelling gear is capable of sounding like any amp, cabinet, guitar or stomp box... and effort is required to match the signature sounds to the cover song. To that extent I have a Helix rack with Variax guitar. The Helix has all the amps, cabs and effects while the Variax has built-in models of many guitars used in classic rock songs. Researching what amp, guitar and pedal board was used in the original recording is another layer of challenge that provides fun for me to track down.

I already know all the arguments against what I do. I do it because it pleases me to do it. I don't even like playing in public, so it isn't for the sake of what the audience wants. To me, reproducing songs provides sufficient challenge to keep my old man retired brain engaged and interested... and that's enough reason for me.

I agree with you, but for me -- but not exclusively.

I play some of them as close to the famous recording as possible, including the solo. For example: When doing Santana's version of "Black Magic Woman" I play the guitar solo on the windsynth as close to the original as I am able. I even have a "Carlos" patch on the VL70m synth module. I think Carlos took Peter Green's solo and elevated it.

Others I play as closely as possible but with my own improvised solo. For example: My audience appreciates my wailing on the sax even in a song where there might be no sax solo on the original song.

Some others I do close to the recorded version but with our own twists to it, personalizing it to our desires. For example: We'll put our variations on the melody and/or instead of background vocal call and response, I might play the response on my sax, windsynth or guitar instead.

Yet others I play completely different from the original, and I mean completely. For example: We do Stevie Wonder's "You Are The Sunshine Of My Life" in a Cool School era swing style.

I love to play to an audience. I'd rather play than be in the audience. I always watch and feel the audience, paying attention to what works and what doesn't. It's not about playing for the audience, to me, it's playing with the audience. It's a dialog and they are equal partners.

When I was young, before DJs started playing in clubs, the focus of every band was to play the song as close to the original as possible. There were times when you could play your own solo, and times when you needed the famous solo, and that depended on the song. We learned a lot then, it was like taking lessons from the masters. How did he/she do that? Why did he/she change the phrasing of the melody in the middle chorus? And so on. It was ear training and finger training.

During one of my two trials at being 'normal' and taking a day job, I had a Sunday afternoon in a jazz band. The leader/guitarist played with Ira Sullivan before he became a teacher at the University of Miami in the jazz department. Heavyweight artists would occasionally come sit in with us when they were in town, because they all knew the guitarist. Sometimes I felt like I was in over my head, but I'm good at faking things (I was blessed with good ears) so nobody seemed to notice. It was a fun gig, nothing was done exactly the same way twice, nothing was done like 'the record' although some of the heads were similar (you can't do "Tunisia" without playing the Dizzy/Bird head), but a steady Sunday gig would never-ever pay the mortgage.

So when I quit the day job to go back to full-time music, I went back to what I call covers (exact) and semi-covers (songs done not quite like the original, or not at all like the original).

It's fun to do, it pays the bills, and although some people may call that selling out, to me holding a day job, so I can play jazz one day a week is a bigger sell-out. YMMV

To me there is nothing wrong with playing covers. Remember the New York Philharmonic, The Cleveland Orchestra, The Czech Philharmonic and the London Symphony Orchestra are all cover bands.

Insights and incites by Notes

Most cover bands play "their own adaption" of the song because, in many cases, the musicians in the local cover band are not skilled enough to actually play the licks or even the groove the same as the guys who wrote it originally.

Some of the better bands I was in did that very thing simply because we were too lazy to play it like they recorded it. We called it putting our own sound on it. The audience loved it... or appeared to love it.... hey, that sounds like Sweet Home Alabama..... lets dance...!!!! YEEEEE HAWWWWWW

My only point about any of this is explained pretty well by this analogy.

Years ago, when I still played golf, a friend I learned much from (George) could hit the hell out of a golf ball. I could kinda hang with him off the tee, but my middle game was weak and when he was 7 feet away putting for birdie, I was 12 feet putting for par. The however here is that he rarely made that 7 foot putt for birdie and I rarely missed my 12 foot putt for a par, so we both parred the hole.

He had the tee game (singing) and the long game (playing) but he couldn't putt (writing). I had some tee game (playing) and the putting (writing) but no long game (singing).

The players on the PGA tour have all 3 phases. (Playing instruments, singing, and writing.) And those are the players (and music performers) I admire most, the ones who can do it all. As often as I have said this is just my opinion I keep getting told I am wrong because Sinatra didn't write.

I... Me... Eddie... I respect people more when they have, beyond the performing ability, the ability to tell stories with lyrics. I think I am a pretty decent writer, but my performance game is lacking to the degree that I am a fine cardboard cutout behind a front man but I belong in the back as a support beam to which the shiny chandelier is attached. I have no improv skills at all anymore. I can play what is written, but to point to me and say "take it", nope. My brain wants to start thinking about "What should I play?" and what comes out is a shanked 8 iron shot into the water.

Nowhere in there do I say "If you can't write you are a piece of crap and you should sell your gear and get a job at the gas station selling people slushies and microwave burritos." I NEVER said that. I just respect writers MORE because of the expanded skill set it takes. If you have all three facets of the game, all the better. If not, play to your strengths. The thing to remember is that while (pick an one of them to put in a name) Carrie Underwood doesn't write all of her own stuff, I am thankful that they don't all wrote their own stuff or NO songwriters would sell songs. Sadly with music being so soulless and superficial anymore, heartfelt writing has given way to the formula song of exactly 3:34 in length. SO many writers had that ONE big song and the rest were "also ran". Like I was never a big Kenny Rogers guy, but "She Believes In Me" is the kind of song that gets my attention because it's about having a spouse beside you supporting your dream of becoming a songwriter. Written by Steve Gibb who really didn't do much else. However, it was #1 on Billboard Country, #5 on Hot Singles and #1 on Adult Contemporary, and it charted well for an Irish artist so I am pretty sure Gibb made a nice chunk-o-change on that one!

When I was young, the object of a cover band was to do it exactly like the record, or as close to it as possible. Because music publishing was slow, and there was no Internet, we listened to our vinyl records and learned the parts by ear, note for note.

We worked for the biggest agent in South Florida at the time, and he would say, "Those guys made a million dollars doing it that way. Do you think you could do it any better?"

Even the harmony parts had to be the same.

The most we could get away with was our own solos -- depending on the song. Even then, often we would have to start the solo like the record.

That is the classic definition of a cover band. Of course, times have changed, language has evolved, and the definition of 'cover band' has come to include anyone doing a song that they didn't write. So how do we designate the "just like the record" band from the "similar to the record" and from "inspired by the record" bands if we call them all cover bands?

When jazz artists play their own take on popular songs, are they cover bands?

Eddie, I appreciate your analogy with golfers, but let me put my own in.

There are builders who can build a house, but they depend on architects to draw up the plans, who also depend on structural engineers to make sure the plans will work and be stable.

There are also some very talented songwriters who are not top-notch performers. When someone else does their song, are the cover artists? Barry Mann, one of the prolific Brill Building songwriters, only had one single release. IMO almost anybody who records a song that Bob Dylan wrote sings it better than Dylan can.

While I do appreciate someone who can write a song and do a first-rate recording of the same song, I don't consider that a requirement.

A lot of great songs would have never seen the light of day if only songwriters were allowed to sing them. And that would be sad because there are so many great songs written by people who are not good singers and/or performers.

Notes

This is absolutely factual, and can be applied to many of the greatest songwriters around. So many others took those songwriters' creativity and enhanced it. I'm not sure how to categorize that, but the result is worthwhile.

The itunes library has 26 millions song. How original do you think your stuff is?

Do you think any pop band or singer does things the same way every time?

Every band plays what ever they can and want too. You may be able to play the same notes BB King played but I 100% assure you that you will not sound like BB.


Sergei Rachmaninov...know who this guys is? Let me see you play his stuff!

I totally get what Bob's booking agent was saying but... does "Yesterday" start with a G?

Got French Horns in your band? No? How are you going to do a certain Beatles song?

Note for note? Close but no cigar...lol

Billy

Now Billy, better not start creatin' problems with this one. The answer of course is: 'sometimes'

(How's that drone monitoring gadget goin' ? )

architects = writers
engineers = producers/engineers
builders = performers

Different skills to be done by either 3 different people, 2 different people, or 1 person.

I am built in a way that I want NO "help" from a co-writer or producer telling me what he thinks. Like the house those 3 people work on, no 2 of them may have the same vision. I wouldn't want some builder telling me as an architect (I always wanted to pretend to be an architect! Token Seinfeld reference.) what he thinks and what he sees in his mind's eye.

When I write a song, I write what my mind's ear hears, and THAT is how it will be. Fly or crash, sink or swim, THIS sound is what I am after so just do what I wrote and shut up. Note that I have had not ONE bit of success as a writer, so there's that...

A guitar player from a band back in the 80s, and a forever cover band guy who has never written a song (largely because he doesn't believe he can do it, thus he never tried) once posted how he buying those pre-prepped meals where they do all the work and you just toss it in a pot. I mean, someone else assembles your protein, your starch and your veg, portions it out to the right size, includes measured out seasoning packets, and ships it to you with directions that say "Sprinkle packet A on protein B and fry for 5 minutes per side." And YOU really cooking? And I couldn't resist posting on his timeline "So just like your music, you are a 'cover' cook too?" and we had a good laugh about that.

I am really in my own special place about music and the reverence it deserves. Some people believe in god. Music is my God.

Starting to commence to began with the drone. The issue is good ones from Japan cost $30,000 to $50,000 dollars. I am trying to decide if I want to take on the project of building one. Building the drone is the easy/fun part. Doing all the programing for the automatic GPS control/camera/chemical spray system and passing some OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) requirements is a lot of hard work.

There are many issues with flying drones here. The FAA has not got their act together yet. I have a commercial pilots license so me getting a drone license is pretty easy. As it will only be used on our land there are fewer issues.

It feels like a lot of money. Then again the tractor cost $70,000 and the boom sprayer cost$40,000 that we are currently using plus paying a guy to drive it.

Anyway I got portant stuff to do at the moment...lol


Billy

We were never a cover band. We were never a original band. We were just a band and did the best we could with what we had on any given night.

I have played a lot of covers. At the end of the day they had a lot of influence on my own stuff.

All this thread got me to thinking about what I really like. I liked the people I met and not so much copied there songs but copied their style.

I have been very fortunate to have been friends with many famous and not so famous blues men. I miss them all.

I have sang this Sunnyland Slim song a million times. https://youtu.be/XZyatrh2Wls

He was a really nice guy I got to play with a few times. Him and perhaps a couple of others influenced me to play this sort of thing. https://soundcloud.com/planobillydfw/sunday-morning-blues-on

Thanks for reminding me of where I have been.

Billy

I have never been motivated by money alone in any of the many endeavors that I have been involved in. I always tried to give the people I worked for as much as I was able.
That includes my own companies. I never considered any one thing to be my only source of income. I never considered any one thing to be my only joy in life.

EDIT: The guitar player on Johnson Machine Gun Is Muddy Waters.

I just like good songs.

I've tried to write songs, but for me the words get in the way. Everything I write just sounds corny, I guess I haven't mastered the metaphor.

I like improvising solos to other people's songs. I get to improvise a solo on almost every song we do. When I make my backing tracks, I make sure to put in a part for me to create a solo on the spot.

I like playing different instruments, sax, flute, wind synth, guitar, bass, drums and keyboards.

I like emulating other instruments on the wind synthesizer, the physical modeling Yamaha VL70m synth does a nice job on many instruments.

I even like singing (the voice is the most difficult instrument I've learned).

I like money, but as long as I have enough to make ends meet, I like fun and interesting experiences much more.

We gigged last night, post-pandemic. It was a pool party at a huge mobile home park where the winter residents were saying good-bye to each other before they went back up-north for the summer.

We played music from 1955 to the 21st century. We played some Buffett, Clapton, Cars, Elvis P, Bob Marley, Dion, Etta James, Blondie, Booker T/MGs, Stevie Wonder, and dozens of others. Some were what I call covers, others what I call semi-covers (not like the original). The dance area was full, we had a great time, the audience had a great time. It was a party, and we were the life of the party.

The two and a half hours went by way too quickly. We were even having too much fun to take a break. There were hundreds of songs we didn't get to play.

At the end of the night, the host and dozens of people told us how much they enjoyed the music.

We packed out, went home, took showers, and at the end of the day we had a great day together. It was like 2019 all over again.

I'm having a great life.

Insights and incites by Notes

You missed the part where you got to go home with a gorgeous wife who is your perfect mate. That would be worth more than the gig money to me.

You are correct. She is definitely is worth more than the gig money. But we need the gig money to pay the bills.

Notes

That describes me also!

Notes, you and I are very fortunate men.

There are some folks who would have to chain a woman up in the basement to keep her around.

So you KNOW my last wife?

A whole string of psychiatrists have tried to figure me out. Now THEY are angry all the time too!

Anybody who is a foodie knows Jane. I have her Book.

Ah. So YOU were the one who bought it!!!

Did you follow her internet series "Second Helpings"? I was the other half of that.

Notes: Will you guys get your regular Tuesday gig back this fall (Little Jim's)? Didn't that place just change hands not too long ago? Or am I confused?

My wife and I met Jane at a book signing about 11 years ago. It was relatively recently that I saw both your names on the same page of something I was reading, and I replayed some of the things that you said about your ex in my mind, put two and two together, and realized what the connection was.

I count myself in that club.

It is truly amazing how much hardship a loving relationship gets you through. My wife was diagnosed with stage 2 breast cancer in March of 2020, which subsequently was identified as stage 3 when the surgery was done. During part of her after care I started having issues of my own with multiple episodes of syncope that I thought were due to a bleeding esophageal ulcer. One episode put me in the hospital for 3 weeks when it occurred while I was handling scalding hot water and that resulted in 2nd and 3rd degree burns on my foot and two skin graft surgeries. COVID-19 was epidemic in Mobile at the time, and I spent 48 hours in a hallway being cared for before I could get a room. Even though we have a 10 bed, state of the art burn ICU at the University Hospital, I was finally admitted to one of the medical floors because the Burn ICU was completely taken over by COVID patients. No visitors allowed of course and my wife had just started going through the stage of her treatment where her hair fell out. She just had her port removed about 4 weeks ago just in time for another syncope episode for me and a hospital admission that identified Congestive Heart Failure. They pushed IV lacix for three days and I lost 34 pounds of water weight.

This was not how we expected to spend our retirement years, but we DID expect to spend them together. Yes, we are fortunate. Even if given the choice, I would rather be not healthy and having the relationship that we have with each other, than perfectly well and being alone.

Sorry to hear about your health problems. The wife and I both have had our share also. Both of use have had cancer and we both have asthma. She broke her hip (that's what they called it but it really is the femur where it connects to the hip. This recovery is worse then an actually broken hip). Plus we both have other "old age" problems.



I agree!

I'm happy for you.

I only wish everybody was this lucky.

Notes

The new owners are undecided at this point. Perhaps they are waiting to see how the economy does and/or if the border between the USA and Canada is reopened. I don't know, they aren't as sharing about their thoughts with us as the old owners were.

Since we don't usually return until October or November, we'll put out a feeler, probably in August. If not, there are some other places we think might work, but we won't approach them until we get a better felling about what Little Jim plans. After 12 consecutive years, it's our first choice.

Notes

Keith, I hope both you and your wife heal quickly and completely.

Notes

All you guys who have made that marriage thing work for you have my deepest respect seasoned with a lot of envy. It just hasn't worked out for me, though I am well aware as to why.

Keith, good detective work. Second Helpings was a lot of fun. We actually won an award for some "online food column" category. The week that she was swamped and we decided that I would do the weekly recipe and SHE would review ME turned a corner. A lot of people took to that turning table and I actually developed a fan base where I was getting about 3/4 of the amount of fan mail she was getting. We had a local low-power AM radio station here that did a lot of talk radio and they called the house. She assumed they wanted to interview her and the guy said "Actually I was hoping to reach your husband. With that dry, biting sense of humor he will be radio gold for me." So I did a 60 minute spot, complete with phone calls, and the fan mail increased. When we parted ways I got a lot of "we miss you" email for about 4-5 months. Then, as usual, I became quite forgettable. That marriage was little more than a good idea at the time. Pretty much oil and water. The last 3-4 years was pretty much "on paper only". That was over with "on paper" 16 years ago now, but in practice it was done after 1 year, so 20 years ago. I am not a day at the beach, and she was an overbearing woman with inferiority issues who overcompensated by trying to bully people. I grew up on the inner city streets of Cleveland, and I have never been bullied, though many have tried, so that didn't go well for her.

Were you up this way to get the book signed? I have my doubts that she did a book tour that took her to Alabama.

Hi Keith,

Sorry to hear about the health issues. I hope thing go better in the future. Your comment

"This was not how we expected to spend our retirement years, but we DID expect to spend them together." is one of the most destressing parts of the pandemic.

My wife developed four new fractures in her back near the beginning of the pandemic. It was a real nightmare. Five days in the hospital alone. Five days I had to totally depend on the medical staff there to do everything correct.

That was only the beginning. We could not get a pain management specialist. I only had occasional access to our primary doctor. I had to run a damn emergency room in my living room for about a month. As I had to give Eva pretty large amounts of pain meds, there was always the fear of her reacting negatively and stop breathing. Yes I have the meds and the skill to deal with a bad reaction but that is super difficult to do alone. My fear level was pretty high for a while.

I sat up at night to see if she was breathing OK. That was hard to assure. I finally called a friend in California and he was kind enough to send me a CO2 monitor FedEx overnight. It had a alarm so I could sleep setting up next to her.

There are a good many older people here on this site I believe will also understand your comment.

I also have a wonderful wife of more than thirty years. I can't imagine life without her.

Perhaps there was never the idea that we should have these types of conversations on this site. I think they are important and bring a different level of togetherness between people here.

Billy

Sandra and I find ourselves in Ohio quite often. If memory serves, the book signing was held at a book store in Westerville; either that or Columbus. I went to school for 3 years in Westerville so I have some close ties to that community, and our favorite nephew lives in Columbus now. Actually, works in Columbus and lives in Dublin.

I probably should explain that I can’t drive past a bookstore without going in; while my wife can’t walk past a cookbook without buying it. Sandra probably has the largest collection of cookbooks in the northern hemisphere. We went into the store just to browse and Sandra couldn’t pass up the opportunity to buy another cookbook and chat up the author to boot.

Kind of like me and pretty guitars?

I have an entire closet full of music books and a file cabinet drawer full of sheet music. I have so much, it's hard to know if I have a particular song in there somewhere or not.

There is a part of me that wants to scan them all with enough tags, so I can search by title, composer(s) or year and another part of me thinking it would take too huge a chunk of time that would be better spent writing more style and fake e-disks for Band-in-a-Box.

Music is one of my main passions.

Notes

Sounds like you need to hire an intern Notes.

Just an FYI, there are free programs that using a cheap USB scanner, catalog books by their ISBN number. Book sellers, librarians and collectors use the method to catalog hundreds of books per hour or to search for used books to resell to Amazon and College Book stores. Take Steve's advice, hire a kid, make sure the program is gathering all of the data you need and catalog your library.

Bookscouter and ScanIQ are two free programs that are popular.

I will get others I know there and in Vero to put in a word with them, asking about you guys coming back. That usually helps I would think.

Thanks. Be sure to ask for Diego or Donna, as it won't get past anyone else who answers the phone.

Notes

My next band was "Captain Billy's Whiz Bang". The band leader picked all the songs, and most of them were by CCR. This band was so bad that in the middle of playing a Senior Prom the drummer threw his sticks on the ground and walked off the stage. I managed to get him back onstage by telling him we wouldn't get paid. That was, fortunately, the end of "Captain Billy's Whiz Bang"!


Regards,

Bob

Maybe Captain Billy had to TAKE a whiz...

I can relate a story to you that shows SOME flexibility. There was a band in Cleveland called Wild Horses. Really popular. They were your basic cover band but they wrote one single, Funky Poodle, and it was a local hit. They were fronted by an old friend named Steve Jochim (who I have always called Poodle). A band I was in at the time played that song. One night Steve was in there just hanging out and I told the guys to start Funky Poodle but just keep looping the intro.

So we started it and I said "Where's Poodle at??" And I located him and pointed at him and then did the "come here" gesture to get him on stage, and we did his song.

But THAT was not an unknown quantity coming on stage to try to wing a song. I mean, he wrote the song he sang. Very different circumstance.