Another Performance Question(s)

Hi Mike

There are absolutely songs we prefer to play live more than others. There are the ones that are exciting in the beginning and start to feel a bit old after a while vs some that develop and get more fun over months of playing them live.

Whether or not we particularly enjoy playing a song over a long period of time can depend on the day, the atmosphere, the stage sound, setting etc … Also I’d say the tighter we played and the more prepared we were the more enjoyable the whole setlist would be, regardless of those other factors, so that’s always what we were aiming for.

By the last gig of the day we might have already run through “Johnny B. Goode” twice during this morning’s band rehearsal and once at a show around the corner. Whether you then switch to “autopilot” or keep engaged in what you’re doing I think has a lot to do with why it is you are making music in the first place.

The amount of miserable cover and function bands (or sometimes even well-known acts, in which case it’s even sadder) who just seem to go through the motions each night attest to the fact that even the best job in the world (like playing rock’n’roll to an excited audience ;-)) can become dreadful if you’re doing it for a paycheck alone.

Thanks to our parents we could take a different approach. Even though we usually play a lot of covers we’ve never been a “cover band” and while we did our fair bit of grinding and collecting hours on sweaty, small stages we’ve always done it to hone our craft and experience the dynamics of live playing rather than for the money.

Because of that we have never not been excited about a gig. Whenever we feel like we’ve overplayed a song or we had a harder time getting excited about it we’d drop it after a while or look into how we can make it fun again.

That was a long winded answer to a simple question but I thought it would be worth going into a bit more detail about the subject 🙂

You probably wanted to hear some examples so if I’d have to pick a song I’ve always enjoyed, it was “Revolution”, even though we played it literally hundreds of times. We always added little things over the years and I’ll always love that tune.

The same goes for pretty much all of our originals, though “I Don’t Know Birds That Well” might be one of my favourites to do live.

Thanks for the lovely question and have a good day!

Mona

Love your detailed answer here Mona.  The years of doing covers and live performances including 2 years at the Cavern and many tours with Steve Harley has certainly enabled you to hone your musical skills into the masters you’ve become.  Your two brilliant original music album output attests to that receiving praise from people in the music industry like John Sebastian, Steve Harley and many others.  Yourself and Lisa are the few true keepers of the Rock and Roll musical faith that started in the 60’s and extend to today.  You understand music as art instead of entertainment with the kind passion the Beatles, Rolling Stones, and others from that era brought forth, and your fans here are so fortunate to have found you.

Good Q Mike and love  and appreciate Mona’s detailed reply and what she stated makes perfect sense and I agree on all facets that she elaborated on.  While it’s good to do a varied setlist repertoire for gigs in general… Wherever the venue or gig type… It’s healthy to shake things up… Not play some songs for awhile… Breathe new life… Try out new stuff whether originals or covers…. Never get bored or get into the live funct burnout thing… Approach it to make it more enjoyable for all… Tis better to pour heart and soul and remain true then to go Music gig Awol and be no longer Contented… This is just my 2 cents worth of thought on this.