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Need An Encore For The Set List - HELP!


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My band recently played a gig and the crowd was screaming for an encore. We wound up playing one of the worst songs on our album (worst because it deosn't really have a hook or the punch that an encore should have). We need an encore for the set list that we can keep in our pocket in case we need it. So, we don't want to cover anything that would be good in the set list as is, just something that would wrap it all up for the crowd and for us. We want a COVER SONG that says something and rocks at the same time! We sound like Tom Petty meets the Goo Goo Dolls (or Replacements, take your pick) and here is our current set list.

 

Please make suggestions.

 

Thanks.

 

Here's everything split into originals and covers in NO PARTICULAR ORDER.

 

ORIGINALS

1. West of Everything

2. Winona Ryder

3. Electrolux

4. When You're Gone

5. Around Here

6. Ashley Robinson

7. Break Me Apart

8. Letter

9. All Over The World

10. 12:15

11. Misery

12. Brutal

13. St. Augustine

14. Kathryn

 

COVERS

1. Keep On Rocking In the Free World

2. Just Like Heaven

3. Learning To Fly

4. Knocking On Heaven's Door

5. Kings' Highway

6. Knocking On Heaven's Door

7. Sweet Home Alabama

8. I Want You To Want Me

9. Found Out About You

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Try "Free Ride" by Edgar Winter.........It'll kick ass if your band has a good singer and guitarist. If you wanna stick with what you got.......Sweet Home Alabama works every time. Believe it or not, so does I'm a Believer by The Monkees. Just make it more modern like Smash Mouth did. The drawback is that if you do them well, they won't want you to stop there either.

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"You Shook Me All Night Long"...AC/DC...I can't tell you how many times this song's saved my ass, had people chantin' and dancin' in the last 20 years, and it seems to work better as it gets older. You don't have to do it in G even, if you can't sing that high...I do it in E.

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Goo Goos always reminded me of Soul Asylum. Anyway,how about LONG WAY DOWN by them. That would end the night ok. Or,if you want to migrate to Petty,either AMERICAN GIRL,or better yet,OUT IN THE COLD,which is a great,great hard-driving tune by him. Or,you mentioned a Gin Blossums song. How about FOLLOW YOU DOWN? TWILIGHT ZONE(Golden Earring)maybe? RIVER FLOWS by Collective Soul? LIVIN' AFTER MIDNIGHT? HIGHWAY TO HELL? SQUEEZE BOX? SAME OLD SONG AND DANCE/SWEET EMOTION? So many choices,depending on the crowd. We actually end with MAGIC BUS once in a while if the crowd is pretty hip.

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Originally posted by Tommy Tune

We used to do Long Way Down......never really worked well(for us, anyway)......we also do TNT by AC/DC.......works every time.

We did it when it first came out and people would hound us and hound us to play it. How about something a little obscure. RADAR GUN by Bottle Rockets. We used to do it and it went over great. And it will probably surprise some people.

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Two of the coolest encores:

 

Steve Miller's "Keep On Rockin' Me, Baby"

 

CCR/Marvin Gaye "Heard It Through the Grapevine"

 

Both very simple, both allow the vocalist to show off, both allow the guitarist/keys to show off, crowd knows the words to both.

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Two more...........Honky Tonk Woman by The Stones or Keep Your Hands to Yourself by the Georgia Satelites. When it comes around to the "Keep Your Hands to Yourself" part.......don't sing. The crowd will do it for you. The song rocks and is a great 2 or 3AM song when the bar is full. That song is the best 3rd set ender that we've ever played. It would fit well with your sound. I also agree with Tbone........some songs work better for some bands than others.

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Leroy Brown works great when I'm playing for the over 40 set...also Old Time Rock & Roll...which used to be THE show ender...20 years ago :D . Another good one, but not as great as You Shook Me All Night Long: Walk This Way. A few weeks ago, we were crammed into a club that shouldn't have had half as many people in it as it did, and on both these songs the customers were chanting the hooks so loud that it was seriously competing with the PA.

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AC/DC always goes over good. I'm the male singer in the band and my voice is too clean to do a convincing job. If I try to rough it up...I'll just do damage. I'm trying to get my wife to agree to sing one of their tunes (their are a half-dozen can't miss guarentee)

 

We've had great luck with "Long Time" by Boston. I've seen other bands do it with the keyboard (foreplay) intro and it was killer. Now, you need searing high lead vocals, great harmony's and a really good guitarist (key's too if you do foreplay) to pull it off, but all that combined with a well executed light show is great. The lyrics are appropriate for an encore too. "just takin' my time, I'm justa movin' on......". Nice way to close down a show.

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Originally posted by flanc

AC/DC always goes over good. I'm the male singer in the band and my voice is too clean to do a convincing job. If I try to rough it up...I'll just do damage. I'm trying to get my wife to agree to sing one of their tunes (their are a half-dozen can't miss guarentee)


We've had great luck with "Long Time" by Boston. I've seen other bands do it with the keyboard (foreplay) intro and it was killer. Now, you need searing high lead vocals, great harmony's and a really good guitarist (key's too if you do foreplay) to pull it off, but all that combined with a well executed light show is great. The lyrics are appropriate for an encore too. "just takin' my time, I'm justa movin' on......". Nice way to close down a show.

We're blessed with a singer that you'd swear was Bon Scott if you closed your eyes and listened. So we do a bunch of AC/DC stuff. He has a hard time with some of the Brian Johnson stuff.(people don't realize who much difference there is between the two)Here's some that we do currently,and people can't get enough AC/DC if you do them well.

HIGHWAY TO HELL

DIRTY DEEDS

TNT

MONEY TALKS

SAFE IN NY CITY

ROCK & ROLL(AIN'T NOISE POLLUTION)

GIRL'S GOT RHYTHM

BIG BALLS

RIDE ON

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Any AC/DC WILL work but for all around, always works, kicks ass every time I pick MONY MONY. It has the driving beat, it's easy to play, it has the call backs(get laid, get f*cked) and the crowd WILL go nuts EVERY time. You can make it heavy, you can make it pop, you can drag it on FOREVER. Everyone knows it, everyone dances to it. You can't loose. In over 25 years of playing in clubs/festivals MONY MONY has never failed It is the PERFECT encore. A close second is OLD TIMR R&R by Bob Seger, but I puked every time I had to play it. I HATE that song.

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Audiopile wrote:


4) Little Feat: Fat Man in the Bathtub

6) Sprit: Mr. Skin

 

Woah. The Feat's "Time Loves a Hero" and Spirit's "I Got a Line On You" are in our set list.

 

My choice for an encore would be the Tubes' "Talk You Ya Later." What.a.song.

 

Hmmm ... aren't those all Ted Templeman productions? Maybe take a look at some of his other work too: Doobies, Van Halen, Toto, Van Morrison, Captain Beefheart, Montrose, Eric Clapton, Aerosmith, Cheap Trick. That guy owned the late 70's & early 80's.

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Originally posted by Audiopile


6) Sprit: Mr. Skin


9) MC5: Kickin out the Jams Brothers and Sisters

 

 

Whoa, I'm having a flashback. I haven't thought about "The Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus" in about, oh, 30 years or so.

 

And another one...summer of '69, two different festivals in the midwest, saw the roots of metal/punk...The Stooges (Iggy did a stage dive and was passed around, in 1969 ) and then saw the MC5 (95 lb. Wayne Kramer and "Ramblin Rose.") My drummers brother had the "Kick Out the Jams, M_____F_____s" version of the album. Rock owes alot to Detroit.

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Originally posted by Audiopile


Speaking of The Tubes: I'd sure like to work up "What Do You Want From Life?"... I doubt it would be much a crowd pleaser... but it would be fun to spew forth.


A few more encore numbers:


Chicago: 25 or 6 to 4

Five Man Electric Band: Signs

Golden Earring: Radar Love

Jethro Tull: Locomotion Breath

Spencer Davis Group: Gimme Some Lovin

Alice Cooper: Billion Dollar Babies

Grand Funk: We're an American Band

I think WHITE PUNKS ON DOPE would be a killer encore song. As for Golden Earring,we used to use TWILIGHT ZONE quite a bit for encores and it went over very well. It has that super heavy straight disco-like beat under everything that makes it a great dance song.

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You mentioned the Replacements -- one of the things I loved about them was their penchant for very cheesy 70's pop songs, which they would turn into raving power-chord anthems. I heard them do killer versions of stuff like Hooked On A Feeling, Hitchin' A Ride, Build Me Up Buttercup and Daydream Believer . And if it was a bit rough and ragged (which it usually was with the 'mats), so much the better.

 

Of course, Paul could have played Barry Manilow covers all nite and the audience still would have loved it, but that {censored} always worked for them. It is funny, fun for the audience, conveys an endearing who-gives-a-{censored} attitude, and gives the crowd something familiar, but done in a fresh way. It's kinda like a giant inside joke between the band and the audience. We've tried similar stuff in our band -- a rave-up version of Take Me Home Country Roads -- and people love it.

 

Anyhoo, maybe you could try something like that. Maybe The Night Chicago Died or something. The possibilities are endless.

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Originally posted by jlindquist

You mentioned the Replacements -- one of the things I loved about them was their penchant for very cheesy 70's pop songs, which they would turn into raving power-chord anthems. I heard them do killer versions of stuff like
Hooked On A Feeling, Hitchin' A Ride, Build Me Up Buttercup
and
Daydream Believer
. And if it was a bit rough and ragged (which it usually was with the 'mats), so much the better.


Of course, Paul could have played Barry Manilow covers all nite and the audience still would have loved it, but that {censored} always worked for them. It is funny, fun for the audience, conveys an endearing who-gives-a-{censored} attitude, and gives the crowd something familiar, but done in a fresh way. It's kinda like a giant inside joke between the band and the audience. We've tried similar stuff in our band -- a rave-up version of
Take Me Home Country Roads
-- and people love it.


Anyhoo, maybe you could try something like that. Maybe
The Night Chicago Died
or something. The possibilities are endless.

The 'Mats were pretty special! What's Slim up to these days?

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Originally posted by tlbonehead

The 'Mats were pretty special! What's Slim up to these days?

 

 

He was working a day job at the big Schmidt Music store in Brooklyn Center -- don't know if he still is.

 

He still plays out once in a while, but I don't think on a regular basis. He seems to pop up at alot of the "tribute" shows -- I think he was part of a Johnny Cash tribute recently. He used to host this annual Hank Williams tribute that was great fun.

 

I've always loved the guy -- I remember him from his days in Curtiss A's band back in the early 80's. He also has a couple of very good solo records, which were recorded after his stint in the 'mats. He has this song called Ballad of the Opening Band that should be required listening for any club musician.

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