Songs you're banned from playing (or forced to play but hate)

[pinkfloydcramer61]

What I truly hate to play: for solo piano gigs, vocal-less versions of Elton John and Billy Joel songs. B-O-R-I-N-G.. However, if someone that sings well (I don't) helps me out, I enjoy that stuff.

[McHale]

I got tired of people shouting out songs like that so I learned just enough of 'em to tease them with. For example, I had a few people ask for Maybe I'm Amazed or Piano Man over the years so I quickly worked up the intros and a verse. Sometimes when they shout those requests, I'll start to play them then suddenly stop and just say maybe we'll do them in the last set - JUST FOR THEM. Of course we never do them but those people stick around for the whole show.

[piano39]

If your intention was to ask, are you really a slut. The answer is YES, no denying

 

 

Face it. If you are a professional musician, you are going to play some stuff that you don't like, for a price. I know plenty of musicians that would never play a song that they didn't like. The basements and garages are full of em. They don't play out in public very much.

 

Here's the moral dilemma:

 

If you are performing at a paying bar gig, you have an obligation to please the audience.

 

If you only play stuff that pleases yourself, it is an exercise in self-indulgence. Most local "original" bands fall into this category. They are too lazy or undisciplined to learn any songs, so they play stuff that sounds like an organized jam session. And they never get re-booked.

 

The tricky part is to find a balance between the two extremes, especially at a paying gig. Find stuff that you enjoy playing and that the audience likes. Also, find a venue that fits your music.

 

I'm lucky in that, for the first time in my life, I am in a five piece band that only plays songs that everyone agrees to. As a result, the audience likes most of our stuff, as well.

[pogo97]

Here's the moral dilemma: If you are performing at a paying bar gig, you have an obligation to please the audience.

 

 

hemi-demi-semi-true

 

Some members of the audience may prefer to NOT hear "Old Time Rock and Roll" just because some loud-mouthed lout thinks he'd like to control the agenda and only knows the titles to three songs.

[frogmonkey]

I always got the impression my ex had a particulr dislike of that song... it might have been the time a 50s covers band he was in played it at a small town summer fair, without realising that the week before (they were not from around there) a girl called Sally had been killed in a traffic accident.

Yikes! Well, I guess you can find one sure way to antagonize him if he walks into the room where you are playing. Not that you'd want to ...

[Gribs]

This is going in a direction that reminds me of an accordion player at Gasthaus Bavarian Hunter restaurant here in town who takes requests and seems to know the fight song for any random college you can throw at him. I imagine that for him it is pure gold. He walks from table-to-table and plays whatever people request and they pop him a fiver or similar. College fight songs are pretty short, so that can end up being a lot of cash in a short period of time.

 

I agree with the professional needs to learn and be willing to play stuff they don't like or would never choose to play by themselves. I used to play in a lot of musical pit bands in my home town and much of the music for musicals is pretty simple, not too much fun by itself, and downright boring most of the time for the individual parts. However once you got together with the singers and dancers and became part of a production, at least to me, was a blast. The sum of the parts was definitely much bigger than the whole in that case, and if you wanted to be asked to do it again you had to be a complete professional - know your parts, follow the director's lead, play at the right volume, be timely, be awake for rehearsal (they get long), etc.

[cram1960]

I can play "Heart and Soul" and no-one tells me to stop. I am king of the universe.

cool song, obviously not banned.

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[pogo97]

I believe we may be speaking of different songs.

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[mrcpro]

I've never been forbidden myself, but I used to play with a drummer who was uber religious and he refused to play Sympathy for the Devil.

 

When I read this Dan it reminded me of a bass player I worked with who went Jehovah's Witness and subsequently refused to sing "Highway to Hell" anymore. He used to sing that thing great too.

 

It wasn't much of a loss though because he quit playing in the band shortly thereafter - too much bar work for his newfound faith. And that was OK because he was a pretty wild dude before this personal transformation.

 

After that band broke up I went through an extended piano bar phase, and got so sick of people requesting "Piano Man" that I banned myself from playing it anymore - no matter how big the tip - because it put me in such a foul mood afterwards.

[McHale]

I believe we may be speaking of different songs.

 

 

I agree...

 

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[Cygnus64]

There's no signature because it's in C. http://imslp.info/files/imglnks/usimg/7/79/IMSLP24900-PMLP55964-mars-piano.pdf

Yes and no (but you are correct:thu:). Several of the mvmts have key signatures, several do not. There is even one mvmt where most of the orchestra does not have a key signature, but the violins do. To make it even weirder, the violins (1 and 2) have different key signatures. However, bonus points for you for saying "C". Most people assume that Mars is in G minor, but the last note of the mvmt establishes C.

Holst publicly stated that key signatures should be abolished. What's odd about that is that Holst is not thought of as a forward-looking composer. This piece was written after the Rite of Spring and after many of Ives' pieces, yet it's fairly traditional and very tonal for something that was supposed to be "groundbreaking". The key signatures ( and lack of many of them) show a 20th century modernist, but the music is more 19th century romantic.

[soundwave106]

Yes and no (but you are correct:thu:). Several of the mvmts have key signatures, several do not. There is even one mvmt where most of the orchestra does not have a key signature, but the violins do. To make it even weirder, the violins (1 and 2) have different key signatures. However, bonus points for you for saying "C". Most people assume that Mars is in G minor, but the last note of the mvmt establishes C.

Mars *does* start with a G minor motif (practically), so that's probably why people think of that. But it doesn't stick there very long. It's a piece revolving more around chromatic scales than anything else.

Holst never wrote anything like the Planets before or after, at least that I'm aware. His other stuff like his military suites and choral work is *very* Romantic-traditional.