"Signature" songs for cover bands?

[TrickyBoy]

 

I used to love singing this one with all the silly falsetto stuff. It still works huh?

 

 

Yeah, that song does really well for us too. Interestingly, it goes over best, by far, with the college kids.

[guitarguy19]

 

I used to love singing this one with all the silly falsetto stuff. It still works huh?

 

 

People eat it up...plus I do all the crazy solos and tapping and stuff...it's fun as hell. Lots of time it's a set closer. Only 1 other band around this area (that I know of) covers that song so the crowds aren't seeing it often.

[Big Al]

 

This is an easy one for us: 1. I Believe in a Thing Called Love by the Darkness 2. In the Meantime by Spacehog 3. All My Life by the Foo Fighters (somewhat more common but we NAIL this one...) These all go over great at generally every show.

 

 

Love the Darkness!

You've got some skills if you can pull that one off!

 

We play originals and offbeat covers, so our originals are our signature songs, but these are some signature favorite covers:

 

-Surrender (Cheap Trick)

-She Don't Use Jelly (Flaming Lips)

-Beat on the Brat (Ramones)

-Anarchy in the UK (The Sex Pistols)

-Carnival of Sorts (REM)

 

And of course we can't go home without playing Folsom Prison Blues. That song has never let me down.

[Rezrover]

 

-Beat on the Brat (Ramones)

 

 

Damn you, I'm digging thru my CD's right now.

[netwerx1]

My old band, Griffon, however... when we did covers, we did a few heavy rock versions of some fun pop tunes that always killed: "Sunglasses at Night" by Corey Hart (on our 2010 EP, The Weight of Water ) "Jessie's Girl" by Rick Springfield

 

We were thinking about rocking up versions of these too, glad to know they killed...I actually tracked down your Sunglasses cover, I love the arrangement, want to cop it!

[slickstrings1]

My cover band does a lot of weddings and mixed generation events so they pretty much have to be obvious songs to get people dancing and having a good time. Can’t afford (literally) to do anything too niche or we’d probably get half the amount of work!!

 

Having said that we still manage to avoid Carwash and Brown Eyed Girl - at the moment we’re doing a lot of guitar-based arrangements of modern production pop tunes along the lines of Rihanna and Lady Gaga - it’s a fresh sound so keeps things interesting for us without losing the crowd. It's probably geared more towards more of a UK audience but check out our song-list and demos on our band page!

[FitchFY]

With that in mind.....what are some of the more interesting or memorable "signature" songs your bands have done, or that you've heard from cover bands?

 

I see that a lot in New England - certain tunes that bands NAIL and everyone wants them to play.

 

Le'see... my hard rock band for years did both "Sunglasses at Night" and "I Kissed a Girl" (Katy Perry) and people always dug into those.

 

My more recent hard rock cover band did "Walk" by Pantera and "Get the Funk Out" by Extreme, and everyone tweaked for those.

 

I had a soul/ funk cover band and folks really dug on "Use Me," "Can't You Hear Me Knocking" (with a loooooooooong jam session), and "Late In the Evening" by Paul Simon.