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Medleys


worthyjoe

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Do a lot of you incorporate medleys into your sets? For whatever reason I was never interested in them until recently and now I love them. It's perfect for songs with popular "hooks" but not necessarily songs people want to hear start to finish. It's also great for songs your band just doesn't feel like playing start to finish, or the bridge or whatever.

 

thoughts?

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We've incorporated some medleys into our sets.. depending on the place we play. There are just so many good songs our there, it's a good way to get some more material packed into a limited time frame for barely any more effort.

 

examples:

 

La Bamba and Beatles' Twist and Shout

Allman Bros' Midnight Rider.. just a verse, then wail into American Woman.. full length

Lot's of CCR stuff hangs together nice.. Born on the Bayou to Green River to Suzie Q, etc

 

What you have to be a little careful of is not to string a 15 minute medley together and wear it out. Medley's were meant to be just a verse or so from each song.

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We do several:

LA Woman/Roadhouse Blues

House is a Rockin/Betty Lou

Walkin on the Sun/Evil Ways

and our 50's medley, about eight songs mashed together in 7 minutes, all in the key of B :confused: and we have a dance contest and give away a Puddlestone t-shirt to the winner.

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We like to chain together tunes that have similay structure, but have little or nothing in common.

 

Pretty Woman (Roy Orbison) into Whip IT (Devo)

 

As Tears Go By (Rolling Stones) into Thank Yo (Led Zepplin)

 

I love the looks we get when we transition into Whip It from the Pretty Woman tag line!

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Our best one, one that we've done for years in my all-purpose cover band, is our "disco medley":

 

Play that Funky Music --> Get up offa that thing --> Get Down Tonight ---> Shake your Booty --->back into Funky Music.

 

All singable, silly dance stuff. Keeps em on the floor the whole time.

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We do the following as medleys:

 

Medley 1

500 Miles - Proclaimers (2 verses and choruses)

into

Take Me Out - Franz Ferdinand (2 verses and choruses)

into

Stacy's Mom - Fountains of Wayne (2 and 2)

back into

500 Miles (1 final verse and chorus)

 

Medley 2

Semi Charmed Life - 3rd Eye Blind (2 and 2)

into

Flagpole Sitta - Harvey Danger (2 and 2)

into

Mr. Brightside - The Killers (full song)

 

Medley 3

Swing Swing - All American Rejects (2 and 2)

into

1985 - Bowling for Soup (2 and 2)

into

Little Black Backpack - Stroke 9 (just the chorus twice in a row)

into

Scars - Papa Roach (full song)

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Originally posted by Outrider

Our best one, one that we've done for years in my all-purpose cover band, is our "disco medley":


Play that Funky Music --> Get up offa that thing --> Get Down Tonight ---> Shake your Booty --->back into Funky Music.


All singable, silly dance stuff. Keeps em on the floor the whole time.

 

 

nice! that's not a bad idea.

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Over 40% of our setlist is comprised of medleys. Some might think that is overkill, however our reputation, draw and niche in our region has really evolved around our ability to move from song to song and keep the crowd moving. We like to keep them grouped by genre's as mini sets. We have a New Wave medley that includes tunes by Devo, Adam Ant, and Flock of Seagulls is 11 minutes long and consists of 9 songs. We have a Rap/'Hip Hop/Disco/Funk Medley plays everything from Dave Matthews to the Ohio Players to Nelly that is 10 songs and 14 mins. And we've just put together another mini set of 80's hair rock that includes Bon Jovi, Metallica and Van Halen.

 

 

It's pretty cool when you see someone in the crowd, who looks like he never listened to anything but punk rock his entire life staring at chicks grinding to "It Getting Hot in Here".

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With the funk/R&B band, we do a couple of them. One of them is the medley done in The Gap Band Live CD with the intro, ending with "Outstanding". We also do a Parliament/Funkadelic medley incl "Cosmic Slop", "One Nation Under A Groove", "Flashlight", "Knee Deep", "Aqua Boogie" and "Tear The Roof Off".

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just now we're doing:

 

libertines can't stand me now(full song)

 

into the middle 8 and big ending of coldplays fix you and it sounds great

 

 

 

Johnny B Goode into rockin all over the world

 

 

I'm working on how to incorporate kaiser chiefs i predict a riot into the Clash's i fought the law too.

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we do play that funky music and groove straight in to some george clinton we want the funk song and then we groove into crowd participation with the roof is on fire we dont need no water let the mf burn, after the crowd is really belting it out, the singer motions me and i do a low d note on my five string and we go into another brick in the wall and at the end of the solo we go back into funky music and rap it up. it works great.

 

kevin james

 

www.monkeyboneband.ocm

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My current band:

 

Superstition -> Funky Music

 

Can't Help Myself -> Mustang Sally -> Love Shack

 

I Will Survive -> Le Freak

 

One of my old bands did some interesting medleys but I can't remember all the tunes in them. They changed tempos and keys throughout. One was a fifties medley that started slow (Oh Donna?) and after 3 or 4 slow tunes went to Run-around Sue (which starts slow and then picks up). The medley then stayed upbeat with 3 or 4 other tunes. I think it ended with Johnny B. Good. Another was a disco medley. We started with I will Survive and moved through several disco tunes (That's the Way I Like It, Get Down Tonight, were two) and ended with Disco Inferno and YMCA.

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We do a few w/ my trio...we have a "Beatles Medley" (Day Tripper/Just 17/Ticket to Ride/Get Back), "Stones Medley" (As Tears Go By/Dead Flowers/Honky Tonk Women/Paint It Black), a "Celtic Medley" when Valerie joins us on fiddle and Kat plays mandolin instead of percussion (Red Haired Boy/Wind That Shakes The Barley/Soldier's Joy/Whiskey Before Breakfast/Cliffs of Brittainey/Davey The Gypsy) and a "Pink Floyd Medley" (Wish You Were Here/Time/Hey You/Pigs On The Wing/Comfortably Numb)...

 

Depending on the crowd, we'll do one or more per gig, but rarely more than one per set.

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We have the typical Pfunk medly then we do... pink panther... batman.... wipe out... mission impossible and end it with peter gunn. About half of each song and each filled with blistering leadwork and bass/drum solos. We usually hear alot of "Holy {censored}!" and {censored} YAAAA!! at the end and people have that deer in the headlights look!:cool:

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Medleys aren't gay...they have a purpose. If they don't fit your band's style, don't use 'em.

 

I think more in terms of stringing songs together without a break...but shorter song clips (medleys) work fine too. ANYTHING IS BETTER THAN...

 

(song)...(big, dance floor clearing "Freebird" style 5 minute ending where everyone plays every lick they know while the drummer whaps his snare)...(3 minutes of dead air while we argue about what song we should play next).

 

Remember, we're competing with DJs a lot more these days, and DJs segue from tune to tune. Keep da booty on da floor...

 

Did one the other day for our barbecue contest gig. We had three rehearsals to learn a set's worth of songs, so needless to say, we kept 'em simple. We did a three song medley of "Green River", "Fortunate Son", and "Little Bit Of Soul". Some nice oldies. Went over very well...like someone said...that bit where you change into the new song is great. We did "Green River", then modulated up to the G and chucked on that. When I started playing that simple little "Fortunate Son" intro lick, the crowd went crazy. Yeah, buddy.

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Originally posted by Tedster


I think more in terms of stringing songs together without a break...but shorter song clips (medleys) work fine too. ANYTHING IS BETTER THAN...


(song)...(big, dance floor clearing "Freebird" style 5 minute ending where everyone plays every lick they know while the drummer whaps his snare)...(3 minutes of dead air while we argue about what song we should play next).

 

 

Yup. Dead time between songs is horrible and should be kept to a minimum. I think of medleys as usually not full songs.... maybe a VERSE/CHORUS/VERSE/CHORUS --> next song. We are always looking for ways to minimize down time... like making the setlist so that I change guitars on songs where the drums and bass start the groove. I think it's important to do that.

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Originally posted by Strings74



I was trying to get our guys to do Take Me Out and it just wasn't working out. Tricky feel. Maybe we'll revisit.

 

 

We skip that whole intro and just start with those series of hits before the main riff starts. Then we stop after the bridge thing ("i know I won't be leaving here... "). We probably couldn't pull off the whole song but it works well in a chunk like that.

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