Cover Me Blind

Cover bands have a place, and it’s playing for drunk people to dance and sing along to. I’ve seen my share of alright cover bands, and a good amount that were truly awful. A few years back I played drums in a band that used to practice in a rehearsal studio where numerous cover bands bashed away. I never want to hear Hey Joe, Alright Now or Sweet Home Alabama again.
Some of them were technically good but no matter how they played the worst bands were the ones who took themselves ever so seriously. They didn’t realise that the only reason to be in a cover band is to have a laugh and make a few quid. Don’t act as if it's anything else.
Personally I’ve never been remotely interested in playing in a band that knocks out a few well known tunes for beer money. But I've played in bands that have thrown in a couple of covers to fill out the set. A country punk version of I Shot The Sheriff anyone? Sadly (or more to my relief) no recording of it exists. We also played a couple of songs by the band Firehose called Rocket Sled/Fuel Tank and Down With The Bass. Of course the crowd had never heard the songs so the audience thought they were our own. Infact I didn’t get around to hearing the original versions myself until our band split. I just drummed along.
But one out of three people in the band not knowing the song is better than four in five not knowing the songs like when I played in a band in my late teens and the guitarist thought we should learn a song by Swervedriver. We played it live a couple of times and I still don’t know what song it was.

Download Firehose: Down With The Bass mp3 here