Music News

December 2009
Movie Entertainment
Brendan Kelly


Back in the day, playing in a cover band was not the most glamorous gig for a musician. What it meant was that you’d be stuck in some dingy bar cranking out fairly faithful run-throughs of the recent Top 40 hits for a well-refreshed audience that probably couldn’t care less about the band on stage. Clearly a rock star you weren’t.

But that was then and this is now. There are, of course, still plenty of unsung cover bands playing the bars. But there are also acts like The Australian Pink Floyd Show, which headlines about 125 shows per year and draws between 2,000 and 8,000 fans a night. The Beatles tribute band Get Back! Also does about 100 shows annually, regularly pulling in between 2,000 and 3,000 nostalgic Fab Four fans for each gig.

And they’re not the only ones. Tongue-in-cheek ABBA cover band Björn Again has been playfully reviving the oeuvre of the famed Swedish pop outfit for years, Quebec’s Lost Fingers have gone multi-platinum with their Gypsy-jazzy take on kitschy ’80s hits, and France’s Nouvelle Vague also hits paydirt by delivering bossa nova renditions of vintage pop hits.

All of a sudden we’re seeing cases of cover bands that are hotter than the majority of bands playing their own originals.

So what gives? Damian Darlington, singer guitarist with The Australian Pink Floyd Show, has a simple explanation for why these tribute acts are such a draw.

“There’s a certain quality in some of this older music which is possibly lacking in some of the stuff people get to hear today,” Darlington said. “There’s a lot of people out there in their 50s and 60s who were listening to this music in the 1960s and ’70s and still want to hear it live now. They want the chance to have that live-music experience and they’ve got the disposable income to buy the concert tickets. But also, the fact that a lot of younger people are coming to the gigs, a lot more teenagers – one explanation is that it’s not uncool to be into the same music your dad is into.”

The Beatles no longer exist, Pink Floyd has no plans to tour, so if you want an approximation of these classic acts, you have to shell out for the cover band. Incredibly enough, Beatles tribute act Get Back! has been on the road for more than two decades,
much longer than Liverpool’s most famous hitmakers stuck together. Jack Petrilla, who “plays” Paul McCartney in Get Back!, started his career in a Top 40 cover band called Canterbury Tales, which played Pennsylvania (where he’s from), New England and New Jersey 25 years ago. He then landed a role in the stage show Beatle mania in Los Angeles, and several of its cast members went on to found Get Back! The band was having a great fall thanks to all the hype surrounding the relaunch of the Beatles CDs in remastered editions.

Petrilla plays his own music on the side but he’s pragmatic enough to realize holding down a steady job in a Beatles tribute act is a great way to pay the bills.

TOP 10 DISASTROUSROCK ’N’ ROLL CAREER MOVES
1. BOB DYLAN’S CHRISTMAS ALBUM
2. JERRY LEE LEWIS MARRYING HIS 13-YEAR-OLD COUSIN
3. DAVID BOWIE, BRYAN FERRY AND ERIC CLAPTON DABBLING IN RIGHT-WING POLITICS
4. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN SACKING THE E STREET BAND
5. THE MCCARTNEYS, THE ONOLENNONS, PETE’N’KATE – WASHINGTON ADVISORY GROUP COLLABORATIONS
6. SAM PRESTON, DONNY TOURETTE DOING U.K.’S BIG BROTHER
7. HAPPY MONDAYS RECORDING IN BARBADOS
8. LIVING WITH MICHAEL JACKSON
9. STONE ROSES’ SECOND COMING
10. ROBBIE WILLIAMS NOT REJOINING TAKE THAT INDEPENDENT.CO.UK

HOT TICKETS
DEC. 1: Jann Arden, Centennial Concert Hall, Winnipeg, $50-$70
DEC. 3: Andrea Bocelli, Air Canada Centre, Toronto, $75-$100
DEC. 3: Priestess, Commodore Ballroom, Vancouver, $20
DEC. 7: The Canadian Tenors, Winspear Centre, Edmonton, $20-$79
DEC. 8: Chantal Kreviazuk, Massey Hall, Toronto, $35-$49.50
DEC. 15-16: Christmas Sing-Along, MSO with Marie-Josée Lord, Notre-Dame Basilica, Montreal, $28.22-$79.01
DEC. 18-30: Cirque du Soleil’s Alegria, Bell Centre, Montreal, $45-$110
DEC. 19-20: Matt Andersen, National Arts Centre, Ottawa, $29