In these days of file sharing, and music streaming, the recorded song has become more of an advertisement for the live show, rather than the money spinner that it used to be. The problem with this is, that going to see live music has become a very expensive past time and there are fewer and fewer bands who come and play smaller venues, e.g. I’m a big fan of Nick Cave but have absolutely no interest in seeing his face on a big screen at a stadium. I had a delightful evening seeing The Specials at The UEA in Norwich when they first reformed in 2016. Tickets were expensive but I’m not complaining because we got to see them in a venue that holds 1500 people and is the perfect size for an intimate but atmospheric gig.
Today there are purpose-built venues in pretty much every area of the country that are designed to pack in paying customers and to make as much money as possible, but seeing bands in these places is not the best of experiences and sometimes will cost as much as a week in the Med’. I completely understand this from the bands point of view, because this is how they make their money and we’ve all got to put food on the table. Now I’m going to sound old again, but, when I was younger, I went to see so many bands in small venues for very little money. Bands that were at the top of their game; U2, The Police, The Clash, The Dead Kennedys. Public Image, Echo and the Bunnymen, Iggy Pop and so many more and the gigs were such great memories. I have been to the O2 Arena to take my daughter to see Avril Lavigne supported by the Jonas Brothers (whatever happened to both of them?) and she had a great time, because she was young. I’ve been to Wembley Arena a couple of times, the last time was to see Leonard Cohen in 2012 (a fantastic night) and the last big venue I went to was the Albert Hall this year to see Pink Martini (also a great gig). I have promised myself the only gigs that I would go to in future at a huge venue are Tom Waits, Talking Heads (very unlikely) and maybe The Jam (also very unlikely). But there is another way.
The first big tribute bands that I remember were Bjorn Again (Abba of course) and The Australian Doors, and there were always plenty of Beatles and Elvis tributes knocking about in pubs and clubs, but from the mid Nineties, as the bigger bands were leaving the smaller venues, those venues began to fill up with tribute bands.
In 1995 Italian cultural philosopher and semiotician, Umberto Eco wrote Travels in Hyperreality. A simple definition of ‘hyperreality’ is ‘better than real’, but a hyperreal world is one in which simulation becomes confused with reality, fakes. Copies and recreations that make our whole world into a bit of a theme park. Eco wrote, that if you go to the Florida Everglades you can see real alligators, but people are much more likely to go on a river trip at Disney World because the alligators (even though they are animatronic) will come up to your boat and snap their jaws. They’ll do exactly what you want them to do. The tribute band means we not only get to see a version of our favourite bands in small venues, but we can time-travel and see the bands at periods of their career that we may never have experienced, or bands that may have had members who have gone to that big gig in the sky.
My own band (Penthouse Dogs) supported an AC/DC tribute called AB/CD in Colchester and they were great, the crowd seemed to really believe they were seeing the real thing, or suspending their disbelief for just a couple of hours so they could have a great time. The audience weren’t much interested in us until the last couple of numbers, when we traditionally played selected cover versions. When we played 20th Century Boy by T-Rex, the crowd went nuts, so we followed that with Back in the USSR (Beatles).
I’ve always loved tribute band names; No asis, Not the Jam, Novana, The Really Hot Chilli Peppers, Stereophonies, Coldplace, Motorheadache. All of these bands are sort of like the Aldi of music ‘Like Bands Only Cheaper’. I have fond memories of going to a small local venue to see Liqueur (see pics), a Cure tribute band and they were really good, they played everything you’d want the Cure to play if you went to see them, (but you’d never be quite sure if the real band would live up to expectations). Liqueur played the greatest hits and did it well in a small atmospheric sweaty rock club. Tribute bands fulfil a great function in contemporary culture.
Bands need to make money, so have to play bigger venues, but audiences need the live music experience on their doorstep and within a reasonable price range, so everybody wins... Long live Liqueur and long live tribute bands. I will finish with a question, if a band such as Dr Feelgood has no original members, is it a tribute band?
Essential Information
Main image, Nudist Priest (borrowed from a Facebook page)
The people that sound like The Cure images by Martin Devenney
