Tribute bands are a funny thing. I don't know when they
started, or who was the first, or how much authorisation you need from the
original artists, but there's loads of them about these days. My local pub, The
Swan at Stockwell is forever hosting tributes to U2, Robbie, Bon Jovi and so on.
And so far I have never been in there, and probably never will......
The
Cosmic Charlies play Grateful Dead music. And I am excited as I never saw The
Dead, so missed out. The Grateful Dead are a strange phenomenon, massively
influential, grossly underated by the popluar masses. A 30 year lifespan, but
their influence and heritage lives on today.
So we get the Cosmic
Charlies....another 'tribute' question I have is what are you trying to do when
you're in these bands? Do you dress up and mimic them like the Conterfeit
Stones, or be musically competant and share a love of a long gone band without
the dressing up, like Ummagummaa's recreation of the early Floyd sets? The
Charlies fall into the latter, although their front man is not unlike Jerry
Garcia in looks!
The music starts and rumbles on for an hour and a half,
and that is just their first set - they really are recreating the 'six songs in
six hours'standard of the Dead's sets! Numbers from the 60s and 70s, at times
it's a bit twangy, and the 'mwamp mwamp' keyboard was a bit too 80s for me! But
I close my eyes and listen to the subtleties of the meandering guitar and drums
and thoughts drift on to San Fransisco, Golden Gate Human Be-Ins and that whole
organic warm feeling that it gives me...
So with all these tribute bands around, lets got the whole hog and recreate
Altamont, The 24 Hour Technicolour Dream or something like that, with the
Counterfeit Stones, The Cosmic Charlies ... does anyone know of a Jefferson
Airplane tribute?? Let's open this up to comments and debate:
Who has seen any good tribute bands, and who
has seen any not so good ones...
http://www.artistsandmakers.com/article.php/20061030134114997