Cover Band - Music

Music

Cover bands play songs written and recorded by other artists, usually well-known songs (as compared to "original" bands which play music they themselves have written). There are a wide variety of cover bands - some cover bands play material from particular decades, for example a 1980s cover band. Others focus exclusively on the music of a particular group, usually iconic groups, and are called tribute bands: it is not uncommon to find The Beatles tribute bands, Led Zeppelin tribute bands, Kiss tribute bands, Pink Floyd tribute bands, Oasis tribute bands, Aerosmith tribute bands, or U2 tribute bands. Some cover bands will play a variety of song styles, of widely different artists, genres and decades. Another type of cover band is one that covers songs in a different genre or style than that of the original composition (e.g., jazz versions of what were originally hard rock songs).

Some cover bands perform covers that are of a different musical genre from the originals. For instance:

  • Richard Cheese covers rock and rap songs in the style of lounge music.
  • Gregorian covers pop and rock songs in the style of Gregorian chant.
  • Gabba covers the pop songs of ABBA in the punk style of the Ramones (the name is also a reference to the chant "Gabba Gabba Hey" from the Ramones' song "Pinhead" from their Leave Home album).
  • Nouvelle Vague covers new wave-era bands with a bossa nova twist.
  • Me First and the Gimme Gimmes is known for punk covers of other artists, with each album picking a different genre or era (i.e. hits of the 1970s, showtunes, etc.)
  • Dread Zeppelin specialized in reggae versions of Led Zeppelin songs, with an Elvis impersonator on lead vocals.
  • Hayseed Dixie started as a "hillbilly tribute to AC/DC" and has become a bluegrass tribute band covering many well known rock bands in their own "rockgrass" style.
  • Run C&W performed bluegrass arrangements of '60s soul music, primarily classics from the Motown catalog.
  • Turetsky's Choir, a former synagogue choir from Moscow, is famous for its remakes of music pieces from different styles, ranging from opera classic to pop hits. The band's repertoire usually includes covers only. Some of them are arranged into medleys.
  • Ten Masked Men is known for death metal covers of pop songs.
  • The Baseballs are a German band, known for doing rockabilly covers of modern pop songs, like Bleeding Love and Umbrella (song)
  • Mallavoodoo, a Brazilian band from Recife, plays instrumental covers of hard rock with keyboards and saxophone.
  • Fretted Wall, a American band from Idaho Falls, mostly covers 80s hairband songs from bands like ACDC

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Famous quotes containing the word music:

    “When we are in health, all sounds fife and drum for us; we hear the notes of music in the air, or catch its echoes dying away when we awake in the dawn.”
    —Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    “Good-by, my book! Like mortal eyes, imagined ones must close some day. Onegin from his knees will rise—but his creator strolls away. And yet the ear cannot right now part with the music and allow the tale to fade; the chords of fate itself continue to vibrate; and no obstruction for the sage exists where I have put The End: the shadows of my world extend beyond the skyline of the page, blue as tomorrow’s morning haze—nor does this terminate the phrase.”
    —Vladimir Nabokov (1899–1977)

    “Let us describe the education of our men.... What then is the education to be? Perhaps we could hardly find a better than that which the experience of the past has already discovered, which consists, I believe, in gymnastic, for the body, and music for the mind.”
    —Plato (c. 427–347 B.C.)