Last night I got a frantic call from my son Kevin. Seems he needed a drummer to do a few songs on Feb 16th. The Bug Jar, a local punk hangout and center of the punk scene in Rochester is having a Valentine's day thing. They asked Kevin to put together a group to do some love songs stuff. Well, he picked "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow" by the Shirelles, "Love Is Strange" by Ian and Sylvia, "I Fall To Pieces" by Patsy Cline, and some song by Velvet Underground. It may be "Three Little Words" I can't remember.
Anyway, they went through 3 drummers and dismissed them because of some flaw or another and so called me because they were running out of options. "I'll bet he knows this stuff" they said. So I get the call and run down to their practice space. Kevin meets me at the door and the other guys show up within 10 min..
Get this.... no music sheets, no words, only a dvd player hooked up to the PA.
Well, we listen to the Patsy tune, then play along with it, then do it with no help. Sounds OK. We run through it again and smooth out some rough spots with chord changes. Do that for the rest of the songs and that's that. They ask me what I thought and I told them that they'd never be able to cover those songs anywhere near coming close to the record because they have punk gear, Not a fender in sight, neither guitar nor amp, just Gibsons and Marshalls and a Music Man. I also told them they shouldn't just try to be a record player anyway and they should make the songs their own by "punking it up" a bit.
Well, we went through them all again and it was a blast. They kept the proper tempos, stayed true to the words but changed the intros and outros to a more punk style and threw in a couple punk style leads into the solos of the originals yet keeping the signature riffs only dirtied up a little.
OSA will be jealous! Chuck, the band is me, Kevin, Party Pat from UV Rays, Hasta Lasagne from the Rays on bass and.....
wait for it......
Todd from the Grinders!
He's really looking forward to our March 7th gig and playing with you at the All-Star jam portion.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
So it looks like I'm now a member of an old time cover band that updates the classics into punk stylings. Ought to be different.
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