Covers that don't work with the original drum part...

Durbs

Senior Member
This came to mind during our latest rehearsal where we working on "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" by The Animals.

The main groove, whilst not hard, doesn't really groove. Somehow it works on the original, but we certainly don't play it like that, and I've seen other bands cover it and likewise not do the original drum part.

Just wondered if there's other tracks out there where people rarely play the drum part as it was.

Possibly "Sunshine of your love", often people don't play the original 1 & 3 pulse.
 
Just wondered if there's other tracks out there where people rarely play the drum part as it was.

Possibly "Sunshine of your love", often people don't play the original 1 & 3 pulse.

For the Animals track, you have to play the original drum part for the feel. Granted it doesn't groove, but it works for the song.

You usually see people play songs just straight wrong. There's a lot of guys that can't get there head around anything other than 4/4. Hold The Line is my personal favourite, I've seen that played in straight 4/4 instead of the 12/8 triplet groove way too many times.

Johnny B Goode is another one that's always played too straight instead of a swingy shuffle.
 
Sunshine of Your Love works fine. It's often one of the first tunes I teach the kids. We do it simple and clean, riding on the FT and just BD and snare. It's simplified and it's a good exercise. Then we add in a few things depending on the student.

Many simple rock grooves don't work without the right intention and drive. Addicted to Love would probably be one of those.
 
Johnny B Goode is another one that's always played too straight instead of a swingy shuffle.

True. A lot of the early rock and roll usually has a weird split between the drummer swinging, but the rest of the band playing straight (or vice versa).

Also, "Bye Bye Johnny" is inversed (snare on 1 & 3), but never seen it played like this live, would throw the audience off IMHO!

But for the Animals track, we tried it both ways, original and with a backbeat and it just always feels better with a 2 & 4 pulse. So what we do now is the original for the instrumentals, then groove for the verses...
 
"Bell Bottom Blues" is another one of those backbeat on the "1" and "3" tunes.
It works great.

I don't quite get the gist of this thread. If everyone is playing the correct original parts, I'm not seeing where the issue would be. Unless the original drum part is being played along to non original pitched parts.

If however the pitched parts are correct, then it's not their issue.
 
Hard to define I guess, but do you not think that there are some drum parts which only really work recorded, and if played note-perfect live, actually lose something?

This is coming from a party/disco/wedding angle, not full on tribute show...
 
I'd say if you run across a song like that, chuck it. Too many great tunes available.

If I could offer an opinion..."Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood"...not my first choice for wedding set.
 
For the Animals track, you have to play the original drum part for the feel. Granted it doesn't groove, but it works for the song.

Agreed, and same for Sunshine Of Your Love, In My Life (Beatles), Learn To Fly (Foo Fighters) and pretty much anything else with a syncopated, signature drum part linked so closely with the song. That's the reason band's play covers: the originals have a sound and feel that make them worth playing.

The exceptions would be when deliberately changing the vibe of a song, which can be risky for a bad not already known for doing their own versions of popular songs. I always cite Dread Zeppelin for reggae-ing up everything, but they were known for that and were pretty popular back in the day.

I always play the original parts as closely as humanly/sonically possible, and would absolutely play Misunderstood like the Animals version.

Bermuda
 
If I could offer an opinion..."Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood"...not my first choice for wedding set.

Definitely a 1st set track!

Having said that loads of people have had Every Breath You Take as a 1st dance which is a jolly little song about stalking someone.
 
I'd say if you run across a song like that, chuck it. Too many great tunes available.

If I could offer an opinion..."Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood"...not my first choice for wedding set.
Maybe I'm just too "young" (I'm 48 - I'm not that danged young!) but this isn't a song that even registered with me when I read the title.

I see this the same way as Larryace - why even put in the effort for a song like this where it's going to be lost on the largest percentage of the crowd? Why not put your efforts towards a song that is actually going to be recognized by your listening audience?

This is what Wiki had to say about the song:

The song was recorded in November 1964. The group gained a trans-Atlantic hit in early 1965 from their rendition, rising to number 3 on the UK Singles Chart, number 15 on the U.S. pop singles chart, and number 4 in Canada.

This single was ranked by Rolling Stone at #322 on their list of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.

A song from 1964 that never made it to #1, and has 321 songs "greater" than it, according to Rolling Stone. I've never heard of it, and I know a lot of music - my wedding/party band has a book of roughly 1000 tunes, and a bit over 200 that I'd call our "boilerplate" material - songs that everyone knows, and are 100% hits on the dance floor pretty much every time we play them.

From my perspective, it's not a matter of whether or not the original groove works when trying to cover it, it's whether you're trying to cover it in the first place.

Pick better songs.
 
I've had to deal with a few songs like this. One thing that I realized I was doing... While I was, in fact, playing the parts correctly, the volume/attack of each drum wasn't right. My personal problem was that I had a heavy snare hand. The snare being that loud in comparison to the other drums really screwed up the feel of some parts. Once I started focusing more on getting the drums to sound similarly balanced with each other, like the original recordings, it made it a lot easier to get the right feel out of weird drum parts. So yeah, just pay close attention to where each drum/cymbal sits in the mix, and try to recreate that. It'll at least help a bit.
 
A song from 1964 that never made it to #1, and has 321 songs "greater" than it, according to Rolling Stone. I've never heard of it, and I know a lot of music - my wedding/party band has a book of roughly 1000 tunes, and a bit over 200 that I'd call our "boilerplate" material - songs that everyone knows, and are 100% hits on the dance floor pretty much every time we play them.
...
Pick better songs.

I'm 38 and knew it... and I'm not even a fan of The Animals. That it's in the top 500 suggests it's not that obtuse anyway!

I guess the counterargument is that variety is good - and not everyone wants to hear the same songs at every pub gig.

Ignore the "wedding" part of the above - it was meant to just be a discussion on whether you always play the recorded part or not.

FWIW we play Sunshine as per the original, but not Bye Bye Johnny...
 
I sort of found this to be the case in some worship music that came out in the early-to-mid 1990s. Everyone was doing his/her own thing in terms of writing parts and whatnot. No one followed it as closely as they (we) do now.
 
I haven't met many covers that don't sound good with the original drum part.

I've met lots of drummers who say stuff like that when they can't actually play the part and don't want to put effort into doing so.

No offense intended.
 
I'm 38 and knew it... and I'm not even a fan of The Animals. That it's in the top 500 suggests it's not that obtuse anyway!

I guess the counterargument is that variety is good - and not everyone wants to hear the same songs at every pub gig.

Ignore the "wedding" part of the above - it was meant to just be a discussion on whether you always play the recorded part or not.

FWIW we play Sunshine as per the original, but not Bye Bye Johnny...
The counter-argument isn't a great argument.

Example - one night I was invited out to hear the band of a guy I knew through the Pearl Drummer's Forum - just a standard pub gig. I got there right after they'd started and I could tell from the first minute that these guys were good. They were all good players and they played very well together. Unfortunately, they played a whole list of great, but semi-obscure classic rock songs. The musician in me appreciated it, but looking around the room, the whole crowd was checked out, most likely because the band wasn't playing anything they knew. It didn't matter that they were slaying the tunes musically. If they'd have stuck to some tried and true classics, they could have lit the place up. Even I got tired of listening to them, although every once in a while they would play something I was semi-familiar with.

Trust me - if 80% of the crowd doesn't know it, it's a loser of a tune that should be stricken from the band's set lists. No one wants to go out to be educated musically - no one wants wants to have to think that hard. They'd rather hear something they know, or at least a different arrangement on something they know, than to hear something they don't, even if it's done well. Why do SO many cover bands have such a hard time understanding this?

Getting back to the subject of the drum groove for that particular song, I'm not sure why it wouldn't work - it's pretty straight forward, even if it isn't a typical backbeat groove. My guess is that someone else isn't covering their part like they should be.

On the subject of playing the recorded part or not, with the band I'm with, we tend to stick pretty closely to the original arrangements, but with that in mind, it doesn't mean I can't apply some of my own feel to the lines, even if I can't change the lines themselves.
 
I'm going to buck the trend and agree with the OP.

Not because playing the original part is not the right thing to do. It is.

But because the rest of the band probably can't follow it.

Sure, if someone's hiring Bermuda to do a cover gig, they're probably good players.

But the original part is sparse. Which means the rest of the band has to, wait for it.... keep their own time rather than rely on the drummer.

I've met too many guitar players who, if the drummer isn't playing constant 8th notes (or triplets, depending on the song), they can't deal. They're lost. Keeping their own time isn't in their vocabulary Or a skill they have.

And don't you dare play too many notes either, because it's the same problem.

They need the constant pulse, or they're likely to wander off into the wrong part, play a wrong note, or just forget where they are.

So I can totally see the OP, or any of us, playing the right part, and the song ending up a train wreck of meandering guitar parts and wrongly played lyrics. Heck, the bass player might accidentally start playing "For Your Love" instead. Whereas playing a straight drum groove and suddenly the rest of the band can follow along and make it sound, well, good enough for pub rock.
 
No one wants to go out to be educated musically...

Ain't that the truth. My last band, the guy would try and educate people about a song, or say musical stuff that no one cared about. It's not like they were transfixed and he had all their attention. I'm like just shut your piehole and play dammit! He was horrible at talking with the crowd.

But I came to the same conclusion, no one wants to be educated when they are out for the night.

OMG they just want to have fun. Remember fun?
 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHjKzr6tLz0

Don't know if the drummer is playing 8's on the kick or is keeping time with his foot like some do on the hat pedal. Stick shots on the and of 1 & 2 in the verse.

Edit: I suppose you could slam out four on the floor, flam on the ands and give it a kind of Fleetwood Mac, go your own way, vibe.
 
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..Just wondered if there's other tracks out there where people rarely play the drum part as it was..


Basically 99,9% of the time when you hear people cover Soul songs from the end 50's till, lets say, mid 70's..

In that case the title of the thread should be 'why covers never work without the original drumpart'..

People spoke about having annoyments in this thread..

Thats one of my biggest annoyments with coverbands who cover those songs..I wish they would stop to screw those songs up and that those drummers would stop with 'funkyfying' those songs into whatever weirdness they have in mind, adding a million stupid fills and basically only (badly) jam away a little, instead of actually being busy with playing a song..

If you are not able to play a straight groove for 3 minutes, then just choose other songs..That would be my advice to all of them..

Like, i am very happy for everyone who learned to play Cold Sweat, but please stop to play such sort of a groove at 130BPM to every Soul song that you can think of..
 
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