Covering the basses

As soon as the last horse race finished at Hollywood Park on May 9, the excited crowd hurried over to a makeshift stage to the side of the track. Holding a beer in one hand and perhaps some more illicit substances in the other, those in attendance proudly wore their Led Zeppelin apparel. It didn’t matter how hot the night was; people stood shoulder to shoulder, creating an uncomfortable sticky feeling that everyone ignored as they kept their eyes on the stage.

But the band about to perform wasn’t Led Zeppelin, or even an intimate performance with Jimmy Page or any of the other members of the band. Instead, the tribute band Led Zepagain, who had been faithfully playing the classic rock band’s music since 1989, took the stage. And even though it wasn’t the real band playing, the audience still went crazy with the opening chord.

“We all in the past had been in different bands,” said Steve Zukowsky, guitarist for Led Zepagain. “But honestly, it has been really successful touring as Led Zeppelin that there is really no reason for us to try and do something original.”

Whether through a tribute band, which takes a band’s music and plays it as accurately as possible, or through a cover band, which takes music from a host of different bands and performs those songs, many musicians are making their living off of music that has already proven to be popular.

“I thought they did a pretty good job of keeping that whole energy of Led Zeppelin alive ““ especially because they look the part,” said Sophia Chang, a third-year political science student. “They set the stage so it would really look like a Led Zeppelin concert.”

Partly to account for their success, cover bands and tribute bands have a solid fan base from fans of the original music before they even start touring. This instant support comes at a cost, since die-hard fans demand attention to detail when recreating the band’s live shows.

“The Jimmy Page stuff is the most intricate,” Zukowsky said. “I had my girlfriend go through the DVD for hours; she kept pausing it to get all the different angles in order to sew the dragon and the moon and the stars and get all the things on there.”

Having a band they know will draw crowds due to the popularity of the music allows for the band members to play internationally, who would otherwise not get such an opportunity with their own bands.

“It’s not going to be multiplatinum, as original music can be,” Zukowsky said. “But, being able to have the resources of Led Zeppelin fans, that’s the benefit.”

Often choosing bands that are no longer touring or together, tribute and cover bands bring the live experience to people who might not have been able to see the original bands play.

“People still want a celebration of the music,” said Eroc Sosinski, bassist and lead singer of Wish You Were Here: The Sight and Sound of Pink Floyd. “Plus, it’s a lot cheaper to see a tribute band than to see the real thing if they are still playing.”

Based out of Cleveland, Wish You Were Here originally started in 1988 as a band called Harvest, which occasionally covered Pink Floyd songs. It wasn’t until they realized that there was a demand for tribute bands of Pink Floyd that they decided to stop doing their original music.

Unlike other Pink Floyd tribute bands, Wish You Were Here features eight to 10 members performing the music live, as well as an infamous light show.

“It seems that everyone jumped on the tribute bandwagon in the last few years,” Sosinski said. “You do need something to set you apart. For bands like Led Zeppelin, you know what people look like. With Pink Floyd, their faces weren’t as familiar, but everyone knew the light show. So, the light show becomes a lot more important when you are doing a Pink Floyd tribute band.”

Linda McDonald, as Nikki McBURRain, drummer for the Burbank-based Iron Maidens, agrees that having a gimmick helps promote the band. The Iron Maidens have opened up for Snoop Dog and have played international music festivals with metal bands such as Nightwish and Nevermore.

“Whether it is men or women, I think if the music is done right, and it sounds like how it is supposed to sound originally, I think it will be appreciated by the fans of the music,” McDonald said. “I think, though, that since it is five girls doing it as accurately as possible has something to do with it.”

At one show for the Iron Maidens in Mexico City, fans became a little too pushy for the band’s comfort.

“They just blocked the place; they were pushing and shoving,” said McDonald. “It was kind of scary because they wanted to come and say hello. It was weird ““ we’re just five girls playing this music; we’re not Iron Maiden.”

Choosing which band to cover can become a difficult choice for others. For this reason, some artists choose a multitude of different bands and change the style of the songs into their own. Cover bands, such as Richard Cheese and Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, have reached success as well.

“There are so many great songs out there on the charts these days, and after Frank Sinatra and Sammy Davis Jr. passed away, there weren’t many lounge singers out there taking songs from the charts and performing them in that vintage, saloon-song style,” Cheese said. “We’re just looking for that special something in that song that jumps out at you. You think of that song “˜Gin and Juice’ by Snoop Dog. What a beautiful love song that is! We like to choose those songs that have that special magical thing.”

Cheese first became known after covering songs such as Nirvana’s “Rape Me” and Papa Roach’s “Last Resort” as upbeat Vegas-style lounge tunes. Since his first album “Lounge Against the Machine,” Cheese has released six more albums, with three more on the way this year.

“Certainly, people don’t need me writing a song when we have artists like the Red Hot Chili Peppers writing music and bands like the White Stripes,” Cheese said. “The people who write songs are really good at doing that; I’d like to think that I’m really good at singing them and drinking alcohol when I’m singing.”

Me First and the Gimme Gimmes have played many locations from headlining New Year’s concerts in San Diego to Bar Mitzvah’s in Malibu, as chronicled on their live album “Ruin Jonny’s Bar Mitzvah.” Although playing Hava Nagila as a punk song did scare some of the older traditional Jewish guests, everyone eventually warmed up to the style.

Yet just because the songs are popular doesn’t necessarily mean instant fame. During Fireworks Night at one Pittsburgh Pirates baseball game, the Gimme Gimmes were booed out of the stadium and asked not to come back for the two other nights of their three-night performance, which Spike Slawson, lead singer for the Gimme Gimmes, believes could have been partly due to their performance of “Sweet Caroline,” the Boston Red Sox’s theme song.

“We got booed by about 30,000 people as fireworks were going off around us,” Slawson said. “We felt the crowd’s attitude. I can’t say I disagreed with them after the way we played.”

Despite having a preset fan base, cover bands and tribute bands often lose out on money.

Due to the music they play not being their own, they have to pay royalties to the original artists, cutting down on their profits.

“This is something I do because I love it,” Cheese said. “If I were trying to make money, I would be going to UCLA and trying to get a degree in ophthalmology.”

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