One of my band mates in Federator N*1 recently asked me "are we a cover band?", which I thought was a very interesting question. That immediatly spun me into tons more questions. To whit:
What is a cover band? Were the big bands of the 1930s-60s cover bands? Would they ever describe themselves as such? Does simply playing repetoire that was originally written by other people qualify a band as a cover band? Do artists who play songs written for them qualify as cover bands?
After a while, I reframed the question as something that I wanted to answer (old politician's trick), which was "What kind of band are we?"
To which, I had the answer!
We are a dance band. That's our primary goal. We are a political band. That's our secondary goal. And we are a band where the priority on internal experience is one of brotherhood and enjoyment (which one may argue is tied to the second part - enjoying one's activities certainly can be seen as a political act*).
As a dance band, our goal is to get people on the dance floor, keep them there, and engage them with love, light, joy, and awesome music. If that music is written by a band member - fantastic.
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