Ah, tributes! Gotta love 'em. For the shows, your favorite local bands all get together and interpret songs by some big influence they all share, all of their fans turn out (as well as fans of the featured influencing artist), and the club hosting the event brings in a ton o' cash! Everybody wins, right?

At the recent Police tribute show at the Bottleneck, a friend pointed out to me what a pain in the ass it was that people could pile in to hear Police songs, but on an average Saturday night there weren't that many people there to see original live music. If the market CAN be tapped, why is it that it takes covering other peoples' music to do it?

1. It's the power of familiarity. The fact that people would pay to see a band they don't know make music they know the melody to, rather than hear something new.

2. Laziness weighs in there too. It requires little effort to get into something you already know, but they'd really have to listen to decide whether or not they liked something unknown.

Do these tribute shows really help the bands? If you are already familiar with their originals, seeing a band at a tribute show can be a fun, enlightening experience. What bothered me about the Police tribute was the total lack of original material. I know, you're saying "Dana, it's a tribute show. The whole point is that they're playing somebody else's songs". Duh. My point is that if they had split the sets up (maybe having fewer acts on the bill would have helped this) into half covers/half originals, it would have given everybody what they wanted and helped the bands win a new audience. Everybody who came to hear Police songs would have gotten that, while at the same time been exposed to originals by these artists, which MIGHT have gotten them out to that band's next show. Instead, they're left not really knowing what that band usually sounds like, and without even the opportunity to buy merchandise, probably never taking the time on their own to find out (see points 1 and 2 as to why they won't).

So, are tribute shows bad things? Not at all. They're a fun concept, and if you're into both the local bands performing and the featured artist, it's a real treat to hear how the songs are reworked. After having produced (and being in the process of producing) tribute compilations, I don't envy the promoters of such an event and all the trouble that probably goes into planning one of these things. It's very easy to critique it with "there were too many bands" or "the acts were too stylistically varied", but in essence that's what you're really going for when you try to put something like this on. By having more acts, you stand to bring in more people. Stylistic variance shows how much influence your featured artist has, and helps to bring in more music fans too.

The main thing I really see missing here is the promotion of the local bands and THEIR music at the same time. Knowing that they have the opportunity to tap into a new audience should be fully taken advantage of, if the scene and the artists in the scene are to be encouraged to succeed.

Dana Detrick-Clark
dana@thezone.org

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For more on Dana, check out her band (Post Orgasmic Trauma) and record label (Serious Vanity).