It's pretty tuff!

We play a lot of 9-1 or 10-2 gigs and we generally have to pad the sets with stuff other than just Surf / Instro. We try to incorporate songs from other genres that have a cross-over appeal.

It seems we're always on a quest to learn / add new material to not only keep it fresh but also so we have enough material for these gigs. This is generally a good thing if everybody in the band is onboard??

I think at last count we have about 25 Surf covers, 8 originals, 8 or so Rockabilly / Instro and 12 or so "other".

And I still feel like that's a bit lite? We're constantly trying to add new stuff to the mix.

We try not to recycle material and normally we are taking 2-3 breaks for a 4 hour gig.

METEOR IV on reverbnation

Last edited: Jul 09, 2012 15:01:54

From observation - I don't play - it takes careful planning and an inventory of 50-60 songs at least. And if you do it very often, you can't use the same 50-60 songs over and over without losing some elements of the regular audience. You have to cycle in new material over time. Or at least keep working out obvious changes to the arrangements. Unfortunately, there is a tendency to rest on one's laurels at about this point.

It could be done with all surf, but probably you need some trademark additional material for personal and audience relief if nothing else, and you need to vary the nature of even the surf. Four hours of Penetration will pretty much kill an audience. Originals for sure, if you have any. You can put some minor gaps within the set, and need them anyway for various reasons - tuning, pacing - but you need some useful patter and banter for most of those, and you need some continuous play "sets" or "suites" to keep the energy up.

You can allow yourself some extra choruses or extended improvisations here and there if you can handle them. Some repetition is OK near the end, and you can also usually be more experimental for most of the last set or for a very early "pre-crowd" set. It depends on the place and the crowd. I have seen some local bands who can just wing it on a new song they all know, or that at least the guitarists know. It is amazing to see people like this play. Anyway, it is clearly a lot of work and usually requires more experience.

I've watched Fenderfan and co. build up to their present peak over several years! Sort of a climbing sinusoid. Other local (mostly surf) bands I know have or have had a similar history and peak inventory.

My non surf band does 3 and 4 hour gigs regularly I think our set list usually runs 30 to 40 songs, we've also been known to not take any breaks in a 3 hour show. Depends on the crowd, if they're dancing and drinkin' keep playing. We have been asked to play an additional hour or set, and we will for more $$. How do we get away with it? We stretch songs. Most surf tunes run 3 minutes or less. Other material may lend itself better to adding and/or lengthening solos or repeating a verse in a vocal and lengthening the song to 5 or 6 minutes. We really try to never repeat a song. You can get away with it in a 4 hour gig as most times the crowd has tuned over by the time you get back to it. But don't make a habit out of it. So when you get the end of an instro, go back to the head and bridge again and then end. Lastly, get creative with the arrangement, go once around with a melody from another song that fits the chord progression AND how many drummers DON'T want a solo? :o)

Play everything you know. If you are fortunate enough to get the crowd shimmying, extend the tune. Hell, most surf tunes are pretty short--make them longer.

My old country band used to play 9 PM til 1 AM many many many nights & we kept adding guitar solos & dragging out the popular tunes for the Budweiser dancers. Even wrote a tune that was basically license for my lead player to go off for 4 minutes in between some silly verses.

Radio Free Bakersfield--60 Minutes of TWANG, CRUNCH, OOMPH.
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They both love it. Nice.

Radio Free Bakersfield--60 Minutes of TWANG, CRUNCH, OOMPH.
http://radiofreebakersfield.com
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http://www.sandiegojoe.com/rfb.htm

I work on the formula of about 15+ songs per hour. In the last cover band I was in (for about 5 years), we used to keep about 60-70 songs in active rotation at rehearsals, and we knew about ~200 songs well enough to 're-rehearse' in take or two. (it wan't a surf band) We also got into the habit of learning special requests for some gigs (if we knew what they wanted in advance). So we actually had learned upwards of about 500 songs I reckon in that time. (We aimed to rehearse once a week) I've still got volumes of song tabs from that.

The current surf combo I'm in (been together for about 3 years but in the current line-up since about February and started gigging in May) has about 20 songs we know well enough to gig and about 10 more we have do with a night's practice. Altho' we've got a regular fortnightly rehearsal schedule, for one reason or another, things conspire to mean that we've actually only managed to end up getting together about once a month. NZ is so small that I've got 2 backup bass players and backup drummer that I've made sure have learned the songs and rehearsed with (and have actually used them once or twice at gigs in the past) because not all the regular line-up are available to play all the time. Even on the 1st gig of the 'new line-up' with the new drummer we got in Feb, the bass player (Sean) was one of those stand-ins, because the usual bass player was on holiday. I think he did pretty well - here's a truncated version of foottapper:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aXZTrFRYeds&list=PL9BAD5391ABE702FE&index=4&feature=plpp_video

He who dies with the most tubes... wins

Surf Daddies

Last edited: Jul 18, 2012 13:50:37