What a Cool Song
We recently watched a couple of artist documentaries on a streaming service. The first doc featured the iconic “disco kings,” the Bee Gees. Who knew Barry, Robin and Maurice grew up harmonizing the lollipop song in Australia before unleashing a slew of wholesome hymn-like love songs between the mid-50’s to 1970? These young lads were relentless in their writing (for themselves and other artists), recording, and performing. They had released their second “best-of” album by 1973 before they got super famous in the U.S.
The second doc featured iconic raspy-voiced crooner, Rod Stewart. That cat can sing! According to this old Rolling Stone article from 2015, “Maggie May” is the best among readers. Anyway, as I watched the show in awe, I kept saying to myself, “We (Will Gail Dance?) should do that song!” If I said it once, I said it a dozen times. Ironically, we ended up adding a Rod Stewart tune at a recent rehearsal. It’s a great rock and roll song from early in his career, but the song did not make the old magazine reader survey. You’ll have to come to a show to find out which RS song we’re rocking.
We Should Play It
At the end of the day, there are more awesome songs out there than we can possibly perform at one show. We are a cover band. By sticking to the formula of whether or not Gail will dance (we simply stream the song for her and ask her opinion), we can narrow the field of song choices significantly. The last thing we want to host are fan singalongs or “time to go pee” moments in the middle of a set. We also do not want to play songs for ourselves (not too much, anyway). If fans don’t like a song, we’ll probably drop it.
However, so far, every song we’ve played is highly danceable and the setlists in their entirety are high-energy. We have worked on over fifty songs in Will Gail Dance? It is particularly fun because we grew up in the mid-late 80’s, and we’ve all playing our instruments since childhood. The songs we’re playing that Gail is dancing to are a part of our upbringing. It’s exciting to be able to crank out tunes relatively quickly and move them to the “pretty much done” category. Here’s a list of artists whose songs we are currently rehearsing.
This is going to be fun!