covers and whatnot.

[Jason00]

. . . I get to go out and play a few times a month and it is a highlight just to have the chance to play for dancing drunks..playing the tunes they want to hear. . .  (At least you are playing the drums somewhere with somebody. :))

My thoughts exactly.  As Michael J. Fox put it in the timeless classic "Light of Day":  "One hour on stage under the lights makes up for the other 23."  No one in the group I'm with has the time to work up any original stuff--family, "real" jobs, 2 have their own businesses to run.  We enjoy listening to the music we play and the bar crowd enjoys dancing to it, so it seems like we all win.

[Big Yummy]

When I was in a hardcore punk band, we were booked into a bar that usually hired very professional classic rock cover bands.  

I didn't want to play the show, but our guitarist said not to worry about it.  "Just play a few riffs that they know and the audience will accept anything."

So we're up on stage, he plays the opening riffs to a Led Zeppelin song, we break into some anti-social punk song, and the crowd's up and dancing.  It was the weirdest thing.  

For the rest of the night, he set up all the songs with riffs from Deep Purple, Floyd, etc. and it worked.

Similarly, I was in a bar in a northern Ontario mining town where a band played a Ska version of Pink Floyd's "Brain Damage".  It was hilarious.  The horns were tooting away at twice the tempo of the song with this happy, lilting rythym over a one-drop beat from the rhythm section.  

The reaction from the locals?  "Yeah, Floyd!"