Sometimes they are the closest thing you'll ever get to hearing the real band live - The Bootleg Beatles, for example, sound very authentic and put on a very entertaining show.

From your post it sounds like the Smyths did a pretty good job too.

and suggest that if The Bootleg Beatles were to sound truly authentic they should be slightly out of tune and a bit shaky live. And not use monitors. I used to be in a Beatles specialist band, you know. I was BeatleGeorge. Or 'Stig'. Recording "A Hard Days Night" out of hours at The BBC was a gas, I can tell you.

I've seen The Smyths a few times and they're great fun. The first time I saw them someone invaded the stage, hugged "Morrissey" and waved triumphantly at the cheering crowd. I've also had "Unhappy Birthday" dedicated to me the last time I saw them. Tribute bands are great if you don't take them seriously but given the choice I'd rather see a proper band.

Good musicians playing good material, and everyone in the audience having a fine time.

...and no danger of the band playing three tracks off the new album!

'Nearly Dan' several years ago. It was for a work colleagues birthday, who was a massive Dan fan. Have got to say it was great fun, and not previously being a fan of Steely Dan, was a bit of an eye opener.

Picked up a couple of Steely Dan records shortly after, which i'm sure would please the members of 'Nearly Dan'.

Did a stunning recreation of Genesis' "Lamb" complete with all the slides a couple of years ago - I swear, if you closed your eyes, you thought it was the real thing circa '75.

who were shockingly awful apparently. At one point he called out "Tragedy! .... That's not a request!"

I've also heard the BBs are terrific.

Then there is that whole "nearly name" thing - No Way Sis, Not Was Not Was, etc etc

are cracking. They make no effort to look like the Floyd but sound unbelievably close. Knowing they can't recreate a full-on Floyd show, they scale it down a little - an inflatable kangaroo instead of the pig.

A few years ago, I had the strange pleasure of seeing the (Bootleg) Beatles and the (Counterfeit) Stones on consecutive nights in a virtually empty field at the now-defunct Middlesex Show in Uxbridge.
The show had been offered the real Beatles in the mid 60s for about twenty quid, but had refused them, so they were perhaps trying to make amends.
Unfortunately they'd barely publicised the event, so my brother and I had the surreal experience of watching the Beatles and the Stones with a few scattered people in deckchairs.
Bootleg John Lennon's calls to the crowd were met with responses only from my brother and me, gamely trying to conjure up Beatlemania between the two of us.
"Obviously we're not very big in Uxbridge", replied Bootleg John, acerbic Scouse accent present and correct.

you might be interested in the Massive's response to my thread on it a few months ago.

http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/tribute-bands-youve-seen-and-their...

Will Lee (bass gun for hire, played with George at his '92 RAH show and with Paul at Concert for New York, Letterman band stalwart...), Jimmy Vivino (Conan O'Brien's band) and cohorts - without doubt the best and most exciting tribute I've seen (okay, the voices are never gonna get there, but musically incredible - from 'Don't Bother Me' to 'I Want You' and all stops inbetween).

Surfing the Tube recently and came across this lot from Oz - better than the current Slade II doing the rounds...

Who I saw last Wednesday make things a bit odd.

The lead singer is the bloke who used to be Paul Weller in The Jamm.

The drummer was some random session player.

The bass player was Bruce Foxton.

They were jolly good.

But it is the old question of where does a band start and finish? How many of the original members, who owns the original name, etcetera.

Will there ever be a Polyphonic Spree tribute?

I think it grates against my rock'n'roll purist soul.

When I see a performer I want to see a performer. I don't think I really want a theatre show.

I suppose a pretty faceless band who are all theatre anyway (like Pink Floyd) would work well enough. I've only seen the Bootleg Beatles and one of the big Led Zep tributes (can't remember the name), and both left me feeling a bit icky.

(decent ones, anyway.)

They're cheap, you don't have to fight for tickets (usually, though I know the BB's tours tend to sell out), you're in an small atmospheric venue rather than an aircraft hangar, and they'll play all the hits (and won't alter the arrangements because they're bored of the original ones.)

Of course, you need a sense of humour and to be able to ignore your "authenticity" gland, but my best nights seeing tribute acts have been far better than my worst nights with the real thing...

are well worth seeing, as rocker43 has previously posted. Much rather see them than the version that John Sykes was towing around (even when Goreham and Downey were invloved) - Lizzy were never about his kind of widdly-widdly fretboard wankery.

And although not a tribute band, The Hamsters sets which are devoted to Hendrix or ZZ Top are great fun. As others have said, sensible ticket prices, small venues, lots of fun.

Wasn't someone planning a festival wholly made up of tribute bands? Instead of Woodstock, why not Mockstock?

Brian Wilson's has The Wondermints as his backing band who Brian apparently saw in a club in LA doing note perfect Beach Boys covers and went on to hire them as his backing band.

Sublime!

I saw a Stones cover band (Strolling Bones, I think) in a pub months before I saw the real thing in a Sheffield stadium in the nineties.

The cover band were great, all killers no eighties/nineties fillers, even though the singer verged on Pantojagger.

I was so far away from the stage in Sheffield the video screen was the size of a portable TV. The Stones appeared to be going through the motions and even some of the classics lacked zip.

I also saw Four More Heroes in a Serbian club in Leeds (what about that for glamour you fancydan, cravat-wearing London-types?). They sounded exactly like The Stranglers although they didn't look like them at all.

I do this because the original can't or won't do it. Also - I'm a fan.

I'm the MD for Dexys Bootleg Runners. We may not be as authentic towards our source as the Genesis guys with the period instruments and all, but we are pretty damn close.

The last time that Kevin Rowland assembled a band under the name Dexys Midnight Runners was for a tour in 2003. That band played some great music but there were two things that made me realise that I was unlikely to see anything like the (say) Projected Passions band ever again.

Firstly, they had just one horn and one fiddle, the other parts being carried by synth. Yes, synths in Dexys! I can only assume that it would be financially impossible for Kevin to take out a band the size of Dexys at their peak. Whereas we can afford to take out 12 musicians who can create a mighty sound that synths just can't do.

Secondly, almost every song was lowered in pitch to meet the changed voice of Kevin. Can't blame him for that - most people's voices lower as the years pass. But it didn't really sound like Dexys.

As I see it, our job is to make the great music of Dexys available to not just the small core of Dexys fans but to introduce these great songs to a wider audience and encourage them to go out and listen/buy some Dexys.

2010 is the 30th anniversary of Searching For The Young Soul Rebels. We will be out on the road playing the entire album and associated B sides etc.

In my opinion there is a huge difference between what we do and what others do. I mean no disrespect but it is a relatively easy job to put together an Oasis/U2/REM or whatever band than it is to do what we are doing.

I had to do an essay about this recently (Authenticity in Popular Music - yes, I know, they'll be giving out degrees in X Factor studies soon), and although I was being a bit mischievous, I think I did a fairly good job of successfully arguing that tribute bands do, in fact, give their audience an authentic experience that they crave.

As mentioned above, lots of them seek out antique instruments etc, in order to provide the correct sound. They also mess about with aspects of the perceived personality of the tribut-ees - like Bjorn Again allowing "Bjorn" to be a rock god for a wee while.

Lots of us would love to have heard Bowie doing Ziggy, say, in 1972, but are too young. This gives us a bit of that experience. Anyway, my argument went a little bit like that - and it can't have been too bad, I got an A!!

for the encouraging words guys. The Bootleg Runners have some dates throughout the UK but we can't be as active as we would like until we get some decent management (anyone out there?).

Our dates are on our myspace (page name as you would expect)

What a band, doing what all us XTC fans deserve. Sadly, they are no more, but there's another band called the Fossil Fuels who I can't wait to play London.
That's what tribute bands are for - playing the music their creators can't or won't.

The superb (and wonderfully named)deadbelgian in a packed tiny bar in Liverpool.

It made me wonder though exactly what a tribute band is - although their set was almost all Jacques Brel (with a couple of Jake Thackeray songs), and they are heavily accordion based, they have a female singer and played some of their own arrangements. So they are not simply imitating or replicating Brel but doing their own take on him. Does that make them a tribute band?

Whom I saw last night at Shepherds Bush Empire. They did a great show based on Zep's classic 1975 concert at Earls Court. The lad who sang was the spitting image of Plant and had the voice, clothes and even the great man's stage mannerisms. Musically they were a tight band too and nailed down the classics very well. With a few beers in me I stood in front of the stage air guitaring etc to Black Dog, No Quarter, Dazed and Confused and a crunching version of Kashmir. Great Saturday night entertainment for twenty quid. Did anyone else go along?

whos who,

fantastic live (if you like the who) and their drummer is unreal (to eye movements and holing the sticks a certain way let alone the drumming. the bootleg pete (?0 is also very very good for the nuances, rog and john are just very good (who soundalike) musicians.
guess its another argument are you after the visuals as well as the sound.?
whos next are very good with a few beers, austrlian doors, small fakers, etc.
horses for courses i guess

The Muffin Men were one of my favourite live acts. For those who don't know, they were a Zappa tribute act and played his music in the correct spirit, IMO. i.e. not note-for-note from one of his albums but their own well-played arrangements of his incredibly complex music.Frequently to half-filled or nearly-empty halls in the UK, so I doubt if they were making any money at it.
When the late Jimmy Carl Black was still around he used to tour with them twice a year. Since his death they've knocked it on the head for a while.