Musicians have always played other people’s songs. It’s at the core of how we learn to play an instrument, by copying or learning what music has gone before. It’s an essential part of being a musician.

But there has been an inexorable rise in what are now called tribute bands, or tribute acts. The aim of the tribute band is to sound, and act, just like the original band right down to the smallest detail. Every note is perfect, every strut, posture, pout and movement designed to evoke the original act in the minds of the audience.

It’s a shared agreement between audience and band. The audience is there to soak up every nuance and almost suspend belief that it’s not their heroes up there performing but someone who has cloned the original down to the minute detail. And let’s be honest there are some seriously talented musicians who are performing tribute gigs every night and in a lot of cases earning very good money doing so.

I’ve seen some exceptional tribute bands and enjoyed their performances immensely, but lately I’ve begun to ask myself questions. In part it was triggered by watching Dea Matrona do a stomping version of Fleetwood Mac’s song ‘Oh Well’. They were close to note perfect but they weren’t trying to be Fleetwood Mac they were playing the song their way. The crashing Peter Green guitar riff that drives the song has to be played virtually note for note or it wouldn’t be Oh Well but I suspect a Fleetwood Mac tribute band would play it differently and be note perfect at the same time.

There’s subtle, but important, difference in my opinion. One is Dea Matrona playing a classic song their way, the other would be a tribute band imitating megastars.

These days just about every band or singer has a tribute act and often lots of them. Venues across the country are full of bands churning out exact replicas of star acts and people are paying good money to see them. So, is there a problem?

I would suggest that there probably is. The audience is demanding what they already know. They want it played note for note exactly as it sounds on their mp3 player, streaming service or turntable. They are not interested in originality, they don’t want to be to surprised, they just want to revel in the known, the comfortable. It’s narrowing choice and drowning out novelty. It is also feeding the megalith record companies and confirming to them that they don’t need to invest in new talent, just regurgitate the old and familiar.

The success of tribute bands stifles the very thing that gives music impetus, innovation. If all music becomes a back catalogue then music will eventually die. But we’re being conditioned to eschew the new, the original. People don’t sit and LISTEN to music anymore, they chat their way through live gigs with music as the back-drop. We often don’t even pay for music these days. When was the last time you bought a physical product like an album? If you’re not invested in the music does it have any value? Is it worth your time?

Tribute bands provide the soundtrack, they enable us to recreate a particular set of memories, they replace the often astronomical cost of seeing the real act. They keep live venues going by providing audiences. None of these are a bad thing but if they squeeze out or even swamp originality then they add more threat to the already perilous state of new, original, music.

If you’re in a tribute band I wish you success but I wonder where exactly all this is going and how it will affect original and new music in the future. Or am I just jealous because there is no Sean Kearns tribute act?