Cover bands a a lot of fun. Ever since I learned of the tradition of all-covers shows on Halloween, I’ve been wanting to put one together. This year, I was thinking I would host a show at my house, get my friends to put together bands. Well, I reached out to my friend Jake Mann, asked him if he’d be interested – turned out, he was already set to play a covers show at the Hemlock. That trumped the idea of putting on a show at my house, so I said ‘hey, can you get me on the bill?’, and I set out to put together a band. I knew my friend Jerry was as big on the Replacements as I was, so we started learning some songs. We had a month or two to practice, but we didn’t have a band. I knew some musicians who would be down to learn the songs and play with us, but I had a mind to hold out for other players who would be as excited as we were about the Replacements. At a show in Big Sur, I ran into Dave, an old friend and band mate of Jerry’s, who was living in Santa Cruz. He was totally down to play bass in our band, except he lived in Santa Cruz and wouldn’t be able to practice with us until the week of the show. Jerry also had another friend, Tim, who played drums and lived in the city. It seemed like we had the band together, except, not together.

My thinking at this point was, the Replacements were famous for incredibly sloppy live shows. If we got on stage wasted and played a set of other bands’ songs that we’d never practiced before, that would be a closer approximation of a Replacements show than if we learned all the songs and played them properly. Well, we settled for a compromise. Two and a half practices in the two days before the show, and half a bottle of vodka before I got on stage. I think we pulled it together pretty well. This video is of the last song of our set, my voice was shot, I have about a half-octave of range here, and I was hoarse for a week afterwards. Well, a blown voice is like a badge of honor, in my book.

The other bands were pretty great. Jake Mann and the Upper Hand did a fantastic set of song by the Cars, Jake in a black wig and white sunglasses, their keyboard player getting awesome Moog sounds out of a tiny synth. The next band was the Don’ts, covering Can. A 30 minute set of Can means two songs, their songs are mostly wild 15-minute freakouts. Apparently at the start of one song, the drummer placed three joints in his mouth, lit them all at once, and passed them out to the crowd. After that set, things were pretty hazy, HIJK covered Soul Asylum, and Love is Chemicals covered Stone Temple Pilots. Lots of hits, lots of singalongs, totally a good show.

Thanks to Dan Baber for taking this video!