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View ProfilesPublished November 15, 2023 at 10:00 a.m.
Call me a paradox, even a hypocrite if you will. But I — who on occasion show up at local clubs with a crew of friends to play a bunch of covers to get drunks dancing — hate, hate, hate cover bands. More often than not, watching them is like looking at a bad AI rendition of something cool.
And it makes me a little depressed, honestly. The skill and bravery it takes to write a song, get up on a stage and play it for a group of strangers who have never heard it before — well, that's part of the magic that is music. The creation, the act of summoning notes from the void and shaping them into something new — it's such a risk, no matter the skill level. And in that risk is beauty. Art can be defiant, and what's more defiant than facing down a pub full of people who probably just want to hear "Wagon Wheel" and instead giving them something new?
Again, I'm guilty. Every now and then, I play a bunch of covers instead of original music. And you know what? The crowds are always more engaged with the covers, and the pay is definitely better. So I get it. I'm not debating why we all do it. I'm just saying: It's fucking Diet Coke, and I don't like when musicians forget that.
I'm not sure where the line is or what makes me enjoy one tribute band over another, but I have seen a few that managed to re-create some of the original artist's magic. By and large, the Pink Floyd tribute stuff I've seen misses the mark, with most acts embodying the band's bloated '80s and '90s stage setups. The group I've witnessed coming closest to re-creating the psychedelic grandeur and haunting dread of Floyd in their prime is our own Dark Side of the Mountain.
The project of onetime Grace Potter & the Nocturnals drummer Matt Burr and Kat Wright guitarist Bob Wagner relaunches for the first time since 2021 with a November 30 performance at the Higher Ground Ballroom in South Burlington. My hypocritical ass will absolutely be there, and I highly recommend that any other Floyd fans do the same.
I'll check in at the SoBu club this week, too, for a similar reason: Spencer and the Walrus. The sprawling, all-eras Beatles tribute act hits the stage on Thursday, November 16, playing the widest array of Fab Four-centric music I've ever seen.
"So many Beatles tributes get bogged down in stuff like costume changes or playing characters, as opposed to worrying about the music," said Spencer Albee, the ringmaster of the Portland, Maine-based band that has paid tribute to the Beatles for 20 years — all without wigs. "I even heard of a group that had plastic surgery to look like the band! That's ... yeah, that's a little strange."
Albee and co. are only worried about re-creating the Beatles' songs as faithfully as they can. Rather than playing era-specific segments in which they ease from the mop-top phase to the psychedelic overtones of Revolver, the band simply glories in presenting as wide a Beatles selection as possible.
That's not to say the musicians won't get creative when the moment calls for it. When Spencer and the Walrus played The White Album in its entirety a few years ago, they marshaled more than 30 musicians on the stage to perform a wild "Revolution 9," including trumpet players in tutus and pianists wearing Ludwig van Beethoven wigs.
"We don't shy away from anything," Albee said by phone. "People tend to gravitate towards the later material, but we pepper in plenty of the older stuff. And all of those guys had amazing solo stuff, so we delve into that as well."
Albee is a fixture in the New England music scene who started out with rockers Rustic Overtones in the 1990s and then played with power-pop trio As Fast As. He was working at a venue in Portland in 2003 when his bosses asked him to fill up a Saturday night with something that might put asses in seats. He booked As Fast As, but with a catch: They became a Beatles cover band for the night.
"It absolutely crushed," Spencer recalled. "So we did it the next year. Then As Fast As signed a record deal and we were on the road like crazy, but every year we would play the Beatles night."
The personnel shifted over the years as more and more Portland-based musicians signed up, such as Sean Morin, Zach Jones and Natalie Mishell Martinez. As the word got out, the group changed venues.
"We just kept moving up to bigger venues every year until we landed at the State Theatre," Albee said. "It got to the point where now we're selling 5,000 tickets a year."
Twenty years on, the show has become part and parcel of the holiday season in Portland. The first night always coincides with the city's Christmas tree lighting in Monument Square. And Albee reckons the group has spread the gospel of the Beatles to an entire generation of the city's youths.
"We've been so many Portland kids' first show," Albee said. "And that responsibility isn't lost on me. Not just introducing them to the Beatles but to live music. So we really go all out."
The next phase of the project started in 2019 as Spencer and the Walrus toured the show in New England, including Burlington. Albee hopes the show will become a tradition in the Queen City, just as it has in Portland.
"I don't see other bands covering the Beatles the way we do," he said. "I mean, where else are you going to see a band go from 'Love Me Do' to 'Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey'?"
And yes, the band will also tackle the Fab Four's latest No. 1 single, "Now and Then," perhaps becoming the first Beatles cover band to take a crack at the John Lennon demo that Paul McCartney, Giles Martin and our AI overlords recently turned into the so-called "last Beatles song." Unless maybe the plastic surgery guys jumped on it first?
No costumes, no accents, no gimmicks — just a bonkers set list, faithfully spanning the work of the band that changed the face of not just music but society itself. That is a cover band I can get behind.
Tags: Music News + Views, Dark Side of the Mountain, Spencer and the Walrus, pink Floyd, Beatles, Spencer Albee
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