We are excited to have our site up and running! In our blog section, we are going to talk about a myriad of issues from music, to guitar technique to cool songs - whatever grabs our interest!

We wanted to start off by asking the age old question - to cover or not to cover? Most "original" rock bands (especially the younger ones) struggle with this question. Should they cover a tune or two in their set-list or not?

If you cover a tune and are able to put your own spin on it, people who are not originally your fans may relate to the song and appreciate you more for doing it. On the other hand, no one wants to be remembered as the band that does the cover of (place song here). Two artists that come to mind immediately are Alien Ant Farm and Jeffrey Gaines. Alien Ant Farm did a really cool cover of Michael Jackson's Smooth Criminal. However, I can't think of another one of their songs. Jeffrey Gaines did a cover of Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" and did an amazing job of it! So good infact, he released it twice within a few year span and both times it did pretty well (the second time was a little better). However, I couldn't tell you what one of his songs sounded like!

Our friends TRACENINE do an amazing job of covering Seal's Crazy! Most people who are seeing TRACENINE for the first time get a real kick out of hearing their kick-ass unique take on the song, but I haven't met anyone yet that associates them with that song! There's No Doubts cover of the Talk Talk song It's My Life and their attempt at Police's Message in a Bottle during a Super Bowl! Speaking of Super Bowl, Prince did half covers of All Along the Watchtower (which I wished he played the entire song) and the Foos Best of You (although rumour is he did it as a dig) which at the time we thought rocked!

When teaching songs to our students in our BAND PROGRAM we love listening to covers of the songs to help us get ideas for different arrangements. Recently we saw a YOUTUBE video of a Phillipino band called Key Control doing a funky/rocky cover of Alicia's Keys Karma - which was amazing. If only the sound quality was a little better.

Whatever your take, we all get our start learning our favourite artists songs! These songs are the songs that influence our playing (and shape our lives)!

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