Gimme Gimme: Cover Bands and the "One Pint" Question

I work with a woman named Michele. Shortly after my first day on the job, Michele invited me and the rest of the department out to a bar to have a drink and see her husband, Gif, and his cover band play. This particular performance was of note, as Michele would be performing back-up vocals on a handful of their songs … or, more accurately, their renditions of other people’s songs.

There are two things in this world to which I never say no. The first is a drink.

Before I continue, I should note that I use the term “a drink” in the more literal, American sense, referring to a single alcoholic beverage. This is not to be confused with the Irish “a drink” or, more commonly, “a pint,” both figurative terms with effectively no weight. I learned this vernacular peculiarity in Ireland in the company of young Irish people, many of whom I would come to count among my closest friends. After only a short time, it became plain to me that the pub is, to the Irish, an all-purpose solution to almost any contingency — a one-stop fix for just about every manner of inconvenience — and the term “a pint” its primary instrument of implementation. To even the casual observer, it doesn’t take long to notice that, no matter where you are in Ireland, you are never more than one-quarter mile from a bar, and that this fact can actually alleviate the need to carry an umbrella, a watch, a lunch, a girlfriend or basically anything that is not money or some other item that can be offered in exchange for alcohol.

Allow me to present as evidence a few examples. Suppose Persons A and B are walking down a typical Irish avenue when rain begins to fall. Person A is the first to notice the precipitation and turns to Person B to point out this discovery, at which point Person B recommends waiting out the storm in the nearest pub with “a pint.” Or perhaps Person A is supposed to meet Person B at a mutually agreed location and time. As neither Person A nor Person B, being Irish, suffers from the particularly American preoccupation with punctuality, they agree that whoever arrives first should go to the nearest pub and await the arrival of the other with “a pint.” Or let us presuppose a more dramatic scenario, in which Person A is Person B’s significant other, or was, for the two have just had a falling-out on a city street and have ended their romantic association. Person A is understandably distraught and lamenting his new found singleness when Person C, a friend, approaches, hears of what has just transpired, and promptly ushers Person A into the nearest pub to talk it out over “a pint.”

At first glance, the situations described above seem fairly universal. Certainly bars have for centuries and all around the freely imbibing world provided refuge from the weather, the passage of time, or the sadness of a lost love. What sets the Irish experience apart is that seemingly innocuous term, “a pint.” In Ireland, it is quickly learned that the Irish believe a single serving of alcohol to be either evil or imaginary, for never once in Ireland, at any time of day or night, did I have “a pint” with an Irish person that was not then followed by another — indeed, in most cases, by another few. Thus, what on the surface seems a revolutionary remedy for all of life’s little figurative hiccups is in fact the origin of a series of many more actual hiccups and a virtual guarantee that your productivity has been curtailed for the day. In short, if you have anything important to do whilst in Ireland, stay home and do it, because if you are out and it rains, it will not get done at all.

As I was saying, there are two things I will never turn down: a drink and the opportunity to hear a bitchin’ cover band perform. I am pro-cover band because in their efforts to entertain the greatest possible number of people at one time, cover bands play music that everybody knows and can sing along with. I use the catchall “everybody” loosely, assuming that most people understand that infant children, deaf-mutes, stroke victims and any others who have lost or not yet developed the powers of speech are excluded from the sing-a-long-enabled. Incidentally, the number of people counted among this group is in constant flux. Young children are singing their first songs every day, just as, everyday, previously sing-a-long-capable people are dying, falling ill or becoming too drunk to continue singing. I am reminded of one such event that involved myself, again in Ireland, in which a group of friends and I were in Galway’s the Roisin Dubh listening to a particularly moving cover of Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here,” at which point the ecstasy began to take effect and, mixed with the large quantity off beer and vodka I had already consumed, caused me to black out, unable to sing, or at least unaware of any singing in which I may have been engaging.

Gif’s band lived up to all expectations. Upon taking the stage, all members of the band proceeded to rock out, and Michele provided stirring back-up vocals, her rendition of the “gimme gimme” sample on Weezer’s hit single “Beverly Hills” being her greatest achievement on the night. All in all, a fine performance contributed to an equally fine evening.

The other day, I asked Michele how the band was doing. I was dismayed to learn that they had broken up, much like Persons A and B in the tragic love story we examined above. I asked Michele what had led to this sad turn of events.

“They were experiencing creative differences.”

Creative differences. In a cover band. A group of musicians united specifically under the mission of playing other people’s music, thus eliminating the need to write, compose or, yes, create anything. I felt I was missing something. Perhaps, never having been a professional or even an amateur performing musician, I am not privy to some generative consideration that even those who have taken it upon themselves to play other people’s music must grapple with. If that is the case, then I fear I may never fully wrap my mind around this concept. Nonetheless, I will continue to wrestle with it, and maybe, with diligence, one night, after many "a pint," it will become clear to me. Or the ecstasy will kick in.