Mandatory cover band staples of yore -- what are the songs you'll always identify with the local bands of your youth?

There are a whole raft of songs that I have this automatic association with the teenage bands from my high school - it was like there was some rule that every band that formed had to play at least one of these songs, if not all of them. Mandatory rawk.

April Sun in Cuba - Dragon
Gimme Head - The Radiators
Black Night - Deep Purple
You Really Got Me - The Kinks
Gloria - Van Morrison
Midnight Blue - Lou Gramm (okay that one was def a 1988 thing but still)

Am I alone here? does anyone else get local band flashbacks when they hear certain songs?

Every band I was friends with in the early 90s did a cover of REM's "Driver 8".

Perhaps that's a regional delicacy.

ive taken part in and/or witnessed like a hundred urinals covers in the past 5-6 years

yeah I always wonder what the chemistry is to make a bunch of bands latch onto a particular song

I swear every band when I was 15 played April Sun In Cuba. And they didn't even play it on the radio much by then, it was kinda weird how they all started playing it. Cool song though

green day - beef stew

lol "brain stew"

haha

Free Bird
Sweet Home Alabama
Smoke on the Water
Take It Easy (Eagles)

oh shit I forgot about Smoke on the Water

also Sunshine Of Your Love

Takin' Care of Business

Love Hurts (a la Nazareth)

Proud Mary

Sunshine of Your Love

Enter Sandman
Centerfield

The main riff to Thunderstruck

Every band I was friends with in the early 90s did a cover of REM's "Driver 8".

― Johnny Fever, Friday, January 4, 2013 6:21 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Ditto (but mid/late-80s) (and in the midwest).

also:

Modern English - "I'll Melt With You"
Grateful Dead - "Franklin's Tower"
U2 - "Sunday Bloody Sunday"

China Grove

brown eyed girl

TAKE ON ME

sometimes i think there wasn't a small-town punk band in the 90s that didn't cover this.

see also: boys of summer

The Misfits

Sadly, living in Newport in South Wales, all the local bar bands in the mid to late 90s specialised in playing Manic Street Preachers and Stereophonics songs. Grim days.

my condolences

someone haltingly playing "axel f"

Teenage Kicks <- that riff can sound so terrible if it's not played with any bite

Duran Duran, "Planet Earth"

a message to you rudy

cherub rock

blitzkreig bop (sometimes ironically covered by a local prog band)

the passenger - iggy pop
don't wanna know if you are lonely - husker du
i want you - the troggs

(auckland, nz, late eighties)

Mandatory Rock, you guys:

Smoke on the water - Deep Purple
Can't get enough - Bad company
Feel like making love - Bad Company
Some yes and/or LedZep, prob.

These were the 'official' school band staples, they all did them, I think, so they could work out who was the 'best'.

Naturally, my band did none of these and stuck to our own self-penned tunes, also never did the school gig thing.

Don't think there were any. Bands, that is. Unless a group of kids from the music dept doing Crazy Little Thing Called Love at a school fete counts.

Wonderwall

Sweet Jane