Which song was your ‘showpiece’?

Caffeine_Vampire

Loathing the word ‘was’ but way back when in the playing out days what was your show stopping number and where in your set did it take up its finger widdling spot?

That was tougher to type than it was to say!

hassleham

Mine is The Chain - Fleetwood Mac. It always goes near the end because it's kind of a band classic for us, even though we're a funk and soul party band haha. Always goes down well at weddings too for some reason..

Danny1969

There was quite a few cos we have a pretty big set list, bout 200 songs or so. Hotel California, Eruption, Time, Beat It, Fake Plastic Tree's, Purple Rain were all big numbers as a guitarist. No real place in the set as we tended to change the songs and the order of them at every gig although stuff like Brightside and Living on a prayer generally ended up at the end. 

Caffeine_Vampire

hassleham said:

Mine is The Chain - Fleetwood Mac. It always goes near the end because it's kind of a band classic for us, even though we're a funk and soul party band haha. Always goes down well at weddings too for some reason..

Yeah great track, wouldn’t have thought of it working as a wedding band song though.

digitalscream

Depends which band.

For BlackHawkDown (originals), it's Sick Kind or Simplify.

For Closed Circuit (originals), it's God Help Me.

For the covers band I had years ago...the old favourite, Beat It (with Get The Funk Out as a close second).

EricTheWeary

No one wanted my playing hilighted! In my last band we used to play 54-46 and I would solo whilst our singer danced about, so dependant on his mood anywhere between four bars and four minutes. That bit in our set when we turned into the Grateful Dead of ska. 

In previous band I usually turned in a version of Hideaway and was always happy to get through that in one piece.

mrkb

Blitzkreig Bop - The Ramones.

Haych

Not sure I was that good a guitarist to have a showpiece song.

I do recall we did a hard rock medley of different stuff that went down very well - most of it was instrumental but our singist did do some work in a couple of places.  If we put a song in the medley and it wasn't hard rock, it was when we finished with it!  It went on for a good 15 - 20 minutes and was upbeat with a perfect tempo to encourage folk to the dance floor, most of the time it worked and it was good fun, too.

Jalapeno

Used to play Now I'm Here by Queen - I did the opening riff after the singist bits, and a long wig-out noodle (in Bb) at the end for the Go Little Genie bit.  We had to drop it as it is so hard to get the vocals and timing right for the drum breaks - unless we were playing it every week it descended into chaos.

stratman3142

hassleham said:

Mine is The Chain - Fleetwood Mac. It always goes near the end because it's kind of a band classic for us, even though we're a funk and soul party band haha. Always goes down well at weddings too for some reason..

Same here. Last song of the first set.

relic245

In a covers band that didn't feature too many solos I used to love playing:

Walking by myself (Gary Moore)
I know a little (Lynyrd Skynyrd)
Over the hills and far away (Led Zep)

They were my 3 'real' guitar songs. They were a little out there for our set but the first 2 usually went down really well. They are the kind of songs that sound like you know them even if you don't. 

We dropped over the hills because as much as we loved playing it it's not really a floor filler. 

Vaiai

I wrote a solo for Left Outside Alone by Anastacia and it was just a big american rock solo with tapping for my fun


Oh, also Let Me Entertain You - did a big wah solo on the outro - vid is on my YT too

Ah, when we could gig...

Vaiai

digitalscream said:

Depends which band.

For BlackHawkDown (originals), it's Sick Kind or Simplify.

For Closed Circuit (originals), it's God Help Me.

For the covers band I had years ago...the old favourite, Beat It (with Get The Funk Out as a close second).

Great solo in God Help Me!

Jalapeno

Vaiai said:

I wrote a solo for Left Outside Alone by Anastacia and it was just a big american rock solo with tapping for my fun


Oh, also Let Me Entertain You - did a big wah solo on the outro - vid is on my YT too

Ah, when we could gig...

Ah indeed.

We used to play this too, but drummer insisted in playing the end in 7:8, and the rest of didn't .... total shambles (no way this is a Prog tune, he can't pick out and differentiate swing/syncopation from odd time signatures.

Roland

My role in the band is to support the singer. Solos are there to give the singer a break, or because the song has a prominent solo. Often the “must have” solos are well known, and need to be played note for note. Crazy Little Thing Called Love is an example of this. The one song where I can show off technique is Long Train Running. The original doesn’t have a memorable solo so I can make one on the spot. 

With our previous singer we used to do Mustang Sally. If he had a problem getting back on stage, or a punter grabbed his mic, then I’d drop in an impromptu solo. 

BahHumbug

We don’t have tooo many songs with prominent solos, but the ‘showpieces’ are Sultans of Swing and Another Brick in the Wall part 2.

Although if I’m doing folk it’s Nic Jones’ Canadee-I-O.

mudslide73

Loads of songs with solos for me - not sure if that's a good thing though. I suppose the widdliest was You Really Got Me. For some reason I got talked into moving key with each of the chords and I've stuck with it. 

pintspiller

The cover band I play in used step aside for me to step forward to start the bass bit at the start of The Chain by Fleetwood Mac. I always felt more pressure doing All About the Bass by Meghan Trainor for some reason.

KDS

I used to get a round of applause when I turned my amp off

Caffeine_Vampire

KDS said:

I used to get a round of applause when I turned my amp off

Someone usually turned mine off for me!

Danny1969

I used to get a lot of requests like "play something you know"