Lazarus Bands

The Family Company is a loose agglomeration of artists pasted over a steady rhythm section of bass, drums, and keys. There’s a raft of similar outfits these days. We’ve had Scary Pockets on the blog before, in various wonderful iterations. Those nice kids from Connecticut have a similar outfit. How about Sugar Shack Sessions? We’ve had Leonid and Friends, and way back when, of course, the Leningrad Cowboys.

Not cover bands, exactly. Not tribute bands, no how. Not even remotely General Business bands. The most recent, quite successful ones like Scary Pockets remind me a little of the band War from back in the day. They were a rhythm section for Eric Burdon, and decided maybe they didn’t need the Eric Burdon portion of their paycheck removed after every performance. They had a ton of hits after they jettisoned the overfed, longhaired leaping gnome.

Anyway, these Lazarus bands resurrect old songs and give them new twists and with their fresh faces and new approaches. Fresh, but familiar is a winning combo in cover band music. These bands use YouTube to get people to come to their shows now, instead of the other way around. Recordings used to pay bigly, but streaming services have driven the royalties paid to artists into the floor. So they use social media to build a crowd, and then sell them tickets and merch in the real world to make their porridge payments. Whatever. As long as they keep making videos like this one, and picking out the right songs to resurrect, I’ll show up. Online, anyway.