Standard Club (or private party) repertoire

[Dave Martin]

Originally posted by BenLoy in another thread:

 

What are club date tunes? Practically anything that people from NY, New Jersey, or Long Island would want played at a wedding. Stuff like:

 

Disco Inferno

I'm Having the Time of My Life

Smooth Operator

The entire Motown catalog

Selected Beatles

Lots of Frank Sinatra

Conga! (the cheezy 80's tune)

1-2-3-4 ("come on baby keep on counting...")

Lots of Rolling Stones

Lots of traditional Jewish songs ("Havah Nagilah, etc.) (sic)

Mony Mony

Stomp (the Brothers Johnson)

Common Jazz standards for the cocktail hour (Take Five, The Girl from Ipamena, etc)

Hot Hot Hot

Celebration

Etc, etc, etc...

 

Most of that list would NOT be called for in Nashville, so this leads to the question:

 

"What are the 'standards' for private party dates in your part of the world?"

[NickT]

My function band does mostly modern pop stuff...www.lovejets.co.uk for a pretty full list. We have since added a few more older tunes, some Jackson 5 etc.

 

(If you go to the site, I'm not in the photos.)

[Dave Martin]

Here, the Motown thing isn't that big, though the Stax catalog is; I work with few bands who do any Supremes tunes, but a bunch who do at least the hits from Otis Redding, Sam and Dave, Percy Sledge, etc. And really the only Aretha songs that are common are Respect and Natural Woman.

 

The usualy couple of Skinerd tunes, and the only disco song that comes to mind as a neessary part of any wedding is 'YMCA'.

 

Bost of the jazz standards come from the Real Book, And there are a few country songs that almost everyone plays - Crazy, Boot Scootin' Boogie, and (if the band is fairly lazy about learning new songs) Achy Breaky Heart.

 

And of course, there's the Chicken Dance...