Some people are so creative. Unless you own one of these toys you may not see what’s so cool about this video but this is virtuoso Kaossilator playing. I like how he’s drawn his grid on the X-Y pad.
A night out at a piano bar is like no other. Maybe you’ve been to a small intimate place where people gather around the piano and sing, or maybe you’ve been to a rocking dueling piano bar which has more of the feel of a crazy rock show. No matter which kind you’ve been to you’ll find a few common elements, one is song requests, the favorite songs in the room are the lifeblood of any piano show. Secondly you’ll you’ll hear singing, lots and lots of singing. In a piano bar the audience is as much of a performer as the piano player. Here are the 10 songs the people love to request and sing the most.
10. Baby Got Back – Sir Mix-A-Lot Yes THAT Baby Got Back, the rap about big butts (and I cannot lie) from the 80′s…. in the piano bar. It’s true. People don’t necessarily request songs at the piano bar that have lots of piano in them, they just request songs they like, and people LOOOOOOOVVEE this anthem to the booty. This song invariably results in lot’s of ladies storming the stage to shake what their mommas’ gave ‘em and everybody from baby to Grandma seems to know all the words this one.
9. Friends in Low Places – Garth Brooks The only country song on list, this Garth Brooks tune will get any room to scream out OOOOAAAASIS at the right time. Even patrons who claim to hate country will sing along with this one.
8. Sweet Caroline – Neil Diamond Almost no one can resist belting out the chorus and horn line to this one. This song transcends age groups and styles and has remained consistently popular for over 40 years and shows no signs of slowing down. If anything it’s more popular now than ever.
7. Crocodile Rock – Elton John Elton John is one of the all time giants of piano music and has many songs that are requested often but none more than this 50′s style rocker from early in his career. A fun song from Elton with a great sing along part. Sing la la la la la in your highest voice.
6. Livin’ on a Prayer – Bon Jovi The chorus to Bon Jovi’s biggest hit will get any room singing at the top of their lungs. This is a go to sing when you need to punch up the energy in the room.
5. You Shook Me All Night Long – AC/DC Another song that is kind surprising that it works so well in the piano bar. The original is a blistering rocker from AC/DC’s Back in Black album but in the piano bar setting it becomes a rollicking sing along.
4. Bohemian Rhapsody – Queen This song from Queen’s Night at the Opera album is one of the most unlikely hits of all time. There’s no chorus or hook to speak of, it journeys through a few different parts before rocking out towards the end. Even though the lyrics don’t always make a lot of sense, people everywhere are able to sing out every word including all the scaramouches and fandangos.
3. Brown Eyed Girl – Van Morrison One of the most famous sha la la sing along choruses ever. This Van Morrison tribute to his favorite kind of girl is like the Energizer Bunny of pop songs, it just keeps on going and going and going….
2. Piano Man – Billy Joel Like Elton John, Billy Joel has many songs that are consistent hits at the piano bar, it’s easy to see why, Billy spent the early part of his career playing piano bars in New York. This song chronicles what he saw night after night from his spot at the keyboard, which are the same things most of still see as piano bar entertainers. A timeless classic outside of the piano bar, but in the piano bar it’s a theme song made to be sung loud. And drunk if possible.
1. Don’t Stop Believing – Journey The top spot belongs to this Journey classic which gets more requests than any other song out there right now. You know how it goes, admit it, you’ve probably belted out “Just a small town girrrrrrll” in the car more than a few times.
Here’s some guys that will be requested in the future
When you think of Rock n Roll you generally think of guitar but the piano has been there pounding out great riffs since the very beginning. The classic guitar opening to Chuck Berry’s Johnny B Goode was said to have been stolen from Berry’s piano player Johnnie Johnson. Here are 10 rock piano riffs that fight for attention with the guitars and come out on top.
This is not a list in order but these riffs are bound to light up any room.
10. Clocks – Coldplay
Not too many songs are instantly recognizable from the opening piano riff but this is one of them. A simple descending arpeggio pattern that snakes it’s way into your brain and stays there forever. Coldplay have a lot of songs the feature the piano right up front but none of their other riffs have the power of this one.
9. Joe Jackson – Steppin’ Out
This skates dangerously close to being jazz but jazzers would scoff at this simple row of triads that make up this memorable riff. The stark drum machine and bassline accompaniment allow room for the piano chords to ring across this track.
8. Fool in the Rain – Led Zeppelin
Zeppelin was such a famous guitar band that John Paul Jones excellent keyboard playing was often over shadowed. The tune from one Zep’s latest albums In Through the Out Door has the piano carrying things all the way. Once you get nice and comfortable with the riff the song breaks down for a re-imagining of the riff that builds until the tension is broken when the original riff comes back in.
7. The Way It Is – Bruce Hornsby and the Range
A number one hit with a piano solo? During the the era of hairdo bands like Duran Duran and Bon Jovi? Yup, it happened, all because of the great piano riff that carries this song. It was re-purposed roughly a decade later by Tupac on the song “Changes”.
6. Don’t Stop Beleivin’ – Journey
Playing this riff will stop most people dead in their tracks just so they can stop and hum a few lines from this classic tune, arguably the most popular song of all time. At least 50 other top hits have been based on this chord progression.
5. Imagine – John Lennon
Imagine is one of John Lennon’s most controversial and most beloved hits. Written after the Beatles had broken up, it is as easily recognized as any Beatles song thanks to the piano riff that plays throughout this tune. A simple I-IV progression with the addition of 3 chromatic notes make this one of the most enduring riffs ever.
4. Tiny Dancer – Elton John
Elton is one the piano rock uber-elite because he has been making great piano based music for 5 decades. A million great piano riffs but I gave it to Tiny Dancer because it is so instantly recognizable. Another simple riff that takes up residence in your brain and stays there. Other great riffs from Eltom, Take Me to the Pilot, Bennie and the Jets, Saturday Night’s All Right for Fighting, Burn Down the Mission. This guy needs his own list.
3. Philosophy – Ben Folds Five
Ben Folds has done wonders for bringing back the piano riff to rock. He has a number of songs in his catalog that feature great piano riffs but I picked Philosophy for its mixture of epic rock pounding and Gershwin finesse. Honorable mentions to One Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces, Brick and Zack and Sara
2. My Life – Billy Joel
The Piano Man also has a catalog stuffed full of great piano riffs, enough for another whole list but My Life has all the elements that make a great Billy Joel riff, kinda jazzy voicings but pounded out like a rocker and Joel’s always great chord progressions.
1. Great Balls of Fire – Jerry Lee Lewis
The original piano rocker and one of the baddest boys rock ever produced. Sometimes his antics, like marrying his 13 year old cousin over-shadowed his brilliance as a rocker, but his riffing is legendary and piano players everywhere are still borrowing from the catalog of riffs he invented.
Thankfully there are still players willing to take up the piano and abuse it for our entertainment but they will owe a debt to many of the aforemntioned for showing how the piano can rock.
Don’t forget to check out this riff here:
We had our song “The Only Woman in the Room” in the soundtrack to this movie. It was used in a really cool way in a key scene. Wish I could show it to you but it is still making the rounds to various festivals and such so that is the only place you can see it right now. Check out the trailer to get a feel for what this movie is about.
I saw a list of piano rock songs recently that didn’t have any Elton John, Billy Joel, Ben Folds, or any of the actual piano rock greats. I couldn’t ignore this and had to make a more definitive list. Chuck Berry was famously quoted as saying that the riff to Johnny B Goode was just Berry trying to copy what his piano player Johnnie Johnson was doing. The piano has always been at the heart of rock and roll and here are 10 giants of piano rock, in no particular order.
1. Old Time Rock and Roll – Bob Seger
The opening notes of this song are the 8 most famous piano notes in rock and roll. Since the 80′s this riff has been synonymous with Tom Cruise’s underwear. A great 3 chord banger that still rocks rooms to this day
2. Angry Young Man – Billy Joel
Trying to pick pick just one Billy Joel song for a list like this is impossible and this submission alone could inspire gigs and gigs of debate, but I’m going to go with Angry Young Man because of the prelude, an amazing display of technical skill but melodic and memorable at the same time. As fans well know, the entire Billy Joel catalog is full of classic piano riffs and trying to choose a favorite is difficult at best.
3. Benny the Bouncer – Emerson, Lake and Palmer
Keith Emerson is hands down one of the best ever to use any sort of keyboard, piano, synthesizer, organ, if it had a keyboard on it Emerson could astound you with his skill on it. Benny the Bouncer is more of a rollicking barroom tune, not the complex classical-rock they were known for, but I included it because it’s pure piano and his mastery of the ragtime style is another element to his playing the makes him such an all time master. The entire ELP catalog is filled with mind blowing keyboard fireworks and is worth listening to for any keyboard lover, but if you like rocking piano in particular, check this one out.
4. Bohemian Rhapsody – Queen
Queen is another that had many songs with great piano parts. Freddy Mercury’s virtuoso playing was sometimes overshadowed by his flamboyance as a singer and Brian May’s layers of guitar. This song is so strange and brilliant, it has no chorus or any other typical song structure, yet, if you go into almost any bar in the world and play this song, people will know every word, even all the scara mouches and fandangos. The piano part is one of the most difficult you’ll try to tackle in all of rock piano.
5. 1 Angry Dwarf and 200 Solemn Faces – Ben Folds
Ben Folds is a piano hero for Gen X and beyond, and his playing has appeal for people who love the classic stuff too. Trying to pick a favorite Ben Folds piano song is like picking your favorite child, I chose this one because of the great intro and the fast bassline that comes in about halfway through the song.
6. Don’t Stop Believin’ – Journey
One of the, if not THE most popular song of all time. The opening notes to this song are instantly recognizable and will cause people from 8 to 80 to drop everything they’re doing so they can belt out “Just a small town giirrrllll” The siren song quality of this riff that cause people to completely lose their minds is like no other riff in all of music. The chord progression to this song has been the basis of at least 50 major hit songs since it’s release.
7. Great Balls of Fire – Jerry Lee Lewis
The piano rock song that has stood the longest test of time, maybe it wasn’t the first, but it is the one the lodged itself into people’s brains as the original piano rocker. Jerry Lewis lit the piano on fire figuratively and literally, a true rock and roll madman. He gave us other early piano rock classics like, Breathless and Whole Lot o Shakin’ Goin’ On which have also stood the test of time very well.
8. Thunder Road – Bruce Springsteen
Roy Bittan’s piano has always been a feature in the Boss’s music and the intro shows some of Bittan’s best work. Imagine Springsteen’s music without the drama that Bittan’s piano lends to it, and Thunder Road has some of his most poetic playing.
9.Turn it On Again – Genesis
I love this odd time riff that does’t feel like you’re playing in an odd time.
10. Elton John – Burn Down the Mission
No piano rock list would be complete without Elton John, arguably the most successful piano rocker. Hits that you know across nearly 5 decades now. I picked Burn Down the Mission because it’s unbelievably epic when they play it live, especially when Elton start rocking the piano. Like a lot of the guys on this list, Elton deserves a list all of his own, and narrowing it down to just 10 Elton songs would be difficult at best.
Don’t forget to check out these guys:
Wednesday March 23 Roaming Royalty will be rockin’ the Mission Tobacco Lounge in Riverside CA. It’s in the downtown area on University, once you’re in the area you can’t miss it. It’s a sweet place to hang out and see music, great sound, cool people, and the 23rd is the owners birthday so it should be full and the party should be happening.
Thursday March 24 at the Viper Room in Hollywood. This is a gig not to be missed, and you have no excuse for missing it because it’s free. You don’t get into the Viper Room for free unless you know somebody, fortunately you know Roaming Royalty so drop our name at the door and get in for FREE! This includes admission to the whole club, not just the part we’re in. A sweet deal and a great excuse to head to Hollywood Thursday March 24, we’re on at 11.
Greeting from sunny southern California. God it’s amazing here, it’s the end of October and I’m still wearing shorts, the sun comes out every day, I haven’t even thought about my coat. This makes me really happy. We’re going to be hanging around the LA area for a while this winter because I’ve had my fill of Idaho and Seattle winters, and because Riverside, the town we’re parked in now is 1 hour to LA, 2 hours to San Diego, 3 and a half hours to Vegas, 5 hours to Phoenix, 7 hours to San Francisco, so it’s a good place to be so I can stay close to a lot of work opportunities.
Since we’re going to be here a couple months I wanted to find some gigs for Roaming Royalty so I started picking up the local weekly papers and doing local web searches to try to get a feel for what’s going on here. Craigslist was obviously on the list of local web searches I did and found that their ‘talent’ section is packed with listings for all kinds of stuff, lot’s of ads looking for movie extras, actors and actresses, comedians, jugglers, every type of musician, animal acts, kids, rappers, rappers, DJ’s, rappers, dancers. dates. and gigs. House of Blues, the Troubadour, Whiskey a Go-Go, all these big big clubs have slots to fill and they advertise the open slots on Craigslist.
I’ve heard the term “Pay to Play’ for as long as I’ve been playing and it works basically like this, a club promoter advertises the open slots at House of Blues on Craigslist, if your band get’s a slot you’ll be given a hundred tickets to your show that night which you are now responsible for selling. By taking the slot you agree to sell $250 worth of tickets and the promoter is going to want his money the night of the show. In reality, how you come up with the $250 is beside the point, you can come up with the $250 out of your own pocket and give the all the tickets away, the promoter doesn’t care, the promoter cares about his $250, thus the term ‘Pay to Play’. He wants you to have a following because first and foremost he wants bodies in his club, but the $250 helps the club owner hedge his bets on a new band. Running a club in downtown LA ain’t cheap.
I figured I’d hit up some of these shows just to see how it goes and the first guy that hit me up was a promoter from House of Blues. He had checked out our website and wanted to put us in on an acoustic night with just me and Charles. The other acts were a singer who had done some dates opening for Britney Spears recently, she was doing an acoustic set, and an other act that had recently signed with Capitol. I checked out the ‘Britney Spears’ chick on Youtube and Kristinia Debarge turned out to be fantastic, a good fit with us in the acoustic setting, and her Youtube videos had hundreds of thousands of hits. I didn’t have a name to go on to search the other act but I figured if they just got signed to Capitol, there’s a strong possibility that they have somewhat of a following already.
Is this a show worth buying our way on to? The possibility of playing to a decent crowd in a good club in downtown LA is cool. Being on the bill with other performers who I can confirm are really good and are likely to have a following is even better. We don’t have a chance in hell at selling tickets to anyone because we have never played LA so the the $250 would be a straight up out of pocket expense, that sucks. If we do a good show and sell everything right we will get some e-mail addresses, sell a few cd’s, maybe a t-shirt for a net return of maybe $50 on our $250 invested.
Is having a video of you playing to a full house at House of Blues in downtown LA worth the extra money? Is it worth it to jumpstart building a following in this area by being on a decent show? Both me and Charlie make our living playing music already so this runs contrary to how we normally do things to say the least. Part of me wants to do it just to see if we’re up to the challenge of maximizing the opportunity. Can we make enough of an impact on the audience to move them to take more interest in our music? After watching Kristinia DeBarge’s video, I’ll bet she’ll sell some merchandise that night, she’ll probably get a lot of e-mails if she asks for them. Will we?
Me and my daughter went to see Kate Nash last night and the opening band was fantastic. Too bad I can’t tell you who they were, because they never told me who they were. They never once said their name or mentioned if they had something out. The singer made some half-hearted banter about a download card, once. Too bad because they could have made a bunch of new fans if they had employed the simplest of techniques, tell us who you are. If they had payed $250 for that show, they could have easily made that back if they had any merch, that is , if they told you about it.
Actually, with my first original bands back in the 80′s we used to do business like this all the time. We would rent the space, rent the PA and lights and then charge money to get in the show to pay for it all. Same basic formula. If nobody showed up we were still responsible for the bills, so it could have been Pay to Play, we were lucky enough back then to have a following that made it profitable. We don’t have that now
I don’t have $250 extra to throw at a show so it’s not going to happen right now, but I can see that if I do want to play one of these clubs, that’s the way it’s going to be. I figure I’m going to work on building a following in the area by starting at the outskirts, like Riverside where we’re parked, then maybe between that and meeting people at the dueling piano gigs we have in the area we can build enough of a following that we won’t have to sweat the $250 because we have the crowd to cover it.
Are some shows worth paying to play for?
Greetings from San Francisco where I am doing a 2 week run at Johnny Foley’s Mad Pianos. Cool spot in downtown SF so if you’re in the area over Labor Day weekend or the week after, stop in and say hi. I love traveling like this where I get to go and hang out in a city long enough to really vibe with it. I have my home, my RV, parked here, the family is here, I have a job here so it’s like living here, but I’m still enough of a tourist to get a thrill when I drive across the Golden Gate bridge every night on my way to the show. Plus it’s a chance to connect with a whole bunch of new people, potential fans and get their e-mail address. We have been all about the e-mail list building since the beginning of this contest and I’m happy with the results. We have added hundreds of people to our mailing list since we started MSi9W and we are adding at least a few people every day, and at our shows we’ve made much more of a point get people’s e-mails.
At shows before we play one of our giveaway songs from our website, we pitch to them by saying something like ‘we want everybody here to get something of ours so after the set hit us with an e-mail and we’ll make sure you get the song you’re about to hear.’ Then we play one of our songs that gets the best response so it’s pretty effective at getting people interested enough to give us an e-mail.
Some of the rest of the pointers in chapter 7 are either things that we have been doing habitually for a while or some things that we’ve needed to put a lot more effort into. Bribing with free songs? Done. Added most of our friends? Done. List building at our live shows? Done. We haven’t list traded with any other bands because we don’t know any other bands with a mailing list that we could trade with. I’d love to trade, it’s an awesome idea, but we’re the only one’s we know doing it, other than the people I’ve met here. Any MSi9W bloggers wanna trade?
Regular communication. We’ve been blowing it in this area, although, the way we’re living right now we’re thrilled to have a stable internet connection for an hour so we haven’t had regular communication with anybody at all, not just our mailing list. Our spot in SF has really good internet and we’re going to be here for a couple weeks so we’ll take advantage of that.
