Play ‘Stairway!’ Tribute bands like the real thing

Drummer Scott Patterson is the last remaining member of The Atomic Punks (theatomicpunks.com), a Van Halen tribute band based in Los Angeles. Again, the Punks developed by starting as a cover band in late 1993. One night at a club, the lead singer didn’t show up for a gig, as band members occasionally are wont to do. So Patterson asked some musicians he knew in the audience to come up and help out, just to get through that evening’s show.

They had one more scheduled show after that, and decided to slip in some Van Halen songs because the guitar player at the time knew a guy who looked and sounded like David Lee Roth. The rest is tribute band history.

“For the first two years, we just played. We weren’t thinking it was anything long-term,” he said. “Then David Lee Roth wanted the bass player and me and the guitar player to go on the road with him. The guitar player wound up going. A guy replaced him. A year, two years later, Roth came and took that guy.”

Video   The Atomic Punks Van Halen Tribute band, "The Atomic Punks" perform "Hot For Teacher." MSNBC

Patterson and the Atomic Punks not only play the Roth version of Van Halen, they also have a Sammy Hagar counterpart for those years. “A lot of times,” Patterson said, “we’ll play both bands in the same night.” And when that doesn’t keep him and the band busy enough, they also perform as a Rush tribute band called Moving Pictures.

Pink Floyd is a particularly challenging band to pay tribute to, because as any fans of the original group can attest, a Floyd show is an experience that goes beyond music. Joe Pascarell is in his 21st year running The Machine (themachinelive.com), a New York-based Floyd tribute group, along with the other original member, drummer Todd Cohen.

Video   The Machine "The Machine" channels the look and sound of Pink Floyd in this performance of "Welcome To The Machine." MSNBC

“Todd and I have done 2,000 shows,” Pascarell said. “You’d be hard-pressed to find a band that has played 2,000 shows.” He estimates they play about 80 to 100 per year, all over the world.

When the real Pink Floyd toured — and let’s face it, Floydies, they probably won’t again, unless David Gilmour has a stunning change of heart — they would put on gargantuan theatrical displays complete with mesmerizing light shows. And they would do so in the largest venues possible.

“We bring a different level of intimacy,” said Pascarell, who noted they still do the lights, just not as many of them.

In the case of The Machine, the music is comprehensive, covering most if not all of Pink Floyd’s vast catalog. The band not only does songs from the early Syd Barrett years, it also does Barrett solo material.

Video   AC/DShe Female tribute band "AC/DShe" rocks the crowd with AC/DC classics. MSNBC

The ladies of AC/DShe (acdshe.com) take an entirely different approach. They not only fill a niche as an all-female tribute band — “We were really the first,” noted bass player Riff Williams, one of the co-founders along with singer Bonny Scott. “I feel we spawned the whole female tribute band phenomenon” — but they only do AC/DC music from the days when Bon Scott fronted the band. He died in February, 1980.

Like most tribute bands, AC/DShe has an ardent following. “We have some fans who have been to close to 100 shows,” she said, mentioning two brothers from Sacramento, David and Terry Thurman, as well as another fan named Dion, as particularly devoted members of the flock. “If not for people like that, we probably wouldn’t be doing this.

“It’s great to find people who share the same enthusiasm for the band that we do.”

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