I haven't had time to post much lately, though I have peaked at the board from timt to time.
Thought I'd like to update those who may care on the tribute band I started, Petty Profit$.
Frankly, it's going great, even better than I expected. We've been averaging about 2 shows a month and are already booked into August. We've only been on Facebook for two weeks and already have about 80 "friends". We also have about 60 people on our email newsletter list.
It's been very cool to see that Tom's music still crosses the generations. One of our biggest shows was almost all 20 something's and they were very into it, singing and dancing along and calling out obscure Petty songs.
Just goes to show that great songs are great songs, period.
If you'd like to, check out the website www.pettyprofits.com we've made a lot of changes to it over the months and I think it's pretty cool. We have our audio demo on there in the "contact" section if you want to hear what we sound like.
We're trying to sound as close to the original as possible, without effecting a imitation. I could probably sound a lot more like Tom than I have been doing but after debating the issue on this board, I decided to use my own voice (which is fairly close to his anyway)and keep the phrasing pretty close.
Anyway, that's it for now. I know some of you don't like the idea of a "tribute" band and I understand your opinion. Do you want everyone to know that I take it seriously though, that I'm not doing some cheap ripoff. I want to be really good at this and I think we're getting there.

Congrats, you are playing out a lot!

Well, I was looking to hear some of your music, bu no music on your site!

Enjoy yourselves, have fun and don't sweat the haters.

Joestein,
There should be music both on the main page (the guitar ending for Running Down the Dream) which comes up after a few seconds and on the "contact" page there's a link to our demo which has parts of five songs.
Try again, I'm curious to hear what everyone thinks.

Iffybiz,

I have tried this link several times and it comes up as a blank white screen on my computer.

Indian....
I'm not sure if you mean the website in general or the "demo"?
If the link in my post to the website doesn't work try typing it out.
I'll check again but the demo was working fine this morning.

edit. I just tried the demo CD link and it worked fine. Mine goes to Windows Media, if you don't have that I'm not sure if that would screw things up or not.

Iffybiz, there are a few copy cat groups doing cheaper shows for families that can't afford to go see the "big time" guys at some larger venues.

Petty Theft is playing at Summerfest this year.

Sorry correction it's Petty Thieves. Can't keep track of all of them.


Good luck.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: FireflyElf,

Hi Iffybiz,
sounds quit okay, you may want to work on the "Free Fallin" Chords, if you want it the exact way
But this would be a cool band to have in my garden while having tons of beer and grilled beer
thanks for the link

Iffy-mon,

I'm impressed. You guys are sounding pretty good.
'grats on sticking with the plan!


Chap

Great sound, Iffybiz!
Very respectable, especially FREE FALLIN'!
On Mary Jane's the keyboarder could make more use of his left hand during the guitar solo.

And it makes me hungry to hear all those damn Petty records again

quote:

Originally posted by Ellis D.:
grilled beer
thanks for the link

GRILLED BEER! THERES ONE TO TRY OUT!

jesus i was a bit drunk last night, i meant grilled MEAT of course
grilled beer is not something i would like to try

Thanks for the kind words. We're going to be working on mixing down 5 more songs we recorded.
We're doing this ourselves (the studio thing didn't work very well).
The stuff you heard was recorded at a practice straight off the mixer in one take. I'm using a Fostex Mr-8 Digital Multitracker (a unit I'd highly endorse)which can record 4 tracks at once.
The only real problem we've run into is getting the balance right between different sounds on the same track.
For instance, we have the bass and the keyboard on one track. There are parts of recording where I'd like to make the bass louder but can't without making the keyboard too loud. Same thing with my guitar and the lead guitar, most of his volume was much louder than mine and in much of the final product you can't really hear my guitar(one of the reasons that Free Fallin doesn't sound perfect).
However, this is basically just for giving to the bar owners to let them know we can play. For that purpose it works.
The other five were done in stereo and we gave them to someone to rework it in protools but after 2 months of them sitting on it we got it back and I'll just mix it down on the Fostex and see what happens.
We're going to try a live recording at the next show with the Fostex and see how that comes out.

Grilled Beer? I would say that would qualify you into instant membership in AA.
Of course, it wouldn't be any worse than fried Twinkies and I tried that once. Just once.
I'm thinking that if you were to somehow grill beer that it would have a be a English beer meant to drink at room temp.

quote:

Originally posted by FireflyElf:
Iffybiz, there are a few copy cat groups doing cheaper shows for families that can't afford to go see the "big time" guys at some larger venues.

Petty Theft is playing at Summerfest this year.

Sorry correction it's Petty Thieves. Can't keep track of all of them.


Good luck.

Yeah, they're quite a few that use thief/theft. Not really all that many "Petty" bands though, at least compared to say the Beatles, Stones, AC/DC and Elvis.
I wanted to have a completely different name than any other band, thus Petty Profit$.
Given the state of the band at the moment, I'm thinking of billing us as "the most aptly named band in the world".

Iffybiz, I think you just ahve to record in several takes to get seperate tracks.

quote:

Originally posted by Iffybiz:
I wanted to have a completely different name than any other band, thus Petty Profit$.
Given the state of the band at the moment, I'm thinking of billing us as "the most aptly named band in the world".

Right on! You don't need Tom Petty's name splattered across any signs where you play.

quote:

Originally posted by Jostein:
Iffybiz, I think you just ahve to record in several takes to get seperate tracks.

We probably will at some point do that. We found out though from trying to record in a studio that it's a different animal than playing live. You have to be extremely picky about everything, to keep working on a track until you get it right.
At this point we're far better live than we are in the studio.
There's also the issue of just how good does it need to be? We're not going to be selling any of our recordings, we don't have the right. They have to be good enough to represent us well as to our ability to play. As we get better so should the recordings we hope.