‘Fast Car’ by Tracy Chapman. (1988) From the album Tracy Chapman. Elektra Records: Hollywood, California, USA.
Cover performed live by Pete Brennan.
I recently secured a recurring booking to perform in the courtyard of a tourist attraction in my hometown. Just me with a guitar playing some cover songs as background music just outside the public cafe, under the marquee. They wanted some live music to entertain customers during their busiest hours and potentially draw tourists who have visited the attraction into sitting down and purchasing refreshments from the cafe.
I have performed this service several times over the last couple of weeks and have noticed that the popularity of this attraction is wildly sporadic. Sometimes I can barely get through the crowd with my equipment because it is so busy and other times I set up and play to only the staff for three hours. Either way I get paid so it’s no skin off my nose, but I would much prefer to play to a crowd than to no-one. It makes the time fly by when you have an audience reacting to you.
Understandably, a big factor that contributes to the quiet ones is the world famous and seemingly random British weather. If the forecast is bad, it is often very quiet.
So this week, when the forecast was less than ideal for outdoor dining, I decided I’d use the opportunity to video record some of my performance for social media advertising. It was quiet when I had set up my tripod/camera (smartphone) and I started my set with the plan to record the whole thing so that I would have a massive pool of ‘content’ (Yuck, I hate that word) to draw from.
I recorded 5 songs before a couple of families arrived and sat down next to the camera and as a result, the sixth song had their conversation prominently featured in the audio. I turned the camera off after that to give them their privacy, (it’s not ethically acceptable to record people’s personal conversations) and I carried out the rest of the gig as usual.
I will attempt to record more videos at later gigs as I gain more experience, both in performance and videography, and as I improve in each as I go.
Anyway, I have made some adverts out of the videos and have little use for them now. But, instead of deleting them for good, I thought I could upload them here as part of my portfolio, even if they are cover versions. A sort of ‘Performance Record’ to be added to my own original compositions that I put on here.
I’m not sure of the legalities regarding such a practice on Substack but, judging by the way cover versions are policed on YouTube, I’m guessing these will probably be removed or in some other way ‘copyright claimed’ at some point.
Needless to say I will not be monetising these posts because of the plagiarisation accusations that would rightfully be aimed at me. I am hoping that it is the same deal as YouTube where anyone is free to upload cover versions as long as they are either NOT monetised or all licences have been paid in the domains that the videos are live in.
Anyway, these will be sporadic posts that I upload when I have these kinds of videos handy. There are often mistakes in them as I just record a gig and only get one take per song and the sound is just what I capture with my smartphone camera.
I hope someone enjoys them. Thanks for reading and listening…
Pete Brennan (Music)
Pete Brennan (Music) Live at Moor Cafe