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[Giles Walker]

I was at this gig and heard quite a bit of their set. I went up at the end and got the setlist from the stage and here it is.

Set 1

Jungle boogie
Hard to handle
Respect
Gimme some lovin
Take me to the river
Son of a preacher man
Get ready
Barefootin
Hit the road jack
Car wash
Long train runnin'
Treat her right

Set 2

Hold on i'm coming
25 miles
Sweet soul music
Think
Go gone
Soul man
Vehicle
I feel good
Superstition
Nutbush city limits
Play that funky music
Land of 1000 dances


Encore
Mustang sally


I thought the musicianship was top class and i love soul and funk music. Infact here are my favourite current soul and funk bands.
Sharon Jones and the dapkings, Breakestra and Glasgows own Five Aces
My problem lies in the choice of songs here, i feel they are rather obvious choices maybe better suited for a wedding than a nightclub on a friday night. I don't see why Aberdeen bands should feel they need to dumb themselves down to this level.

Any thoughts?

[Dave]

Sharon Jones and the Dap Kings are great. I've been sneaking their version of "Just Dropped In (To See What Condition My Condition Was In) into my sets for a while now.

As for the choice of songs, yeah, they are standards, and it would be good to see a band with that much talent try more challenging and unfamiliar material. However, for a band seeking to make an impact in the early days of their career, they might want to establish a fanbase among those more ambivalent to soul music than the devotees who will enjoy their performance regardless of their choice of material.

To put a DJ's spin (arf!) on it, I've been doing soul nights in Aberdeen for the best part of a decade, and I've found it's always a case of three steps forward, two steps back when it comes to choice of material. Over time, I've managed to develop a weekly night where as many people dance to "You Hit Me (Right Where It Hurt Me)" by Alice Clark as "Respect" by Aretha, for example, but I would never kid myself that i could get away with playing soul music that has never been featured in a major motion picture all night. I'd imagine Soulfunkinhot are going to experience similar resistance to new ideas if they ditch the crowd-pleasers in exchange for worthy but under-exposed material. They should have the courage to experiment, but they should also be aware of their core audience's current limitations.

[Hugh_Jazz]

Thanks for the comments guys.

I think Dave's got it right......there needs to be a blend of classics plus a careful selection of high quality, lesser know tracks that will still get the punters on the dancefloor in numbers.

SFH is still in it's infancy, and over the coming months I'm sure you'll see significant changes to the set list. That said, I doubt we will ever completely get away from the mainstream, classic soul/funk tracks....in fact, I dont think we should because the punters love 'em.

However, if there are lesser known tracks that push our buttons and will get people up dancing with the same gusto as the classics, then we'll certainly be up for giving them a go.

[soundian]

Originally Posted by Giles Walker

I don't see why Aberdeen bands should feel they need to dumb themselves down to this level.

Any thoughts?

I don't think geographical location has anything to do with the choice of set list, I think any new soul band would play a similar set list regardless of where they live.

As a DJ yourself you should know that the people who pay the money judge you on how many people are in, how many are dancing and how merrily the tills are ringing, not on the artistic integrity of your set.

[The Kernel Loaf]

'One Nation Under A Groove' by Funkadelic would be top notch.

[RockAustin]

Cheers for the comments!

It is a hard call when deciding what you choose to play. We had a limited time to get a new set together that would distinguish ourselves from Souled Asylum so had to make some judgments on what we wanted to achieve in the short term. I think what we have done is pull off some standard soul numbers with a lot of our own style and personality. When establishing yourself as a quality band, you need to hook in as many people as possible with songs that they know, possibly sing along to, and definitely dance to.

When you have 11 members, there are a great number of song suggestions and limited practice time all together to make them work so have had to be quite selective and to some extent choose fairly safe options. Sometimes they work immediately like Hit the Road Jack and others need a little more thought put in.

The next stage is to take on more challenging tunes, we may stick with ones that people know but we will start to stretch ourselves more and more. Once we have a good repertoire of songs and a good fan base, we can start introducing songs to people as you might do in a DJ set. It takes a long time to get that sort of turnover and maintain a high quality but we'll get there.

Feel free to suggest songs that you’d like to hear us do and we’ll add them to our list of songs to try out.

Colin