Many years ago, I went to see a band called the Landsharks in concert. I loved Jimmy Buffett music a lot at the time, and had been sucked into the Parrothead vortex of grass skirts, blended drinks and palm trees.
When I found out the band was coming to town, I was ecstatic because Buffett himself rarely came to the Pacific Northwest, and the only time he ever did an outdoor concert there it was 40 degrees and everyone on stage and in the audience was freezing to death.
I was really looking forward to the concert, largely because I wanted to see the band’s take was on the music and see what arrangements they had come up with. After all, I do a lot of Buffett songs and I have my own unique style wen it comes to them, my own imprint if you will.
What I didn’t understand then was the concept of a “tribute band.” Instead of a fresh take on the music, I ended up watching clones (clowns?) perform; every nuance of a Buffett show was duplicated as precisely as possible, right down to the instrumentation and the faux palm trees and beach balls in the concert hall.
I stayed a little more than 30 minutes. It was then that I discovered that I don’t like tribute anything in my life. I simply don’t get it.
Let me qualify this a bit. I think it’s cool that some bands do tributes to musicians that are dead. Some, like many Elvis impersonators, do an amazing job and it is a real tribute to the King.
I don’t, however, get doing a tribute to someone who is not only still living, but trying to earn a living with an act they came up with. Such is the problem with the Landsharks, A1a or any other Buffett tribute band, and certainly many other tribute bands of bands that are still together.
Why am I so anti-tribute? Simple. As a creative type guy, I put a lot of effort into the things I create. I don’t need some second or third tier yokels ripping me off and trying to sell it to others under the guise of being a “tribute.” It’s not. It’s a rip off. You are basically making money off of something I created. You didn’t do a thing, except copy my work, my style, my arrangements, and even my solo licks.
This, my friends is an atrocity. Sadly, while you can protect a lot of your work, for some reason you can’t do much legally about people who rip your persona and profession off.
Again, this is not to say that the Beatles tribute band Rain are shady. The Beatles aren’t together anymore and they do an outstanding job reprising their catalogue through the years. Amazing, in fact!
But how hard is it for four guys to put on makeup and riff KISS, for instance. It doesn’t take a lot of hard work. Pull out the sheet music, listen to the records, rip off the sound, sew up some outrageous costumes, paint a star and dog on your face and go make money off of all the hard work the real KISS has done to establish a following.
I know I’m coming down hard on these guys. And I know some people adore tribute bands. And tribute people, I guess.
As a pirate entertainer, I go to a lot of festivals. At every festival, I run into anywhere between two and five Jack Sparrows at every one of them. It is a Jack off everywhere I go. You see a lot fewer Barbossas and Will Turners. But Jack is everywhere.
This wouldn’t be necessarily bad, but there is no equality among the Sparrows. I have seen Oriental Sparrows, really short Sparrows, rotund Sparrows and even an African American Jack Sparrow.
Some are amazingly good at pulling off their tribute (and they are smart enough to shop at YorDreem Creations for their Jack accoutrements – shameless plug for my mate Black Skot). Others, not so much. Some are downright bad at it, almost to the point of being embarrassing to themselves and really, the whole pirate entertainment community.
You would think that I would really appreciate the grand masters of Jacks, the guys who not only have all the mannerisms, but look just like Captain Jack Sparrow, too. Wrong! These are the worst of the bunch in my book, and for a very simple reason.
The lesser Jacks supposedly fail in their impression because they tend to inject their own personality into the persona. To me, this is a good thing. It makes them a performer, not an imitator.
It takes little to no skill to imitate another persona. It actually takes more skill to balance the persona with who you really are, bringing a new dimension to the role. It makes you more interesting.
I have met the dead-on Jacks. You swear you’re standing right there before Johnny Depp himself.
That my friends, is the core of the problem. I have to wonder what fun there could possibly be in doing an imitation of Johnny Depp doing Jack Sparrow. You don’t really see anyone doing Johnny Depp as Willie Wonka or the Mad Hatter. I have seen Mad Hatters around at events, and they are simply guys (or girls) being the Mad Hatter, not Johnny Depp as the Mad Hatter.
See the difference?
I’m not trying to discourage anyone from mimicking their favorite pirate actors. It’s all well and good. It’s just that I don’t really get it. I have been in these shoes, too. I once did Sir Henry Morgan in character. It is an art. But notice I didn’t do an impression of Laird Cregar doing Morgan in The Black Swan. If you really want to do a character performance, why not pick a real pirate? Or, at least, do your own take on the Jack Sparrow character, not a mimicry of Johnny Depp.
Oh, and while we’re on that subject… Johnny, that finger wagging thing, that was mine. It was long before you stepped into the role of Jack Sparrow. While I appreciate your tribute to me in the movie, it was my move, baby. Get your own moves, baby!
Out on the Treasure Coast, wondering where all the originality is going in this world,
– Robb