Better Off Led

Mockstars are the new rockstars.

by Brian McManus

Give vocalist Paul Sinclair five minutes of your time and he can easily tick off a dozen stories about how his original band, Sinclair, came just inches away from making it.

There was the time in 1992 when Interscope president Jimmy Iovine flew in from L.A. to see the band play a gig at Conshohocken’s Cool Breeze Café only to be turned away at the door when the woman accompanying him couldn’t produce proper I.D.

And the time the band was offered a letter of intent from Enigma Records only to see it shredded after Seagrams bought the label.

Or when Hard to Handle management—which represented AC/DC at the time—showed major interest but became gun-shy when the band’s manager suddenly decided the fly-by-night contract he had with the band was binding (after realizing some money might be made).

Oh, or the time Gene Simmons’ manager Larry Mazer sat in on a practice intending to sign Sinclair, only to decide afterward they weren’t quite what he was looking for. Not bluesy enough. Instead he’d go on to sign the shining beacon of all things blues, Skid Row.

Sinclair just couldn’t catch a break. Like, in ’88, when he took out a second mortgage on his home to put out the band’s debut—on vinyl only. That was the year music stores pushed full tilt (or so it seemed at the time) into the digital age, replacing LPs with CDs.

Mis-Led: (From left to right) Paul Hammond, Paul SInclair and Andrew Lipke sit in the control room of Fat City Studios.

“I’ve got a million stories like this,” says Sinclair, 43, while holding court in Fat City Studios—the recording and mastering space he shares with longtime collaborator, guitarist Paul Hammond—located in the basement of his Blue Bell home.

Eventually, all the near misses and the almost weres became a source of frustration for Sinclair. Add to it the revolving door of musicians joining the band only to quit months later—excited at first by the major label courting, headlining gigs at CBGBs and sharing bills with bands like Zebra and Foghat, but equally deflated when nothing came of any of it—and Sinclair started to give serious thought to turning the once-a-month Led Zeppelin cover gig he and Hammond, also 43, were doing at the Bridgeport Rib House into a full-time gig.

So that’s exactly what they did, forming Get the Led Out five years ago, with the tagline: “America’s Led Zeppelin!”

And now, ironically, unfairly (?), through performing the music of Led Zeppelin—the same music that inspired Paul Sinclair the man to start Sinclair the band in the first place—he’s closer than ever to grasping rock ’n’ roll’s elusive brass ring. He’s gone from rockstar to mockstar and back again. And in this day and age at least, the difference is becoming more and more slight.

“I love the scrappiness of tribute bands,” Kurutz says over the phone from his home in New York City. “The earnestness—they weren’t being rewarded particularly well with accolades or respect for the work they were putting in, but they loved getting on-stage and playing these songs anyway.”

In Like a Rolling Stone Kurutz theorizes that the essential notion of the tribute band, i.e., “something directly inspired by what has gone before,” extends beyond tribute bands and into society. “Steven Colbert is, in a way, a tribute band to Bill O’Reilly,” he writes. “Quentin Tarantino is a tribute band to 1970s blaxploitation and B movies … Karaoke is based on the same premise as a tribute band, as is the popular video game Guitar Hero, in which players replicate, note for note, famous guitar solos.”

Kurutz traces the short, odd history of the tribute act in his book, beginning with the hit 1970s Broadway musical Beatlemania. Beatlemania’s creator, Steve Leber, started the show on the premise that tribute bands were no different than classical orchestras. But instead of playing Mozart and Bach, Handel and Chopin, they played the music of Jagger and Garcia, Plant and McCartney.

“The argument is at once convincing and also off-base,” notes Kurutz, “because so much of rock ’n’ roll relies on elements beyond the musical notes, like style and attitude.”

Jill Stein, a Ph.D. at the UCLA Center for Sociology, takes a slightly different tack in Mockstars, a documentary about tribute bands. “Perhaps much like we’re still doing Shakespeare plays, there will be recreations of famous concerts a hundred years from now,” she says.

Which argument you buy is a matter of personal belief, but the most glaring omission in all three is this: The intrinsic belief that performing music written by other people is unavoidably, inherently, toxically and indubitably lame. In other words, the question shouldn’t be, “Why do people form tribute bands?” so much as, “Should they?”

“Tribute bands were once marginalized; this strange oddity in the music world,” says Kurutz. “Now they’re totally legit. They aren’t demeaned or made fun of the way they used to be.”

Last November The Late Show With David Letterman had a tribute band on each night of the week. For “Tribute Bands Week,” the show featured acts aping Prince, James Brown, Johnny Cash, Neil Diamond and Guns N’ Roses. “That it wasn’t presented as a freak show says a lot,” says Kurutz, who posted the YouTube performances on his blog, likearollingstonethebook.blogspot.com

Established musicians are also getting in on the tribute circuit. Letterman’s Late Show band bassist, Will Lee, is in a Beatles tribute that does bang-up business, the Fab Faux. Also a member of the Faux is Late Night With Conan O’Brien guitarist Jimmy Vivino.

“They command a certain level of respect,” says Sinclair. “No one calls them a tribute band. They’re just amazing musicians playing their favorite music. That’s what we aspire to.”

None of the debate about integrity or lameness is lost on the Pauls, Sinclair and Hammond, as they try to maximize the former while minimizing the latter. The members of Get the Led Out don’t dress the part of Zeppelin. Sinclair doesn’t employ a fake British accent when speaking to the crowd. When the group signs autographs after shows (and they do) they sign them with their own names, not the names of members of the band whose music they play, as some tributes do.

In fact, Sinclair and Hammond wince with pain at the very term tribute band. “It just reeks of impression to me,” says Sinclair, dismissively waving a hand adorned with more rings than most men wear in a lifetime.

“When I’m onstage I don’t think I’m Jimmy Page,” agrees Hammond. “I’m Paul Hammond playing guitar parts by Jimmy Page. Paul Sinclair is Paul Sinclair singing the lyrics of Robert Plant.”

“Every [Zeppelin tribute] band out there, their template is the [concert doc] Song Remains the Same. They mimic that ’73 performance you see in the movie,” says Sinclair. “That’s what they emulate, down to the fact ‘Dazed and Confused’ is 20 minutes long. What we’re doing is bringing you the songs just as you know them from the record.”

To do so requires hours of meticulous listening to and studying of the music of Zeppelin. “We listen to it under a microscope,” says Hammond, who has built electronics to help aid in capturing some of Zeppelin’s more odd aural landscapes.

Sinclair even goes as far as to make his voice crack when Plant’s does on record, and is well aware that their audiences know every word to every Zeppelin song, even exact Plant phrasing. “These songs have been played on the radio for 40 years,” he says.

It’s an intense exercise, and the Pauls are devoted to it completely, so much so that criticism of their earnest efforts by purists seems grossly misplaced. Fortunately, it’s something they don’t deal with that often.

For that they can thank Mark Wahlberg. Some of the general acceptance of tribute bands, Kurutz contends, can be traced to the movie Rock Star, a Wahlberg/Jennifer Aniston vehicle from 2001.

In it Wahlberg’s character is plucked from tribute obscurity to front a group he idolizes. The plot was inspired by the real-life story of Tim Owens, an office-supply salesman from Akron, Ohio, who, in the mid-1990s, went from singing in a Judas Priest tribute band called British Steel to actually singing in Judas Priest.

The overriding theme to all this is, of course, if the band you’re paying tribute to doesn’t have a problem with what you’re doing, why should anyone else?

The jump from mockstar to rockstar is happening more and more frequently. Following Priest’s tribute-leaning lead in recent years has been Yes, Boston and Journey, who have all cherry-picked their new frontmen from acts that serve as tributes to the original music they wrote.

In Like a Rolling Stone, Kurutz runs down several tribute acts that have been joined onstage by the members of the bands they were paying tribute to. Often times the original artist feels more honored than put off. Paul Hammond knows for a fact that Jimmy Page is a fan of Get the Led Out. (Hammond delivered a custom-built Martin guitar to Page’s home for his 63rd birthday.)

Kurutz believes the current musical climate is a perfect petri dish for breeding tribute acts that will never know the scorn of purists. “My sense is—and I hate to say this—that the bar has been lowered in a big way,” he laments. “Music is so dispersed now, and no big artists like U2 or Springsteen are coming out. And so much original music is so derivative anyway. What’s worse—Badfish, who play tribute to the music of Sublime, or a ska punk band playing originals that are influenced by Sublime?

“There’s a whole generation of kids who don’t even know what selling out means. They hear Led Zeppelin songs in car commercials or hear this music in video games. We’re looking at a future where the stigma of being in a tribute band will be all but completely erased.”

McTear’s not talking about the Pauls’ performances as Get the Led Out, but instead the countless records they’ve mastered for him over the years.

Mastering is the final stage of the recording process—after recording and mixing. Like the scene in Napoleon Dynamite in which the movie’s protagonist chugs milk and analyzes its flaws (“This cow got into an onion patch”), Hammond and Sinclair listen to fully mixed recordings on their vintage analogue equipment in Fat City and pick out any flaws, equalizing it and pulling out distortion imperceptible to most human ears (and, presumably, even to some deer). It’s a very specialized talent. It also happens to be the Pauls’ day jobs. They master music every week from all around the world, and their reputation for quality work continues to grow.

“Both of them have incredible ears,” McTear says of the duo. “They can hear things in a mix that makes you think they’re not human. They’ve taught me a lot.”

Their list of mastered output is a virtual who’s who of Philadelphia independent music—the Cobbs, the Brakes, BC Camplight, Blood Feathers, Hail Social, the Swimmers, Golden Ball, the A-Sides, Capitol Years, Meg Baird, Birdie Busch, Creeping Weeds, Photon Band, Ex Reverie. The guys have also been at the helm of two records by Will Oldham, a Louisville, Ky., artist who records under the moniker Bonnie “Prince” Billy. They’ve mastered releases from as far away as Ireland, Sweden, “even Utah,” Hammond jokes.

“Howie Weinberg has mastered a record for me,” says McTear (Weinberg is one of music’s most lauded mastering engineers, responsible for such work as Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Blood Sugar Sex Magic, Beastie Boys’ Licensed to Ill and Public Enemy’s It Takes a Nation of Millions). “I can say, without a doubt, the Pauls are better,” McTear says.

Lipke found himself playing keyboard on the recording of angst-filled local artist Kate Gaffney’s record a few years back. It was recorded in Fat City.

After a few days, it dawned on Sinclair, Wow, this Lipke kid has chops. “Every idea I threw his way, he hit out of the park.”

Lipke has a Bachelor of Fine Arts in music composition from the University of the Arts and has been teaching piano and guitar lessons privately on the Main Line through the Meridee Winters School of Music since he was 19. He’s a wunderkind.

Originally Lipke joined the group to fill in on keyboards for three shows. Sinclair and Hammond were so impressed with his performances, they asked him to join on full-time basis shortly after.

He accepted with the provision that his own budding solo career be allowed to remain his priority (Lipke just released his second album, Motherpearl and Dynamite, through Drexel’s Mad Dragon Records). Now Sinclair and Hammond maintain they couldn’t play a show without him.

“In this band he plays electric, acoustic, keyboard, banjo, he doubles my lead vocal, plays percussion … ” says Sinclair, searching his mind for something he might be forgetting.

“Jawharp,” adds Hammond, jokingly.

Lipke doesn’t like to use the term “tribute band” either. “It’s been such a challenging and interesting musical exercise to be a part of,” he says of Get the Led Out. “It’s me practicing my craft at the highest levels.”

As a kid seeking a job in the big ol’ coke-fueled orgy called the music biz you could a) own your own indie label for a modest $40,000 a year b) start an indie band for a more princely sum of $45,000 or c) sing in a Led Zeppelin tribute band for a whopping $150,000.

Make no mistake; bands that make it to the top tier of the tribute cake are richly rewarded. The tribute business is big business.

In its upper echelon you’ll find Dark Star Orchestra, an act specializing in recreating specific concerts from the Grateful Dead, meticulously logging each show so as to never repeat one in any given city.

“These guys had a publicist, a crew, a tour manager, they sold their own Dark Star Orchestra merchandise. For all intents and purposes they are a real band,” says Kurutz, who attended a DSO show for Like a Rolling Stone. “Only they’re playing someone else’s music.”

Kurutz reports that DSO (who made national news last year when Jersey City Councilman Steven Lipski drunkenly emptied his bladder on several of their fans at a D.C. show) can earn upward of a million dollars in a given year. Badfish, a tribute to Sublime, earn as much as $1.4 million in a year.

Dark Star Orchestra is represented by SRO Artists Inc., a full service-booking agency based in Middleton, Wis. SRO signed Get the Led Out to their roster last January. Big things are already beginning to happen. The group plays the Nokia Theater in Times Square in March and are prepping for their first gig at the venerable Electric Factory here in Philly this week.

With this kind of success as a possibility, it’s no surprise tribute bands are forming at an astonishing clip.

On tributecity.com, a kind of loose Web index of tribute bands across the world, you can search for tribute acts by state, name of original act, name of tribute act, postal code (U.S. only) or style.

Philly has more than its share: AfterImage and Beneath, Between & Behind, both tributes to Rush; Liberation, the tribute to Chicago; Sweet Emotion, a tribute to Aerosmith; Ozzmosis, a tribute to Ozzy (not to be confused with Oz-mosis, from Erie, Pa.); These Crowded Streets, a tribute to the Dave Matthews Band; Meeting in the Aisle, a tribute to Radiohead (who play North Star Bar on Jan. 30); Almost Fab, a tribute to the Beatles; Forty Ounces, a tribute to Sublime; Trespass, a tribute to Genesis; and finally, in addition to Get the Led Out, you’ll find two more Zeppelin tributes: Swan Song and How the West Was Won (the latter comprised of all teens).

Tribute bands from outside Philly are flocking here too. Recently we’ve played host to several different tribute acts from outside the area: the aforementioned Badfish; Appetite for Deception (Guns N’ Roses); Back in Black (AC/DC), Satisfaction: A Rolling Stones Experience; and the show “Tribute Wars” at the Troc—with Appetite for Destruction (another GNR tribute); Tragedy (Bee Gees); Ziggy Starlet (an all-female David Bowie act); and Mistress of Puppets (an all-female Metallica act, not to be confused with Misstallica, another all-female Metallica act who play Johnny Brenda’s with former Black Sabbath tribute band Iron Man on the 31st), just to name a few.

But that’s not all! Bruce in the USA, a tribute to Springsteen, and the Fifth Annual Elvis Birthday Bash (with Elvis impersonators) are both coming to the Keswick, rounding out the current spate of tribute acts stopping by the 215 to find success.

It’s a success some still find hard to swallow. They no doubt share the opinion of Mick Jagger who, when asked about Stones tributes by the Boston Globe in 1980 explained their success with a straightforward answer: “The appetite for recycled crap in this country seems enormous.”