What's a "Show Band"?

[medjuck]

It's a term I heard as a teenager and I recently came across it again but not not in a context that explained what it meant. (It was in reference to a rock n' roller who had formerly been in a "show band".)

[Harold_Z]

My stab at it - feel free to add or subtract, but this pretty much works for me.

A step up from a lounge band. A band with commercial appeal, strong front people capable of impressive (hopefully) singing, choreography, some comedy and anything else thrown in that would make it an attraction.

Probably a good example of a 50s show band would be Louis Prima or the Treniers.. In the 60s and 70s maybe something like Wayne Cochran, the Checkmates or the Ohio Players. Just examples - there's lots more and most never achieved the exposure the ones I named did- but they worked and worked. Many on a regional basis and many were imitations of more successful stars or show bands.

[JSngry]

Yeah, it's a band that actually had a show - something that customers would sit down and watch, like Vegas, only not. Often unmistakably not.

As opposed to a dance band.

There's variety, there's patter, there's costuming, there's choreography, there's all kinds of shit that you don't have to do if all you're doing is playing background and/or straight-up dance music.

I met my wife while playing in a hotel show band. That used to be the lifeblood of many young musicians just coming into the professional world. Damn near every town in the US with a population of over 50,000 had at least one hotel that had a lounge that featured show bands. Either that or a show room. You'd play 3 dance sets, and in between, there would be the shows. Sometimes the front person/people would participate in the dance sets, sometimes not.

Between DJs & karaoke, that scene is dead now. But when it was going, the only way not to get a gig at some level on that circuit was to either not try or else to really, really suck. There were that many bands, that many rooms, and that many gigs, ranging from entry-level to pretty plush.