I think the set lists most people might find interesting that I used to do were the Jewish sets with the hardcore Jewish wedding bands. Everybody knows the Hava Nagila and maybe the Mezinka Dance, but there are actually Jewish wedding bands that, in addition to doing all the normal top 40 pop stuff, can do HOURS of Jewish wedding band material without stopping in between songs. There is a massive amount of music in this tradition, as well as a massive amount of traditions surrounding it.
While that material might be foreign to the average person, (including most Jews I know personally) probably the most off-the-wall setlist to me that I ever played at a wedding was actually with a New Orleans style brass band. This particular weekend I was playing two weddings back to back with the brass band, which in and of itself was super weird. Who hires a brass band for their wedding reception? On top of that, the wedding party requested all these prog rock tunes. By that, I don't mean Carry On My Wayward Son and Tom Sawyer (although we did those too), but deep-cut, really complex tunes like Schism by Tool and 21st Century Schizoid Man by King Crimson. So we did those tunes. ...and much to my surprise...they liked it. Prog-rock, no-singer, wrong instrumentation, paying over $10k for the band, and they dug it. But it gets weirder. The next day, the leader of that brass band texts us all saying that he mixed up the request lists. That prog list was supposed to be for this next night. So we did all that kind of stuff again. What really blew my mind the most was that the first crowd got that all by mistake and was still totally satisfied.
Oddly enough, I played a gig just last night with a singer that I used to do weddings with all the time. This isn't exactly the kind of stuff she'd do at a wedding, but it's pretty close. While the list of tunes is pretty blasé, it was still pretty fun because the band was really good and we were all the type of folks that are open-minded about opening them up and having a good time with them. Gigs like that are great. The client's happy and we get all this cool stuff in under the radar. The night before that, I was on the road with an original project. As weird as it might sound, last night was just as fun partly because we had both the constraints of the job with the collective agreement by the whole band to make it fun and sneak in all this cool stuff under the radar.
Outside of set-lists, I've seen plenty of wild stuff on wedding gigs. Some of it makes for great stories, but a lot of it is really depressing. I'd imagine that the boring weddings you're familiar with are more of a good sign of you having mentally healthy, socially adjusted friends and family.
I think the set lists most people might find interesting that I used to do were the Jewish sets with the hardcore Jewish wedding bands. Everybody knows the Hava Nagila and maybe the Mezinka Dance, but there are actually Jewish wedding bands that, in addition to doing all the normal top 40 pop stuff, can do HOURS of Jewish wedding band material without stopping in between songs. There is a massive amount of music in this tradition, as well as a massive amount of traditions surrounding it.
While that material might be foreign to the average person, (including most Jews I know personally) probably the most off-the-wall setlist to me that I ever played at a wedding was actually with a New Orleans style brass band. This particular weekend I was playing two weddings back to back with the brass band, which in and of itself was super weird. Who hires a brass band for their wedding reception? On top of that, the wedding party requested all these prog rock tunes. By that, I don't mean Carry On My Wayward Son and Tom Sawyer (although we did those too), but deep-cut, really complex tunes like Schism by Tool and 21st Century Schizoid Man by King Crimson. So we did those tunes. ...and much to my surprise...they liked it. Prog-rock, no-singer, wrong instrumentation, paying over $10k for the band, and they dug it. But it gets weirder. The next day, the leader of that brass band texts us all saying that he mixed up the request lists. That prog list was supposed to be for this next night. So we did all that kind of stuff again. What really blew my mind the most was that the first crowd got that all by mistake and was still totally satisfied.
Oddly enough, I played a gig just last night with a singer that I used to do weddings with all the time. This isn't exactly the kind of stuff she'd do at a wedding, but it's pretty close. While the list of tunes is pretty blasé, it was still pretty fun because the band was really good and we were all the type of folks that are open-minded about opening them up and having a good time with them. Gigs like that are great. The client's happy and we get all this cool stuff in under the radar. The night before that, I was on the road with an original project. As weird as it might sound, last night was just as fun partly because we had both the constraints of the job with the collective agreement by the whole band to make it fun and sneak in all this cool stuff under the radar.
Outside of set-lists, I've seen plenty of wild stuff on wedding gigs. Some of it makes for great stories, but a lot of it is really depressing. I'd imagine that the boring weddings you're familiar with are more of a good sign of you having mentally healthy, socially adjusted friends and family.