Just play all sorts and see which works best for you. Don`t be too worried about the direction of the band at your first gig. Just because you are playing that stuff now doesn`t mean you`ll be playing it in a year or so from now.

Did you know Blur started off playing Iron Maiden covers?

To 'make a good band' in the sense of having the possibility of getting anywhere with the music, you need to start writing and performing pretty much all your own material right NOW. As far as I can tell, with most succesful bands the musical style for each song is mostly led by the person (or people) who generated the song in the first place. This is because the songwriter generally has the most coherent idea of how the song will work in a full band arrangement. The songwriter certainly doesn't have to be the singer.

What I'd say is write a load of original songs, identify which are the best songs and then let the style and quality of those songs determine the band direction.

It's no use trying to be a death metal band if your songs all sound like ABBA and it's not much use going on national tours if your songs turn out to be completely **** because nobody is going to follow you.

That's the scientific approach to being in a band :)

just get high

don't get high

get poon

yes focourse, we wrote 2 new ones last night, actually last night was the best practice we've had so far, i was really happy with it. we got our first gig on the 10th of march and i think where i was worried now i'm quite looking forward, my singers being a little more laid back and my guitarist is calming down the the random covers. so all is well:) but i still want all your opinions.

what works for my band is that the fact that we are all such good friends so that when i say we are going to be a blatant rip off of radiohead they damn well listen to me.

I read that Bark Psychosis started as a Napalm Death cover band. Grindcore to post rock, wow.