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Every year The Launchpad hosts a popular costume party, complete with live music, drinking, and dancing — everything you might expect from a harvest time rager. But Albuquerque’s beloved haunt adds one unique element: resurrecting dead rockers and inviting pop star doppelgangers to play, much to the ravenous delight of the city’s creatures of the night. Their annual Night of the Living Cover Bands show has become so popular that it now lasts the entire month, and every Friday and Saturday in October is booked solid with musical acts masquerading as their favorite performers.
Barney Lopez, who does booking and promoting for The Launchpad, has been filling the sought-after slots on the bill for ten years and he says The Launchpad has been hosting the event much longer than he has worked there. Lopez also plays bass for Red Light Cameras, a popular New Mexico pop-rock band who happen to be Night of the Living Cover Bands veterans.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
The Paper.: Didn’t Night of the Living Cover Bands used to be only one night, or a couple of nights?
Barney Lopez: When it first started, it was just a one-night event that they did one year. It stayed at one night for several years, eventually grew into a two night thing, or they did one night at Launchpad and one night at a different venue. I think one year it was at Low Spirits. It had been in Santa Fe one year. We grew it to two weekends, and then three weekends, and now four weekends. Last year we tried to make it all ages on Sunday, but this year we pulled back. Last year we had 12 shows, this year we have eight.
Was nobody showing up to the all-ages show?
People showed up, it’s just that October is a super busy time of the year for touring bands coming through New Mexico. So with Launchpad being booked for basically half of the month with Night of the Living Cover Bands, we were kind of in a hard place where we couldn’t book a lot of things that needed dates. Pulling back a little bit opens up some dates so that we can book some other shows in October.
It’s one of my favorite events of the whole year — depending on who’s playing.
It’s tons of fun because even if you’re like, “Oh, I don’t really like Hootie and The Blowfish,” they’re done in 20 minutes and then you can watch the next thing, so the turnover is really great. We try and mix it up with the genres and the style of bands that are playing throughout the night. So there’s a little something for everybody.
Are there any bands that you’re particularly excited about this year?
So there’s Sorry Guerro, a local band that has been around for a pretty long time — 15 to 20 years — and they usually knock it out of the park every year with their covers. They’ve done Prince in the past, they’ve done N.W.A. in the past and this year they’re gonna be doing Michael Jackson, which I think will be fun because they’re a pretty hardcore band.
There are a couple ways to go about doing the cover band shows. Some people try to be really true to the artist, and then some people try to be true to themselves and they turn the songs they’re covering into their own versions, which I always appreciate.
Willa J is doing Britney Spears this year, I think it will be pretty cool. Smoking Dolls are doing Bikini Kill. Burque Soul is Carlos Santana, and I love Santana, I’m stoked for that.
I recognize most of the local acts but I didn’t recognize some of the acts they were covering.
Every now and then people pick something that’s a little bit more on the obscure side. Someone is doing Night Ranger, it’s pretty obscure ’80s hair metal stuff. It’s fun because usually they’ll pick something and then you’ll say, “Oh, this song. I know this song, I recognize this band now.”