Cover bands tend to get a bad rep, certain musicians look down on them thinking there really isn’t that much to them besides learning to play someone else’s chord progressions and mimicking another band’s stage persona. And yes, that sounds completely uninspired and boring, and it also doesn’t accurately reflect the reality of most cover bands.
In reality, cover bands have to carefully study the source material experiment how much of their own twist they can add to it (jury’s still out on whether a cover should be an exact replica or can deviate from the original), still work on their stage presence and the cohesion of the band as a whole. Not having to write original material from scratch doesn’t really ease off the workload of designing a live performance.
