To quote Vito Corleone, "How did things ever get so far?"
There was a time you had to be dead or a world beater to get a tribute. You had to John Lennon or Buddy Holly or both: not just a genius but a genius who died young and then the world will come around and cover your songs and weep att your memory.
Now, as Helen bach mentioned the other day, they are tributing the Strokes. The Strokes??? Why, they just released a crap albuim and they are fine and dandy though Julian is putting on the pounds. So the ten year anniversary of Is This It???? Is that that?? Sure it's a good album, maybe a great alum, but why are they doing it?
For the most part, a tribute band is to a cover band, what an escort is to a street walker. Same shit, diffirent location. Queens and U2, Stones and Doors tribute bands… Indeed, the Doors did a neat trick, they became their own tribute band. But just as sucky no doubt.
All these "tributes" are a little belittling. Why not just say you love a band and want to suck up to their audience? Why frill it up with lies. How is it a tribute?? Shouldn't a tribute work in a different way? I mean, doesn't a great cover change the way you hear the original to the determent of the original.
And anyway, if a tribute is a cover, a replaying, of somebody elses music, does that make all theater tribute bands by extension? Is "Follies" a tribute to Sondheim? And if it isn't then why is covering Is This It a tribute to the Strokes?