Weird Setlist Omissions

Re:Springsteen I remember reading a newspaper review of his show here on the first E-Street reunion tour, and the critic happily pointed out how all of the set was--bar some new songs, covers and "Darlington County"--material from the '70s. Some people who'd attended the show subsequently wrote letters that got published expressing their disappointment that they didn't get to hear their favorite songs. The critic responded in print that perhaps they just went to the wrong tour date, pointing out that at the next stop (which was like in New Orleans or Dallas) Springsteen did an all '80s plus "Born To Run", "Rosalita", covers & the new songs set.

Didn't R.E.M. phase "Stand" out pretty early? I know both "Shiny Happy People" and "Radio Song" were rarely if ever done live.

No one's mentioned Grateful Dead and "Saint Stephen" yet.

Garcia really didn't like the material on Aoxomoxoa very much. "China Cat Sunflower" was the longest lasting item in their sets, and even then it was part of a medley w/"I Know You Rider".

Springsteen played here like a dozen years ago, and how everyone bitched and moaned the next day that he didn't play "Dancing In the Dark", "Born in the USA" or "Hungry Heart".

Motehrfucker played "Mary, Queen of Arkansas" for the first time live since 1972 and the fans were mad because they didn't get to have their Courtney Cox moment. I tell you, i smdh quite vigorously.

I was kinda shocked that Metallica had never played "Escape" until they played Ride the Lightning in its entirety a few months ago. This site says they've still never played "Frayed Ends of Sanity" live.

Also weird: Shriekback circa 1986, they opened with "Nemesis," prompting everyone audience to look at each other with an expression that said "gah, they're not even warmed up yet". But then they closed with it too.

I saw Cheap Trick in 2000 (? thereabouts) when they did a three night stand in Mpls and played the first three albums in a row. I went the second night and they played all of "In Color" but during the encore did not play "Surrender", evn though they did it the night before. I mean I was fine with it and I think so was the crowd cuz Aerosmith came out & both bands did "Train Kept A-Rollin" which was pretty sweet.

But still, probably one of the very Cheap Trick shows where they did not play "Surrender"

The last time I saw AC/DC they opened with "You Shook Me All Night Long." It was the ultimate "suck it" moment from a band with more than enough songs to go around.

The Flaming Lips make such a point of playing "She Don't Use Jelly" at every show that even its inclusion and reasons for inclusion - "this is a big hit, and some people habe never seen us before! - have become more annoying than the song itself.

I would've thought that most current Radiohead fans don't even like 'Creep', right?

I think they play Creep when they visit more far-flung locations, I think it was popping up in a few of the South American shows.

AC/DC Concertgoer: "You Shook Me All Night Long"? I'd like to suck on some of that!

when I saw Radiohead in 2003 they did both 'Creep' and 'The Bends', tho Thom seemed to make a joke of both of them. Why bother eh why bother. I do kinda wonder who would be paying to see a Radiohead headline show in the last ten years and be disappointed that they don't get 'Creep'.

(Equally I wonder how much of a usual Flaming Lips crowd nowadays would really think of 'She Don't Use Jelly' as their hit.)

i'm always impressed when long-running bands don't have one song that's an every-single-show given. Sonic Youth obviously aren't a 'singles' band like the Stones or something where crowd-pleasing is a super overt agenda, but even among the dozen or so '80s songs they've played the most over years, some of them have just been abandoned entirely during for one or two tour-heavy years at a time.

"Another point: almost every arena act uses a teleprompter, but no club acts. What's up with that?"

It's one more thing you got to carry around. I'm sure the bassist or guitarist in Tortoise got to shake their heads some nights at having to haul around 2 drum kits and 2 Marimbas/vibes sets.

also there's prob not money for it. or room in most clubs for it. and the smaller the band/venue, the more off-putting the audience would find it. and a hundred other equally obvious reasons.

I've seen SY lots and don't think I've ever not seen them play "Kool Thing". I saw them play "Burning Spear" in 2001 and then claim they'd never play it again, screwdrivers nice knowing you

"Burning Spear" probably isn't even top 10 most played SY songs but it's "the one with the screwdrivers and the riff"

they didn't play "kool thing" when i saw them at the hollywood bowl a couple years ago; they were only doing 1985-88 material that night.

their top 10 most played looks like: schizophrenia, teenage riot, tom violence, white kross, kool thing, bull in the heather, brother james, eric's trip, 100%, expressway...none of which have been played at, like, half the shows they've played since it was released.

The last few times I went to see Small Factory, they started "Suggestions" but then played "In Between Days" instead. Grrrr.

Monster tour REM; barely a single song from the entire catalogue of pre Warners albums/singles/ B sides. maybe 1 or 2 tops (usually So Central Rain, maybe Fall On Me)
in a 25 song set.

re Radiohead and Creep, they opened with it at the Reading Festival in 2009 and did the most heartfelt version i'd heard since the 90s, an amazing unexpected moment as they'd not played it in Leeds the night before:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gpmO_7yKUHM

Feeling your pain aero
Replace "your biggest hit" with "that cover from the Youtube you did for somebody's birthday" or "that out-of-character novelty song" and you'll be in the same damned boat as 75% other indie rock acts on their way to indie rock hell

Depeche Mode. first time i saw them on the Violator tour (1990) they did next to fuck all from the entire first 4 albums and the whole 81-85 singles album.
so no Just Can't Get Enough etc. incredible gig mind. Bowie too in 1996 at the Phoenix fest he barely did a non 90s hit. that was amazing too though!

Replace "your biggest hit" with "that cover from the Youtube you did for somebody's birthday" or "that out-of-character novelty song" and you'll be in the same damned boat as 75% other indie rock acts on their way to indie rock hell

― flamboyant goon tie included, Tuesday, October 9, 2012 11:06 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

oh yeah. really gotta be careful what you put out there that could easily become a fan favorite without you wanting it to be.

I've seen SY lots and don't think I've ever not seen them play "Kool Thing".

I've seen them twice and I don't think they played it, but thinking abt it I literally don't remember a single song they played either time except for a 40-minute version of Diamond Sea

OH OF COURSE: Sinead.

She famously introduced a Wailers song, saying it was "a song by one of the greatest songwriters of our time", and somebody said "...Prince?" and she said "NO I'M TALKING ABOUT PETER FUCKING TOSH"

(xpost: at an all-ages outdoor summer festival, at a university, when they were the only act playing.)

imagine Sinead has only song Nothing a handful of times live ever

* actually the report included a "fuck that fucking midget" but I don't really approve of that, Sinead

song sung

but ppl going to see her prob wouldn't expect it

Prince did a version when I saw him this year, but it wasn't v good. His Martika autocover was better.

oh yeah. really gotta be careful what you put out there that could easily become a fan favorite without you wanting it to be.

I don't think too many artists are thinking "uh oh, this song/cover is Too Good or Too Random, I better make sure everybody switches off their cell phones lest it make me a million dollars" but maybe I'm wrong? Usually the realization that Satan was sitting next to you that day comes many years later when people won't stop shouting "Citibank! Citibank!" because of a plum license

oh i know. i'm just saying...i've watched bands play a set full of the best songs they could write, and then they throw in an '80s cover or some kind of jokey thing with swear words in the chorus, and the crowd goes nuts and i think "what a shame, that's all these idiots will remember about the show now." and sometimes that ends up being all i can remember too.

iirc Prince plays NC2U live all the time? xxp

like Alien Ant Farm? they supposedly would just mess around playing the "Smooth Criminal Riff" while warming up. then people asked them to play the whole song. then they got signed, and the label wanted to put it on their album. and now it's the only thing anyone knows them for. maybe they're fine with it, maybe it's not big loss that nobody knows what their actual songwriting is like, but to me that's illustrative of how slippery the slope is. (xpost)

xpost Bowie is one of those guys that gave a huge hunk of his catalog its own farewell tour, though.

When I saw Sinead in 2007 she totally played "Nothing Compares 2 U."

ooh yeah that's a good example

xp re Alien Ant Farm

Prince played it, too, a couple of weeks ago.

When I saw Gotye a few months back, he/they sort of snuck the ubiquitous hit into the middle of the set, iirc.

I was on the house for the second ever performance of Making Mirrors material, two days after the album came out (six weeks after the single had, the week after it went to #1) and he played it in the middle there too

The Pogues only play Fairytale of New York when their banjo player's niece is in town or something.

Didn't Neil Young refuse to play anything out of On The Beach untill it was reissued?

Leonard Cohen never used to play "Famous Blue Raincoat". He's started playing it in the past few years though.

Replace "your biggest hit" with "that cover from the Youtube you did for somebody's birthday" or "that out-of-character novelty song" and you'll be in the same damned boat as 75% other indie rock acts on their way to indie rock hell

Hitting rock bottom for a band presumably occurs when people start shouting for "that song people mistakenly think is one of yours due to prevalence of incorrectly-tagged mp3s on Limewire".

Did people ask for "There She Goes" at Boo Radley gigs?

(That's not incorrectly taggged, neccessarily, btw)

Didn't Neil Young refuse to play anything out of On The Beach untill it was reissued?
Saw him play Ambulance Blues in 98 or 99, so that isn't right. But that isn't exactly a weird omission since the legacy of that album was really created since it was reissued, it seems.

yeah rem played 'ambulance blues' w/ him at a bridge benefit late 90s; peter buck had requested it and said neil's reponse was 'why would you want to play THAT?'

Replace "your biggest hit" with "that cover from the Youtube you did for somebody's birthday" or "that out-of-character novelty song" and you'll be in the same damned boat as 75% other indie rock acts on their way to indie rock hell

Yeah, Ted Leo did a wacky mash-up cover thing of "Maps" and "Since U Been Gone" about 8 years ago and people still shout for it at his shows.

I'm pretty sure I saw a Sonic Youth show in Hollywood in the late 90s where they ONLY played "The Diamond Sea"!

I've seen The Walkmen five or six times and they have never played "The Rat."

i like the 'not playing the hit version of the hit' workaround -- like Springsteen doing the acoustic demo arrangement of "Born In The U.S.A." then they can't complain that you didn't play it, and might actually appreciate getting a different take on it. or you can do one of those medleys where you breeze past the big hit in 30 seconds.

saw mark farner at a local park this summer and he omitted "we're an american band." puzzling until i realized he didn't write or sing that one. still, though.

the only thing that's weird to me is the idea that you're entitled to tell a musician what to do or how to do their job.

otm

the only thing that's weird to me is the idea that you're entitled to tell a musician what to do or how to do their job.

― budo jeru, Tuesday, August 29, 2023 12:32 PM bookmarkflaglink

it's so "weird" that you didn't conform to my specific expectations

― budo jeru, Tuesday, August 29, 2023 12:32 PM bookmarkflaglink

is anybody actually doing that itt, though?

xxxpost That's why some bands do their hits songs twice in concert (Queen with "We Will Rock You", Neil Diamond with "America", etc.)

this isn't the "songs I'm angry didn't get played" thread, it's "weird omissions", aka "huh, I woulda thought they would ahve played xxx song!"

in this day and age I spoil the setlists for myself when I can so if it's a band where me wanting to go depends on what they play, I already know going in.

Not a weird omission as such, but I find it amusing that for the Cure's only live album/concert film recorded in the US they didn't play what was by far their biggest US hit.

I'm glad that I spent a lot of time at jam band shows, where the bands had no hits and would just surprise you with whatever-the-fuck out of their 100+ song repertoire every night. It inured me somewhat to the disappointment of not seeing bands play specific songs.

But I see the point. I saw Living Colour last month and was mildly disappointed that they didn't play Open Letter to a Landlord, which was one of their biggest singles. But they played a lot of cool stuff I didn't expect and the show ruled. But if they hadn't played Cult of Personality, their absolute biggest hit, it would have seemed pretty weird. I looked them up on setlist.fm after the show, and sure enough, night after night of Cult of Personality, while Open Letter is rotated in and out every few shows.

I can't spoil setlists for myself though. I did that once by accident a few years ago - went to check a band's setlists and realized that they played the same show at every stop of the tour. Went into the concert knowing what they were going to play and when, and that killed the momentum of the show for me.

xpost "Friday I'm in Love"?

Lovesong, No. 2 on the Hot 100

this isn't the "songs I'm angry didn't get played" thread, it's "weird omissions", aka "huh, I woulda thought they would ahve played xxx song!"

Exactly. It's just observations, not accusations or demands or anything. I certainly enjoyed that Specials gig and simply thought it strange afterwards that they didn't draw in the entire Finsbury Park crowd with their best known song.

oh, I see. I guess I assumed since FIIL has 3 times as many Spotify streams as Lovesong

if jason alexander's two-hour speech was, say, a one-man show about his experience as a young actor performing in a stephen sondheim flop on broadway, then, no, i wouldn't expect him to bring up seinfeld.

well sure but concerts generally aren't that it's "watch us play for 2 hours". like I don't think any of this applies if you're specifically seeing a band doing say one of those shows where they perform an album in full (though most bands will still do the big hits during those anyway).

I can't spoil setlists for myself though. I did that once by accident a few years ago - went to check a band's setlists and realized that they played the same show at every stop of the tour. Went into the concert knowing what they were going to play and when, and that killed the momentum of the show for me.

― peace, man, Tuesday, August 29, 2023 1:34 PM (one hour ago) bookmarkflaglink

yea I nearly looked up the Sparks setlist before I saw them (and yes, it was the exact same every night on this tour) and I'm really glad I didn't. there were at least 5 tunes I never would've guessed on there and realizing they really were playing *that* song was so much fun

Another gray area is when an artist has a new band or goes solo and people come expecting to hear songs by the former band. Like I know Robert Plant didn't play Zeppelin songs live for a number of years but then added some to his set in the late 80s. And idiots were always yelling for Minor Threat songs at Fugazi songs.

I always found it interesting that Meat Puppets, even a decade into their career were still totally pleasing themselves by loading the setlist with goofy cover versions, instead of playing Backwater or Plateau.

Once I saw them open with a jaunty trundle through 'A White Sport Coat & a Pink Carnation' when they could have just launched into Sam and blown everyone away.

Keeping the SST theme, Black Flag and Hüsker Dü were well known for filling their setlists with new songs and works in progress, IIRC.

famously a big problem for Mike Doughty who says he found it triggering

tbf I kind of get it from the fans perspective - that Stewart Copeland/Adrian Belew supergroup from a few years back would play some old Police/King Crimson/Belew solo tunes but most of the set was from the studio album. which is fine, I mean I thought that album was pretty good and obviously what the band was formed to play, but also they were good enough to replicate it pretty much note-for-note. but hearing Copleand fill Bruford's shoes or Belew imitate Sting, or even Mark King doing a vocal that's a completely new take on a Police song, that shit was super cool