If a group tours after their first album… what do they perform? Say they have a 45 minute album… do they just do 45 minutes of music and talk a little?
From my own limited experience of this, well, yeah. Usually less.
Thing is, most bands (that I’ve seen live) with just the one vinyl platter to their name are opening acts, for some more established band/performer, with a larger catalogue o’ tunes. Usually, it’ll be a 20-40 minute set, with the one ‘hit’ song, a couple others from the album, then maybe a couple cover tunes thrown into the mix.
Or, the one-disc band is playing some small venue, like a night club/dance club, and the bulk of the evening’s music is provided by the DJ, or other bands. YMMV, naturally.
It’s pretty rare for an act to be big enough to sell 2-hour concerts when they’ve only had one album. (Guns 'n Roses did it in 1988-89, can’t think of any others right now.) They’re usually an opening act, and 45 minutes is around the average time on stage. When they do play as a main attraction, they add covers, extend their songs with meandering solos, or simply show up an hour late. (GNR did all three.)
A lot of “freshman” bands also will tour with 2 or 3 semi-unknown opening acts, sometimes more. Of the few of those I’ve seen, everyone plays for about 30 minutes.
Some bands with only one album have a lot more original songs than they put on the album.
I know when I saw Beck in concert he only had two albums, but he performed songs that showed up on future albums.
Max: IIRC, I saw G’n’R opening for Aerosmith in spring/summer 88… Did they headline a later tour that year (or in 89), or is my memory making bad connections in my head? (Hey, it happens all too often, but I was pretty sure about this one.)
They did show up late (only about 20 minutes, though), add solos, and to top it all off, Axel seemed to be suffering laryngitus to boot; they only did two songs, then split, much to the bemusement of the crowd.
[sub]Bemusement here entailed booing, screaming, and the hurling of much trash at the poor roadies who had to set up for the next act.[/sub]
I’ve seen several bands headline gigs (mostly at fairly small venues) for forst major releases. Usually they have extra material they can play to round it out.
When I saw the Dave Mathews Band the first time he probably had enough non-released material to just play that stuff. But he appears to be addicted to songwriting so that’s no surprise.
Alanis Morrisette played every song on ‘Jagged Little Pill’ and two songs that appeared on her follow up. I realize she had two albums out prior to JLP but she appears to be pretending they don’t exist.
The Gin Blossoms I saw three times on their first national tour and they pretty much stuck to the formula while throwing in some regional covers. Here in DC they played some stuff by Tommy Keene, which worked for me (but I’m an old guy) and Robin did some crowd surfing.
Anything to keep the crowd busy and happy, I guess.
I saw Bush play during their first tour.
They played the whole album, two songs of their second album, and one song I never heard get released at all.
Actually, it’s funny. No Doubt(who was nobody then) opened for the Goo Goo Dolls who opened for Bush. It was funny to see No Doubt. Gwen was on stage saying, “Do you even know who we are?” and the audience was booing them.