I know there is going to be a high variability to this. A band that’s been around for a long time is going to build up a repertoire, and some music is easier to retain than others (e.g., blues songs in just a few keys).
On the other hand, a lot of pop songs as recorded are fairly difficult to reproduce live and would careful practice.
So, let’s take a band like Dave Matthews. Can they just play any of their rather elaborately instrumented tunes at any time? Are there some cuts that they just recorded for an album and perhaps have never performed live at all? And so on for other bands.
I know there’s no single factual answer, so any wisdom and insights you can provide would be appreciated!
Well, I remember Alex Lifeson of Rush saying that he can remember every guitar part he’s ever written. But I don’t know if that means that the band as a whole could just pull out any obscure tune from their back catalog and perform it.
Depends on the band. The Grateful Dead are known for being able to play just about any song they ever recorded, as well as cover versions of songs they didn’t, and use a different setlist in every concert. I wouldn’t be surprised if they could play 200 songs, possibly more.
Most bands have a regular set list for each tour. For a long-established band, it will consist of a mix of their hits and some new material. They also rehearse the list prior to touring and each concert will be pretty much the same.
Yeah, the Dead had a lot of songs, probably more than 200 in total, as there were quite a few that only got played a few times.
The E Street Band seem to be able to play a vast amount of stuff, and Springsteen takes requests at every concert. It’s always interesting to hear them more or less learning some of them as they go on, which is pretty impressive for a band with about 17 members.
With both bands, there’s been occasions when they’ve completely screwed up songs, most famously for the Dead at Woodstock, but they’re surprisingly rare.
They use teleprompter-type equipment that displays lyrics and chord changes on-the-fly to help them pull this off (not saying that’s necessarily a bad thing).
I first saw that being used for the Who’s 1996 Quadrophenia tour with Billy Idol and Gary Glitter. I’m in favor of it, especially if it gives the performers one less thing to worry about so they can concentrate on their performance.
In 2009 Pearl Jam played the Philadelphia Spectrum for four nights and supposedly played every song they had recorded or played in concert - 140 songs in all.
As a gigging band playing bars and private events, we typically assumed 3 sets @ 12 songs a set (3-5 minute, danceable songs) = 35-40 songs. Since we were typically trying new songs, ditching ones that didn’t get a strong response/we got tired of, we usually had 60-70 songs we could pull out easily and maybe 20-30 more we could access and dust off. So, maybe 100 after 12-18 months of ramping up?
I’d say that was pretty typical of the semi-pro bands I’ve been part of or spoken with…
Working cover bands usually know 100-200 songs, with the extreme versions having 300-500 songs. Most originals bands I’ve dealt with know far fewer as a group, sometimes just their 8-12 song set. At their height, most bands that I’ve personally been in have had 20 or so songs that we knew well enough to include in a set list, with about 10 or so more that we could get up to speed in a practice or two. If you go on long enough in an originals band, you eventually get to the point where you (thankfully) can’t remember some of your early work.
ETA: And I’m not going to defame anyone by name, but I’ve seen rather big bands have discussions about what they were going to play next while on stage - complete with “I don’t remember how to play XXXXX, do you remember how to play it?” being said.
Purely anecdotal, but I remember watching REM Unplugged on MTV way back when and Michael Stipe had to read the lyrics to “It’s The End of the World (As We Know It)” off a sheet of paper. I don’t blame him for it but I was amused.
I also watched a Youtube clip of Rilo Kiley performing where Jenny Lewis fumbled her way through one of their early songs (“The Frug”) obviously only half remembering how it went. She was able to laugh it off but that was the closest thing they had to an early hit and she still couldn’t remember the words.
Both of those are vocalists and I don’t know how remembering the instrumental parts compares but I can certainly believe that some have a hard time calling back to infrequently played songs on a moment’s notice.
I’m not in a band, but I’ve been to more than 150 concerts and seen maybe 400 bands live, many multiple times. In general, most songs cannot be performed exactly as it was on the album and it requires a band to do a live arrangement. For some bands, most or all of their songs will translate well, for others they have to pick and choose which ones will work well, and that means some songs will never get performed live, or they may try, realize it doesn’t work, and drop it.
For cover bands, I think the numbers above make sense, they’re not spending their time composing, and they need to have enough to keep things interesting for an audience, so I could easily see them have 100+ songs they could pull out, perhaps some needing a bit more rehearsal than others. For bands performing original work, I think that number is a lot smaller. From what I’ve seen, a brand new band will generally get a fairly short set list and perform maybe 5-6 songs from their first album.
In fact, that seems to be the number for any touring band, play about 5-6 songs from the new album, and as albums get older, drop a track or two over time. They’ll occassional bring out an old track they’ve never played before, but I’d probably throw the number of songs they can play, perhaps with a few weeks rehearsal for a tour, at around 5-6 songs per album they’ve released. So a band that’s maybe 8 years old or so and have 4 albums, I could see them having 20-30 songs to play with and have some variation with their setlist. For bands that have been around longer and have 10+ albums, they’ll easily be able to pull out 50-60 tracks and may even have completely different sets for each show.
I’m always disappointed when a name act performs the same set night after night on tour. I know this was less of an issue in the pre-internet days, before set lists and videos were posted for every gig. But I would think it would get boring after awhile, especially on a lengthier tour, for the musicians themselves. I know Neil Young, who has a much larger body of work to choose from than most, will sometimes introduce variations from night to night, but even he falls back on fairly regular sets in the course of a tour. If I had that many songs to choose from, I would delight in shaking things up from night-to-night, and especially in surprising my fans by pulling out old and rarely heard tunes.
The acoustic duo I’ve been playing in for the last 12 years has a repertoire of over 220 songs. About 35 of them are originals, the rest covers. I still make brand new set lists for every gig we play. In this way, I can not only (for our sake) put in songs that we haven’t played for the last several gigs to avoid getting stale, but also avoid playing the same songs at the same venues.
I am gratefully blessed with having a very good memory for retaining lyrics and chords once I’ve learned them. I’m playing concurrently in a roots rock/rockabilly/classic country/60s rock band – this being a repertoire I’ve played with different bands on many occasions since the early 70s. I can’t even count the number of songs I know in these styles, and I continue to add new (old) ones to this day. Again, while there are songs I’ll nearly always play at any given gig, I try to shake these up from gig to gig also.
In the end, I can’t speak for the big guns and their approach, but I love playing and singing, and love casting my net very wide when it comes to the songs I have to choose from. In all of my musical aggregations, I’ve been pretty much limited by the other guys in the band. If I had my way, I’d learn five new songs every month…maybe more. But most others don’t see it that way.
I’ve just been browsing the Springsteen stats at setlist.fm. This year, he played about 175 different songs over 55 shows, about half of them only once or twice.
Pearl Jam look to be not far off, with about 150 songs played, again half only once or twice. Dylan did about 60, once again with about half of them played once or twice. By contrast, Black Sabbath played only 21 songs in total, with 11 of them at every concert.
I’m sure this site will answer most questions about successful bands, but I think the basic answer is that it varies greatly.
I imagine that a lot of it now has to do with the way that nearly every song is accompanied by specific video imagery on the big screens, and all the other things that go into making it a “show” rather than simply a “concert”. It seems that the logistics would be a nightmare if they had to have something prepared for every possible song.
As far as getting tired of playing the same songs, I can see that being the case with more “straightforward” musical styles. Just ask any bar band veteran about playing Sweet Home Alabama But with certain other, more complex music, I think it’s more like what Neil Peart has to say here:
The minimum to start regular bar gigs is 60, for top-40 cover bands or similar. You’ll play about 40 in a night, and if you don’t have a 50% pad to change things up, you’ll have a harder time drawing a regular crowd. Different kinds of bands can get away with fewer; blues and jazz tunes tend to get drawn out much longer, so the count can be a bit lower.
Plus there are a number of songs everyone’s played in other bands and could be done well enough at the drop of a hat without practice, on request. Mustang Sally, anyone?
Understood, but I’m old enough and curmudgeonly enough to remember when bands relied on the music they played to make a connection with their audience, rather than on all the extraneous “show” elements. If you can’t move an audience with solely your music, you shouldn’t be up there. Although the blame for this rests as much with the audiences as with the bands, I suppose.
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As far as getting tired of playing the same songs, I can see that being the case with more “straightforward” musical styles. Just ask any bar band veteran about playing Sweet Home Alabama But with certain other, more complex music, I think it’s more like what Neil Peart has to say here:
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I’m a “weekend warrior” local musician, and have never aspired to anything more than that. The overwhelming majority of the music I play is very simple. As long as I can vary my sets somewhat from gig to gig, I don’t tire of the music I play — even though I’ve been playing a fair number of songs in my repertoire for 40 years or more. It’s almost never “automatic” for me…I still feel the emotions the music contains, and try to put them across — for both the audience’s sake, and for my own.
No offense to anyone, but bands like Rush are anathema to me. I can certainly understand respect for their musicianship, but it’s just not what I would care to hear. I’m a “feel” musician as opposed to a technically skilled one…feel and emotion mean way more to me than how many different notes you can play in ten seconds.
I once drove hours to see Bob Mould play in Philadelphia on one night, and then drove another hefty distance to see him play in Washington, D.C., the next. I took a look at the set list before the latter and discovered, with some dismay, that the song selection was virtually identical. He would be playing precisely two songs that he hadn’t the night before. I suspect that the only reason that the set lists were not TOTALLY identical is that Washington, D.C., was his home base at the time, and he kind of wanted to put a little extra oomph into it. Now, I’m not saying that I expected him to give me all-new material from one night to the next. But I’m not sure, much as I love Bob’s music, that I would have bothered with doing all that driving had I known in advance that the shows were more or less going to be the same.
Old Road Dog and House FOH for med/large venues(where touring bands play), here.
Just to add to what others have said upthread, there is every variation under the sun. I have seen big new bands with 8 songs on the set list and that is all they know. I have seen laminated set lists that state "tour 201*). I toured with a latin rock band that started almost every show with one song and ended on another but they argued every night about all the other songs on the list and what order. Those guys had about 25 songs down pat and could work up one more from about 12 at sound check.
My current boss (hurry up and take me on tour Matt, I am getting bored), never uses a set list and calls “audibles” all night. He and the band know 20 or so originals, have 10 or more covers ready to go( but no more than 1 or 2 a night are played) and could ably get through another 40 or more. They are a blues band so they can also do "12 bar, in A flat, turn around on the 6 and it does this thing… A one-A two… and kill it. Those are fun, I get to see the Organist pat the top of his head, Matt never looks.
I saw a show once, 10,000 Maniacs, where after the set was done, the singer took requests from the audience (the band was likely unable to hear this), start to sing a cappella and the band folded seamlessly into the song. They did this for close to 10 songs, from a long career and did it very well. Probably their last tour, on SMU campus in a large theater or hall.
But with certain other, more complex music, I think it’s more like what Neil Peart has to say here: