Set list good or bad?

OK, played the mini festival last night, in the main hall the band before us overextended and we didn't sound check properly so it took a couple of songs to get the levels right. Our set was half an hour, but the next band were still on the road so we played on for a full hour. We then moved on to the marquee where we finished the evening. Again we had a 30 minute set lined up but ended up doing about 20 songs. Good fun in a relaxed environment. Next stop, practice Wednesday prior to the full month on 7th Jan.

Making the drummer think? Sure that's a good strategy when on stage. /three spinning smilies

This forum needs spinning smilies. 

Nothing much there post 2000, but much is very British based. Looking at another Stereophonics song to add to the repertoire probably "A Thousand Trees" and we've already slipped in White Rabbit, so we've got 30'ish songs now

Our new bass player has managed to find us a drummer! Sounds like he will fit in, so he's coming along next week. We've done some more rough takes on soundcloud for the bass player to learn the songs. Won't be long before we can put some time in a do a proper recording. 

Didn't happen, the guy, although was interested, just had too many commitments. Still we have a couple more guys that we know of who may be interested, we'll see how it goes, we're not in a great rush because we have a stand in who will play any gigs that we may line up in the summer.

I had a practice with the other guitarist last week and we now have Oliver's Army pretty much ready to introduce to the other guys and we have started on Always the Sun

I'll be the first to say it and probably get a lot of stick for it but here it goes, I don't like set lists, the band I'm in doesn't have one and we play 95% plus covers, we find them to be far too rigid and leave you very little room for change and adapting to your audience or the venues atmosphere or mood or any changes that happen during the night, we're a resident band we play so we play the same private club three nights a week, we play 90 minute sets, with a 20-30 minute break in between sets, usually 4 sets on Thursday nights, 5 on Friday and 6 on Saturday, though we do play 'by ear' a lot so if the night is going well we will maybe add an extra set or two in, but we don't have a strict set list, in fact we decide on the night what we are as we are playing, we always plan the first couple of songs we're going to play according to how the venue feels and it's mood when we are about to start playing and how we would like to influence it according to our mood on the night, but after the first two, three or four songs, we're picking songs according to how the venue's audience feels on a song by song basis, yes we have quite a few songs that we 'pair up' or play in groups as in if we play one song we pretty much follow it with a specific song or couple of songs though not always on the same order due to how we can blend them in together. But we don't have a set list, we could if we where ever asked for what we play provide a list of every song that we cover, or every band that we play covers from, but since we are not 'chasing gigs' anymore and have a residency, we have no need to have a pre arranged set, and in fact find it to be rather limiting, for example during bad nights, nights that we aren't feeling it, we can 'drag' out songs and turn songs that are normally 5 minutes in length and under into 15 to 45 minutes clock burners as we call them, or when our partners are in the audience sneak in songs that we know are among their favourites - all our partners seem to come to most of our gigs every week so we always sneak in song just for them that might not suit the venue we play at. Not to mention that we improvise a lot, it's actually easier sometimes to improvise a solo or play your own, instead of learning a solo note for note, though sometimes if it is a really distinctive solo there is no getting around learning it note for note, or at least the general outline of it.

One thing that we do have however is a 'closer' a song, or two, that we always play when we are finished for the night, that lets the venue and audience know that they can hang around all night if they want, but this is the last song and we're fucking off home when it's finished, it's also a bit of a hint to the management that we're done, but we could be persuaded to stay on for the right amount or a 'bonus', for us it's 'Closing Time' by 'Semisonic', and '3AM' by 'Matchbox Twenty':


 




So I would of voted that you take up squash, sorry it wasn't to be mean, or as a put down, but because if your ultimate goal is a residency at a venue or a recording deal, your going to need to be able to adapt to the crowd and situation as it happens on the fly.  You are there after all to set and guide the mood of the venue, so that can mean pump it up and get everybody excited or calm it down and get people to slow down.  On top of that you have to as well be able to adapt to different venues and audiences, you might be an indie covers band, but if you get a gig in an area that is predominately rockers, you have to be able to recognize that they are not your usual crowd and target audience, but you still have to entertain them and keep them happy, and venues can change overnight from being full of Rockers to Brit pop fans, Mods, Metal Heads over night depending on the groups of people who show up, so you can get booked at a venue that usually caters for Indie music fans, but the night you play, it's full of rock fans.

Nope Thursday night we usually play until 2am or 3am, Friday we play until between 4am and 5am, and Saturday we play until between 5am and 7am, depending on how good the night is going and good a mood the band is in, we start playing between 7pm and 9:30pm, generally we start a bit later than we are meant to, but most nights we play we usually start no later than 7:30pm, this last week has been an exception as I had to cancel all of my Monday students to attend one of my students schools orchestra's Easter performance, and reschedule them for Tuesday, so instead of teaching Monday through to and including Tursday, I was teaching from Tuesday through to and including Friday.  That's one of the reasons why the three gigs this week went on longer, a lot longer, than we would normally play for unless it was a special occasion, we had to start playing later on Thursday and Friday due to my teaching commitments.  We don't normally play until 4am/5am on a Thursday night and until 9am/10am on a Friday and Saturday night, these hours are generally for special occasions like Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, Boxing Day, New Years Eve and New Years Day.  

If you work it out including breaks we play for 8 hours on a Thursday night, 10 on a Friday night and 12 on a Saturday night, that's including 30 minute breaks in between sets, and a 30 minute break after the last set, if you don't count the set breaks we play for 6 hours on Thursday night, 7.5 hours on Friday night, and 9 hours on Saturday night, that's not unusual for a house band, not to mention it's a private club we play at, it's open to members 24 hours a day, and it is rarely not busy, in the what must be coming up to 5 years now that we have been the house band there, I have never seen the bar at the club not busy.  

They have live music three nights a week, usually until 2am or 3am on Thursdays, until 4am or 5am on Fridays and until 5am or 7am on Saturdays, though during public holidays, and special occasions there may be more nights that we play, or we may play till later.  The bar itself is open 24 hours a day, and you can get served alcohol 24 hours a day 7 days a week and still smoke a cigarette indoors due to it being a private club.

Thanks to it being a private club, it doesn't have to follow the same rules or laws that a bar open to the public does.

Check out the first post, we're not interested in regular gigs or earning any cash, this is purely for fun. Maybe over time we will build a much larger repertoire, but at the moment we have about 30 songs and growing. I can't even imagine playing for 9 hours, that's about 100 different songs! so, with all the evenings you do, you must have hundreds of songs to call on. Very impressive.
Anyway, I used to play squash, don't really want to go back to it, so I think we'll soldier on:) .
Interesting bit about smoking, the law in England doesn't allow employees to be subjected to other people's smoke, private club or not.

Cool on the band, Gooner...

We had rehearsal tonight... Worked bugs out of Sgt.P, Rocky Mtn Way, Badge, and a couple other old tunes....

We have another gig coming up down on the coast in a ritzy place in a real ritzy area, and they want us to back some singers for something or another local contest during one of our set blocks...

We are all old farts that did it for a living waaaay back, play mostly blues in this band but we've played about everything at one time or another... Just adding some more oldie RnR stuff for money gigs like that. They like us. $$$ Hey, the right pay, we'll play the hell out of Muttface Sally...

Thanks Drew, we're trying to be a bit different, covering indie/pop/punk. The songs are really coming together now and we have definitely got a gig July 16th, it will be same sort of thing we did at the end of December and in addition it's likely we will play a 50th B'day party at some point.

out of interest what are the songs you don't know?

Not really, we recorded Golden Brown because I wasn't happy with the levels........I was right. I stuck it on Soundcloud so all the band have access to it, Guitars and keys need turning down. We are getting a focusrite 18i8 soon so will be able to go straight from the mixer.
https%3A%2F%2Fsoundcloud.com%2Fgooner_1%2Fgolden-brown-cover

We're playing the summer version of what we did on 27th December so in the hall we've got about 45 mins so we're doing:

Mrs Robinson
Maid of the River
Will you
Where is my mind
Here comes your man
Up the junction
Golden brown
Annie get your gun
Local boy in the photograph
Echo Beech
Airport
Stay free
Zombie

If we have any more time (unlikely) Oliver's army, Dutchess, We go together.

Then we're in the marquee a bit later to do another hour of the stuff we've left out.

Sounds pretty good to me, at least you can hear everything, not bad.