Live Music

Setlist.fm and the End of Rock n’Roll Surprises

I know I don’t have to look, but….

Remember wristbands? For big shows, you had to get one a few days before tickets went on sale just to get a place in line. For some reason, the powers that were didn’t want people braving the elements for three nights in a flimsy tent just for a chance to see Van Halen in concert.

If you asked me, something was lost the day those things were introduced. Which you didn’t, but get off my lawn, etc.

Things have changed in the 35 years since I started attending shows. Recently, they’ve taken away ticket stubs and made the t-shirts too hideous to contemplate. Next thing you know, there will be people with cameras filming the whole thing to post online the minute the show ends. Or worse, live stream it.

Oh.

Now they have taken away the surprise of what songs will be played.

Setlist.fm is the seemingly harmless culprit. For the uninitiated, I am referring to a website on which every last show by all of your favourite artists is listed in chronological order and displays — in most cases — a comprehensive list of every song that was played. I would imagine that it is actually people who attended the shows that compile the lists, wiki-style.

It’s genius if you ask me. I try to keep track of all my shows and the songs and moments that stuck out, but even the next day, when I get around to writing about it, my memory is already a bit foggy, and it helps to have this information at my fingertips.

Oh, and it’s free. So what’s the problem?

Look, I know that Setlist.fm exists as an invaluable repository of every show that ever was. And when I want to know what the Beautiful South played when I saw them in 1995 or what Die Toten Hosen blazed through at the Sziget Festival in Budapest when I was there in 2009.

When I wrote about the first show I ever saw, way back in the late 1980s, I realized there was a gap between what I wanted to remember and what actually happened.

Funny how the brain does that, right?

But what is upside for some is a downside for the next guy, and now I can know before the show even begins what songs will be played and in what order. In fact, I can look back on multiple dates on a current tour, and if things are similar, then I can be assured with virtual certainty of what I will see and hear.

Nobody’s got a gun to my head. Of course, I don’t have to look. But we know how that goes.

I am sure that Setlist.fm exists for the right reasons. Like all social media platforms, it was all good intentions at the outset. But also like all of them, there are unintended side effects that no one takes responsibility for.

That’s not entirely true. The responsibility not to look is mine. I have to govern myself and that’s where things get tricky.

My next show is Tears for Fears at the end of the month. And it’s going to take everything I have not to see if they will play “Mad World,” or at what point in the show “Woman in Chains” happens.

Will they play any covers? What does the encore consist of? What can I anticipate as being the high point of the show?

What good will knowing these things do me, except kill the sense of wonder one should get from seeing shows?

You still see people who insist on filming snippets of songs at shows, and I always wonder, “When are you going to watch this?” and “How is what you are doing better than just being in the moment of it right now?”

I guess I could ask myself a similar question: “Why do you need to have this information?” and “Why don’t you just let it happen and let yourself be surprised?”

The only people who need to know what’s next are the soundman, the lighting guy, and the guitar techs. You want a setlist? Get a roadie to give you the paper copy that’s duct taped to the stage at the end of the show. Throw it into a frame when you get home and call it art. Hang it on the wall, and Robert is your dad’s brother.

Let it go, man. You don’t need to know everything all at once all the time. There’s a life lesson in there somewhere, I’m sure.