having just seen Madonna and Bon Jovi recently i can honestly say most people come to only hear the hits. i have never seen people leave a show so early like i did during Madonna. the people around me complained the entire time because she played so many songs from MDNA. i was embarrassed that anybody would act that way. i got my seats for like $99 each before the show but the rest of the people around me paid $350 a seat and if i was going to spend that much you better believe i would check the setlist in advance.
for bon jovi i heard people bitching because they played songs from their last few albums as well as 5 new songs or so from their new album. its like they just came to hear stuff from the 80's which is so irritating to me since they have had like 10 albums since then.
i know for me the hard core fan i would die if fm played some of my favorite rare songs but for the rest of my friends or family that come to see the show if they did that they would be so angry. i'm getting tickets for my in-laws and while they are mac fans they havent kept up with them much past Tango and if they went to see them on the Say You Will tour they probably would have complained about them playing those 4-5 new songs. they have the cd because my hubby's brother bought it for them but they didnt like it because they thought it was too heavy. lol for me i loved that part of it but they were expecting something closer to Rumours. its sad because for me i love it when artists mix it up a a bit but many people want them to keep the same formula. its like whatever they do they cant win!
i am so happy fm is still touring though and i will keep paying to hear them because the music is just so damn good.

What I Don't Get?
 

What I don't get in all of this is.............

WHY DO THEY HAVE TO PLAY THE SAME SHOW EVERY NIGHT?

We can solve the hits v. no hits issue by having a revolving list of songs by show. They want to sell more tickets, you get people going to multiple shows, and paying more for it too if there was variety between shows.

Let's be honest these songs are the staples largely....

The Chain
Dreams
Rhiannon
Tusk
Landslide
Go Your Own Way
Don't Stop
Never Goin' Back Again

(you can make arguments for a couple others that's fine, but for the sake of this discussion let's say those 8)

I do like hearing the hits...I really do, but I don't need to hear them all, and a I surely don't need to hear them all everytime. Why not rotate through that list and play 1/2 of them on any given night.

Then take this next list, of near staples or singles....

Second Hand News
Big Love
Sara
Gypsy
I'm So Afraid
Silver Springs

And rotate these and play 1/2 of them a night. That gets you to about 7 or 8 a night, and leaves room for about 12 songs to have fun with...imagine something like this.

Night #1

Tusk
Dreams
Never Goin Back
Tango
The Ledge
Crystal
Save Me A Place
Angel
Big Love
Sara
I don't want to know
Smile At You
Long Distance Winner
Red Rover
That's Alright
Caroline
Rhiannon

Encore:
Silver Springs
Go Your Own Way


Night #2

The Chain
Landslide
Come
Save Me A Place
Storms
Second Hand News
Straight Back
Big Love
Sara
That's All For Everyone
Oh Well
Thrown Down
Cryin in the night
Oh Diane
Beautiful Child
I'm So Afraid


Encore:
When I See You Again
Don't Stop


For example

Fun, But you simply cannot skip GYOW.

Exactly my thoughts. It wouldn't go over well, for sure.

^^I love how everyone loves to make career decisions for Fleetwood Mac, as if somehow THEY know what is best for them. After all, they deserve to control FM because, you know, they are, like, hardcore fans and stuff. Puhlease. The bottom line is that it would be impossible for FM to please everybody so, at best, they are trying to please as many people as possible. Invariably, that means appealing to the general unwashed masses whose FM collections may be limited to The Dance and one of the many greatest hits compilations. Sadly, there are not 15,000 hardcore FM fans in every major North American city. The number one rule of show business is do not be boring. And for 90% of the audience at an FM concert, that means keeping the hits flying at a decent, consistent pace. The worst feeling for any performer, especially a sober performer, is the feeling of losing an audience. When people are displeased, they vote with their feet. Literally; they get up and go to the restroom. Or you hear the loud cackling or people yelling at each other over that distracting, unfamiliar new tune that 90% of the audience did not come to hear. As evidenced by the first few dates of the SYW tour, some of the new songs went over like a fart in church, and were summarily dropped. It isn't because they were particularly bad or difficult to perform. It's simply because the audience passively voiced their disapproval. As such, we should be grateful that they are doing anything new/obscure at all in the current setlist. And I believe it is particularly ballsy, especially for an arena-level act, to perform new songs that haven't even been released commercially.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, I caught a Rickie Lee Jones concert last week. Rickie, who used to play small-medium theaters, was at the City Winery- with a capacity of perhaps 250-300 people- most of whom I could tell were pretty diehard fans. It was just her and two accompanists on stage. Reviewing her previous setlists on setlist.fm, I already knew that Rickie played a different set every night. What I didn't know beforehand is that she doesn't have a setlist :eek:! She wings it. She would start strumming some chords and once her players recognized the song, they would chime in. And when they didn't know what song she was playing, she would start humming into the mic or she would start singing without them. Or she would instruct one to take the low harmony and the other to take the melody. I could see puzzled expressions and then smiles of recognition on her guitarist's face all night. For another song, she forgot all of the guitar chords, so she sang the song acapella. It was all so off-the-cuff that, when the show came to an abrupt end and the houselights came up and recorded music started playing over the loudspeaker, the audience was so into the show that they stayed in their seats and clapped and cheered for, like, five minutes until Rickie, who had already put on a coat and hat (as if she was about to leave the building), came back and performed three more songs. I thought the show was pretty cool in the sense that it was so small, intimate and spontaneous. But on the other hand, I thought it was a bit thoughtless and perfunctory. And it is obvious why Rickie is no longer headlining bigger venues- she could never get away with this lack of professionalism on a bigger stage. But then again, this is probably who she really is- someone who has always resented the conventional rules of show business. Accordingly, from what I've read, she has always struggled financially.

The writer does sound like a Ledgie, completely disconnected from the masses! :laugh:

I enjoyed the piece, but Fleetwood Mac basically has a guarantee to make lots and lots of money with an arena tour and that trumps all fantasies and pipe dreams.

Good point.

Its hard to please anybody.

If we manage FM.They probably quit on us because we will have different ideas and they will get confused and say take this gig and shove it.

As I say to the fans. DON'T Blanking GO if you are tired hearing the same setlist tunes over and over again.

They will not hold it against you if you dont show up at the show.



BTW I do enjoy Rickie's tunes .I'm glad she still makes her rounds.Thanks for sharing that Ed.

I think rotating songs from night to night would be the most practical way to compromise between pressures here, if you can take for granted that all the songs are rehearsed enough that is.

I don't know who is putting the pressure on the band to make a lot of money, but my gut reaction is to wonder why a band that's sold this much at this point can't just do whatever the hell they want at this point (so long as they can pay the venues they choose). I guess it's partly that Fleetwood Mac only gets its **** together every so often, that puts a lot of pressure on those moments to please everyone, which yes is impossible.

Rock's Back Pages
http://www.rocksbackpagesblogs.com/2...ldies-circuit/

the new oldies circuit

Author: Mitchell Cohen 13 Apr 2013

Anyone who goes to see Fleetwood Mac or Rickie Lee Jones in 2013 knows what to expect, at least in terms of repertoire. Paying for a ticket — neither admission price being what you’d consider inexpensive — is like striking a bargain: I’m going to come hang out with you for a couple of hours, and you’re going to play a bunch of songs I recognize, and there aren’t going to be more than a few surprises (arrangements might change, some songs may be more passionately rendered, vocal keys are adjusted for age, that kind of thing). This implied deal is a trap that the artists find themselves in, especially at the Fleetwood Mac level. Walking into Madison Square Garden, I was reassured that the band had no current album to promote (turns out they have recorded new music, and shared one song from the sessions), because if you go into the house of Lindsay and Stevie, you want to watch that dynamic play out with the script you know: it’s like a revival of Death of a Salesman or Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf, with the text (and in this case, the cast) locked in place and only the staging and performances the unknown factors.

The problem with Fleetwood Mac 2013 isn’t that the band is slack or uninspired — those rock songs from Fleetwood Mac, Rumours and Tusk crackle (“Go Your Own Way” is one of the best singles of the ’70s), and Nicks still twirls girlishly on the spacier songs, and Buckingham squeezes out sparks on guitar — but that there’s a central character missing. Without Christine McVie, there’s nothing to bring the band down to earth, no calming moments, no soulfulness, really, and no “Over My Head” or “Say You Love Me” (or “You Make Lovin’ Fun,” or “Over & Over”). Everyone loves Stevie Nicks — the young women jump out of their seats and sing along with every note of “Landslide” and Rhiannon,” songs that they hold close to their hearts — but she was the third-best writer in the group, and on the numbers where she isn’t throwing ambivalent darts at her guitarist, she can be a bit much, slinking around the stage in her wardrobe of scarves.

A couple of nights later at City Winery, Rickie Lee Jones faced an audience similarly inclined: they came to reminisce, primarily, although they paid homage by buying the new CD (of cover songs, it should be noted) at the merch table. Jones’ impressive debut album came out in 1979, the same year as Tusk, on the same label, and it’s probably a safe bet that not a small number of the post-boomers at both shows own Rickie Lee Jones and at least Rumours, if not its complicated follow-up. Backed by a guitarist and a cellist, Jones tossed off her hit “Chuck E’s In Love” early on in the set — get that out of the way — and eventually made her way to the piano where she locked into “Living It Up” and “We Belong Together,” two songs from her second album Pirates, and that was where the show lifted off. She wasn’t bound by the original arrangements, and couldn’t have recreated them under those musical conditions anyway, so she found the centers of them, and re-sculpted them. But what if there were a new album of new songs? Would the audience get fidgety? That’s part of the trap. The Devil You Know(nice title) visits The Stones, Tim Hardin, Donovan, Neil Young, “St. James Infirmary,” so she could throw a few of those into the set without disrupting the flow, but this new generation of oldies artists also wants to stay vital, and how do they manage that?

For a few minutes, everyone was saying how good the new David Bowie album is, and they’re right, but I listened to it once, just to check in, was pleased that it shows some vitality, and then filed it away (not literally, since I didn’t purchase a hard copy, but mentally). If he does tour, how much of it could he get away with, in arenas where people are paying hundreds of dollars to see him? He’s not alone. What if Tom Petty album put out an album of new songs before storming the Beacon Theater for a week, and used those shows to hype it? And it doesn’t matter so much whether Tempest, Psychedelic Pill, Wrecking Ball and Old Ideas are ok, disappointing or great Dylan, Young, Springsteen and Cohen albums: they aren’t going to convert many new fans, and if there are new fans to be made, each of those artists has at least ten albums that are more essential entry points. I’m seeing a lot of pre-publicity for new Elton John and Rod Stewart albums, each being called a return to form, or something like that, but honestly, does anyone believe that either is going to deserve to sit alongside Tumbleweed Connectionor Never A Dull Moment? Or that it’s going to mean much if, by some bolts of inspiration, they do? We all know which Elton and Rod songs are going to get people on their feet at Madison Square Garden.

http://emscee.com/foolsparadise/

I was thinking the same thing because I swear I saw Item #3 posted here somewhere recently.