Open Letter to Stevie

[DeeGeMe]

Originally Posted by discokandi7

Allelujah and Amen to that.

Unfortunately, I don't think her upcoming shows will really give us anything new. If you were to ask a casual fan to name 5 Stevie songs, your likely to get Eo17, GDW, Dreams, Rhiannon etc as an answer. Her set lists are designed to appeal to the bulk of the people at a given show, the casual fans, who go, "oh look honey, Stevie Nicks is coming to town, we should go see her", not her die-hards. At a 5000 seat venue, its most likely that 4000 of those people only know her most popular songs. Another 500 may have all her albums but only recall the hits, that leaves 500 devoted fans who would know and appreciate the rare songs. Even when she has a new album to promote, new songs in the set list are the exception to the rule. Think back to the TISL tour, by midway through the tour, she had dropped several of the songs from the new album because the audience response to them was indifference. Don't get me wrong, I would love to see a set list of mostly new/different material and NO COVERS, but it's highly unlikely that will happen.

Exactly, and that's why we'll never see a radically different set list for a Stevie tour. She doesn't do a super-long set so it's not like she's got 3 hours to pull out new material. She's got what-60 to 90 minutes on stage? Minus the time to cover the big hits--how much does that leave exactly? 1-2 songs. And that's what she's been doing recently on tours, Crash into Me, Circle Dance are examples. We have to remember that the die-hard fans only make up a very small percentage of her audience and she's got to cater to the majority, not we in the minority and the majority doesn't want to sit there as she revives a song we heard on a demo in 1979 that was never released. Also, figure that her limited vocal range these days precludes her from doing some songs entirely, which also places limitations on the song list. Given all of that, we're probably lucky to ever hear anything new/different on her tours.