Similar Setlist Thoughts?

[negative1]

[yeah maybe this should go in the moments forum?
(or stay here for more visibility)]... anyways...

ok, as i tend to do around album and release time..
(more so for the last couple of albums), i try to
stay away from the boards and news...

why? because i found that in the past, looking
at things too closely or too long tends to dull
the excitement, and enjoyment of the 'new' material..

sure, a lot of what is out now is just the evolution
of a lot of material from the past.. but still.. i digress..

i guess it really says something about this group,
that i remember people complaining (and i was one
of them), back in the 'beaucoup fish' era, that sometimes
(not often) they really didn't expand on their setlist...

well, it really hit home with 'a hundred days off'' album ..
i remember tracking the percentages of the songs
that were the same from show to show !!!

so here we are a decade later... same band (somewhat)
as UW MK2 (with 1 replacement).... and we see the
band 'settling' with playing a similar, and sometimes
exact same SONGS for each of their shows!

well, since i didn't bother to check out the songs this time..
I REALLY ENJOYED THE SHOW... yes, i've seen them
several times now....and regardless, no matter how big
the crowd, or the venue, they always put on an energetic
and entertaining show (at least here in the US/Canada)....

i just saw them last night, and will see them again
tomorrow....and you know what, if they do play the
same songs.. i won't mind (well not much).... sure
hearing 'dirty epic' live for the first time is special...
[i've never heard them play it before...darnit.. but now
i can cross that off my list... hopefully 'juanita' someday]...

maybe i'm older, sadder, wiser, jaded... or is it relaxed,
or sedate about the whole thing.... trust me, if i was
really disenchanted, or disinterested i wouldn't bother
going...i did drive 6 hours to see them you know....
[and no, i'm not justifying that as a reason that i
enjoyed it]....

maybe they've come to terms that this time around..
(like in the past)... that this generation, or this audience
doesn't really mind the setlist, or song selection...

YES, the fan in me wants the older way, with the improvs,
and long sets... but unless they go back to a 'riverrun' phase...
[which i totally dug]... i just don't see it happening again any
time soon..

of course, i could be wrong, because i know they tend to mix
it up a lot more for non-US audiences.... but the last few times
(3 now)... when the album/singles came out... they tended to
go back to the formulaic style for their concerts..

maybe that's why i don't get my hopes up too high.. but i still
got some nice surprises from the show... i'll let you find them
out, and not spoil it completely.. they do have other things
(and not just the visuals)... that will always make want to
go see them regardless of the setlist....

later
-1

[34958hq439-qjw9v5jq298v5j]

UW hasn't come within 500 miles of me in the last decade, it seems (I live in Wisconsin). I wish I could make the same complaint

[dubnobasswithme]

Interesting bit from Karl about the whole 'same setlist' thing:

from http://dcist.com/2010/10/dcist_inter..._of_underw.php

I read an interview online where you said you have only recently started using set lists. Is that right? How did you communicate what song is next?

Yeah. We were pretty much making it up as we went along. How would we communicate? We've always had a lot of hand signals that are now reduced to kind of nods and winks of eyes. We read the audience. It was something we learned form hanging around DJs at the end of the 80s. We'd watch these DJs turn up with a box of records, assess the audience, check out the DJ that was on before, drop the first record and then see how the audience reacted. They had no set list, they just saw how the audience reacted and improvised. And we thought, "you know, these guys are more live than most of the groups that we know. These DJs are playing different sets every night." It was a lot like watching improvised jazz to us. It's not the same every night. It's different every night, and that's what we want to do. It's just going where the flow of the night wants to go. And after 20 years of doing that, the crew, who have always improvised the videos and the lights and the sound, they came to us and said "could we maybe make a set list before we go onstage just so we can have a vague idea of what we should prepare for what's coming up."

[Troy McClure]

It'll be 7 1/2 years come Saturday, but I think knowing that they still have to do plenty of work to get the song to come together is plenty for me this time. And they still improv somewhat with the songs, from what I've heard so far this year.

It's not like they are other dance groups live where it's a good show, but it's each show is exactly the same on their tour.

They still have Karl Hyde, which is one of the best front men I've seen live regardless of genre.

-Jason

[nelfun5]

RS: How has your live show developed over the years?
Karl: Well, we’ve tried to maintain that notion of improvisation. We still don’t rehearse or have a setlist. We are inspired by the best DJs that don’t have a setlist who respond to the moment as well as jazz improvisation. Our intention is always to create something which is of the moment and is changing depending on where you are in the world and who you’re playing to and what their response is. Things have changed and obviously technology enables us to develop our instruments so that it becomes more expressive and enables us to do more of the things that we’ve always wanted to do.
We’re continually looking to being in that place where we’re unsettled so whenever we get comfortable it just doesn’t work. If something works one night, we deliberately set out to not do it the next night. Except if things are really slick, we deliberately set out to make a horrible mistake so that we can kind of get out of a kind of slick state of mind.


Makes me feel blue.

[bazwint]

Originally Posted by nelfun5

Makes me feel blue.

Me too, Wonder why he changed his mind?

[joethelion]

I think the whole "similar set list" thing comes and goes...

like during the AHDO tour - depending on what leg of the tour you saw them on, there were PORTIONS of the show that were drastically different. Like - NYC... absolutely a "moody" show (Dirty Epic showed up for like the 2nd time ever), but there were still a lot of the same songs as other nights. Then later that year (or it might've been the next year - but still for AHDO) at the Ultra Festival; songs were MUCH more "dubby" and heavy bass. It was totally a "hits" show, but the songs were different enough for me... and didn't sound like other performances at all. I didn't even recognize the first 2-3 minutes of "Twist" (as they didn't plop in the piano bit until LATE in the song)

then during OWB - there were def setlists, but nothing as strict as say... the Prodigy, Depeche Mode, etc etc. Different versions of Cowgirl (I remember the one in NYC was like 13 min long) and different openers

and then later in that same tour - you got stuff like "Airtowel" and really random OLD songs

...I haven't paid attention to this tour much - are the setlists back like AHDO again?

[testudo]

I heard from someone who directly asked Rick about why they don't mix and improvise more, Rick's answer was: "the 'People' want to just hear the hits"

hmmm... maybe got this idea from listening to too much Huey Lewis and the News... must have been a dream come true to play the TV show together the other day.

Yeah, the whole not improvising thing is just plain sad.

I mean did John Coltrane stop improvising after a period in his career so he could help the lighting guys out during his set?

It was really impressive how they lit up Karl last night and the lighting in general, but I would take an improvised sound from UW over a lighting spectacle, any day (at an underworld show)

yeh, sad.

[joethelion]

so wait...

are you guys saying that the shows ON THIS TOUR are less improvised than previous tours? (even like that '00 tour where they didn't have any Darren's... or the AHDO Tour - which was basically track-pause-track-pause, and "jamming" within songs)

or - just there has been a general progression of fewer and fewer improvs dating back to the early days?

Like - even though the OWB tour wasn't technically "improvised" - a lot of randomness was thrown in, and I mean - they only made the setlists at the last minute (as far as I've understood). I actually quite like the OWB tour, I think that if you were to pick any show at random; it's probably going to be better than any other random pick from previous years.

[potatobroth]

Originally Posted by joethelion

so wait...

are you guys saying that the shows ON THIS TOUR are less improvised than previous tours?.

What's Happening?
ON this particular tour, the setlists are identical from city to city with the only exception being which encore song shows up before Moaner: Pearl's Girl, or Dirty Epic.

Identical songs in an identical order.

What does that mean?
For anyone not as fanatical as we are, to anyone that goes to a one-off show, its an absolutely fantastic live experience. I saw them last night and it went OFF! Brilliant energy, brilliant mixes, brilliant show. BUT... to the super fan who goes to 2, 3 or more shows, its sad to see. I've done the back to back shows before and neither show resembled the other.

All that being said, that was probably my favorite of all the New York City shows I've seen of theirs. I won't be bootleg hunting this time around though. :P