Re: Setlist.fm

Largely inspired by Heff I realized that I could go through Setlist and check the concert lists of shows I've seen, both recently and going back in time. I have been perusing my own notes, which go back to the 1990s and in some cases before, and fleshing this out.

Just up to 100 shows listed:

[www.setlist.fm]

However, a lot of smaller bands I've seen don't have their concerts recorded, so I have to add them. There are some artists whom I've seen multiple times who are not even in Setlist.fm! Typically local acts, but still. It creates an impression that skews toward the larger acts.

Anyway if you are on Setlist.fm, follow me or friend me or whatever it is that people do.

Cool idea! But with (gulp) 40 years of concert-going, that would be a heck of a lot of brain cell scratching and research to attempt. And yes, i imagine since I've also seen so many shows at smaller club venues, many of those would not appear. Still, might be nice to attempt.

I admit, I don't even know how to follow or friend anyone on Setlist.fm

I love, love, love setlist. I can waste a lot of time looking over all the data. In the beginning, it was relatively easy to add setlists without any oversight but now the moderators are asking for more proof that the setlists really are accurate (it's still pretty easy to add and update). Lately, I've noticed that there are some people that must spend hours going through websites and YouTube links to add setlists. One person has been adding every live performance on John Peel's radio show.

One can send comments to other users and anyone can view these comments (unless the user deletes them). The thing is that only the comments to the user can be viewed, not the responses (I guess going to the corresponding commenter, one can see them). Some of the comments from the moderators can be pretty funny.

I love, love, love setlist. I can waste a lot of time looking over all the data. In the beginning, it was relatively easy to add setlists without any oversight but now the moderators are asking for more proof that the setlists really are accurate (it's still pretty easy to add and update). Lately, I've noticed that there are some people that must spend hours going through websites and YouTube links to add setlists. One person has been adding every live performance on John Peel's radio show.

One can send comments to other users and anyone can view these comments (unless the user deletes them). The thing is that only the comments to the user can be viewed, not the responses (I guess going to the corresponding commenter, one can see them). Some of the comments from the moderators can be pretty funny.

I used to be active on setlist back when I was attending a lot of concerts (by my modest standards) circa 2012-2016. I have been to few enough gigs before that - thanks to living in a relative backwater - I was able to fill in a lot of the previous years, although I did not attempt to add some of the smaller very local shows I attended.

I also had a lot of fun going through the data, especially looking up which bands basically used the same set from concert to concert on a tour, and which were a lot more unpredictable.

I saw so many shows in 1998-1999 in DC, and then around 2001-2004 in Portland. After having a kid in '08 my numbers went down substantially but I'm seeing a lot more. The little indie bands and clubs I frequented in the '90s and early '00s are often not well-represented in the data — I mean, these are not Springsteen or Phish shows where everything was documented — so I am adding a lot of placeholder shows with incomplete data, but at least I'm putting them in.

Currently up to to mid-'03 in my records plus the smattering from the late 2010s and 2020s. [www.setlist.fm]

My friend Matt, who sees and photographs a lot of shows, and doesn't have a kid to intrude in his calendar, commented to me, "Haha I actually don’t know that it’s possible to friend or follow someone. Which is kind of a weird deficit in the system, come to think of it…"

But he's at [www.setlist.fm]

Man, Portland in summer 2003 was LIT for concerts… Daniel Lanois (I saw), New Pornographers (I saw), Buzzcocks with Exploding Hearts (R.I.P.), Stacey Earle, Le Tigre, Lisa Germano, Yo La Tengo, The Clean, Michael Penn (I saw) etc. All the same week in June. [www.wweek.com]

Setllist.fm is nice, but it's no Discogs. Meaning, I can't spend 3 hours a day there! I have ticket stubs for every show I've seen, but in the 90s it was mostly about seeing local/regional touring bands in clubs with no tickets, only door charges. We're talking 3-4 shows a week even in podunk Orlando! Most of that is nowhere big enough to surface there; even with the magic of crowdsourcing data.

Former TP subscriber [81, 82, 83, 84]

[postpunkmonk.com]
For further rumination on the Fresh New Sound of Yesterday®

I was trying to post a meme about ticket stubs but cannot figure out how to do it.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 12/21/2022 12:27PM by zwirnm.

Setlist.fm is great for checking recent concerts/tours, but I don't know if I'd put much faith in it for performances from bygone years. I just looked up my first Red Rocks show -- The Clash, 09 August 1982. Whoever entered the setlist for that one ... well, I must be fair: he or she probably is going by memory, just as I am. But as I remember it, they opened the show with "White Riot," not "London Calling." I know for certain they played "Ghetto Defendant" that night, because Allen Ginsberg himself (a Denver resident at the time) came onstage and reprised the spoken-work part he did on Combat Rock. And I'm sure they must've played "Bankrobber" during the encores, because my friend Dave and I were singing it all the way through the parking lot to his car.

Paganizer, if you were at that show, can I impose upon you to comment?

Regarding older setlists, yeah some of them are hard to believe but the moderators seem to be requiring more proof so I think they are becoming more reliable as a result. Some people spend an inordinate amount of time combing through the internet for data. The nice thing is that they now post the links were they get said data and one can find some interesting stuff out there. One of the links led me to this radio dj that has been posting all kinds of radio broadcasted concerts in the late `70s and `80s in San Francisco, so who knows there might be a live recording of that Clash show out there.

And memory can be a funny thing. For years I always remembered that the Dictators opened up their show in `91 with "Next Big Thing" but just recently Ross the Boss posted the setlist and "I Stand Tall" was the first song (which makes more sense when I think about it).

> Regarding older setlists, yeah some of them are hard to believe
> but the moderators seem to be requiring more proof so I think
> they are becoming more reliable as a result.

Well, so much for my plans to come up with a whole tour's worth of bogus setlists that show GWAR playing at Shriners conventions.

What are YOU doing New Year's Eve?

Just found all the concert lists from the period from 1997-99 when I was a really avid concertgoer, after college and living abroad and starved for live music. I was mostly posting these to Usenet groups (!) but kept them archived in simple HTML for a modest website I kept up for awhile.

Other than some cringeworthy rhetorical flourishes and writing style it’s great to see my reactions at the first time I saw some bands that ended up being very significant in my own life over the coming years, as well as others whom I’d forgotten I even saw. (Honest: I didn’t remember that I ever saw the Go-Betweens; it was a festival in London in 1997 and at that point in my life I didn’t know their work well at all. Darn it; I wish I had.)

Mostly DC but also some from Indiana, London, etc. so my setlist.fm roster is continuing to grow.

It’s puzzling to me that setlist.fm doesn’t seem to allow any way to follow or friend or whatever people with similar interests. Very strange.