I saw riddle of steel last week, they opened for planes mistaken for stars. they had some descent songs, but they weren't a headliner, and played for too long. It was "I think we got time for one more, "three times... I left after three songs from the headliner.

there is exception, I've watched the appleseed cast play, for over an hour, and leave mesmerized everytime.

I was ready to play a show the day our band wrote its first song, but my musical companions thought we needed a little more material.

Ishmael wrote:Question For Steve: Shouldn't you just get it over with and change the URL of this site to ifihadahifi.blogspot.com?

shouldn't you?

I'm bored at work, therefore I'm piling on:

We played in Portland once, on a 4 band bill (which we will NEVER agree to if asked), and the second band started late, played for 50 minutes, and took 30 to break down. It was a Wednesday night. They had some sort of psychadelic powerpoint that they couldn't get set up at the start, then it needed to be disassembled into its component parts at the end of the set. All the while the sound woman was standing next to me saying, "the sooner you break down the more I love you," with a faraway look in her eyes.

lemur68 wrote:I think bands should probably conduct set-up/tear-down drills as part of the rehearsal process.

I know that's the least rock-n-roll thing ever, but people will thank them for it.

I have a very specific way I pack everything up. So long as I'm give a bit of space i can get my synth, bass, pedal, amp head, and cabinet packed and moved in about 3 minutes. And this is a good, non-destructive packing job.

Any band that is in the middle of a bill and is obviously lacking on the teardown etiquitte I feel is basically giving the audience, club, and other bands the finger. I will use whatever bit of power I have to inform people who put on show that "slow teardown band" are jerks.

Ben Adrian

benadrian wrote:

lemur68 wrote:I think bands should probably conduct set-up/tear-down drills as part of the rehearsal process.

I know that's the least rock-n-roll thing ever, but people will thank them for it.

I have a very specific way I pack everything up. So long as I'm give a bit of space i can get my synth, bass, pedal, amp head, and cabinet packed and moved in about 3 minutes. And this is a good, non-destructive packing job.

Any band that is in the middle of a bill and is obviously lacking on the teardown etiquitte I feel is basically giving the audience, club, and other bands the finger. I will use whatever bit of power I have to inform people who put on show that "slow teardown band" are jerks.

Ben Adrian

heh. Dude, you are torn down and outside smoking by the time most band dudes have unplugged their guitar cords and reveled in the "good show man"s from the audience.

First off, i'd like to say that this post is pretty much pure gold, and yes slow tearer downers are pretty much the bane of my existence.

As rude as it is, i've been known to stand right next to the stage while the previous band is slowly tearing down, and in some extreme cases, I start setting up as soon as space becomes available.

pushy? yes.
rude? definitely.

As far as shows i've put on or run sound for, I have implied threats of physical violence upon band members that don't get hopping.

but time is valuable, and it's utterly disrespectful to not clear all of your stuff out as soon as possible. Plain and simple... I doubt there is anyone here that will argue against that.

Now having said that, even though I suppose we have the catalog for it, I couldn't even imagine playing a set over 45 minutes. That would be a whole different world for us.

As far as i'm concerned 30-35 minutes is just about perfect unless it's a record release, special occaison, or very clearly people are there to SEE YOU. I actually will hold to this rule even for bands with super long songs.

If you don't like it, write shorter songs.

An opening band should stick to a shorter set, 30 minutes or less.
A bit longer for the support is good.

But remember the key saying folks:
"Always leave them wanting more."
I hate bands that do the "oh man, this is great, when the hell will it be over?" shuffle.

-C.

FWIW, the longest sets I ever played were the same night... a two set affair, with each set being about 1:30 or so. So roughly 3 hours of Beatles songs. Believe it or not, it did not go on too long. The crowd did not lose interest, nor did we. Everybody was having fun and dancing and acting stupid and stuff. Way to go, summerfest!

[quote="cneutron]As rude as it is, i've been known to stand right next to the stage while the previous band is slowly tearing down, and in some extreme cases, I start setting up as soon as space becomes available.[/quote]

Having just returned from a ten-bagger, this thread is hitting very close to home. My band is usually quite good about set-up/tear-down mechanics and we usually start moving the previous band's shit offstage for them if they are dragging ass.

We also try to play short sets, though I think we ran slightly over our desired 25 minutes at the Circle A having made a somewhat disastrous last minute song substitution. Bottomless Pit was forced to run a little long into the "Ween Night" DJ - thought this did mean less Ween to suffer through.

Dan

I think the length of a band's performance should on average be about 40 minutes to an hour. But it totally depends on the kind of music. Hell, there's a band here in Montreal (Jerusalem in my Heart) who only play sets that are little over 10 minutes! But it is a GOOD 10 minutes.

Keeping in the topic, my brother saw Rush recently and apparently they played for 4 HOURS (with a 15 minute intermission). When I mentioned I've seen bands who've played for only 30 minutes, he was completely taken aback, as if it was a completely foreign concept (as he is very ignorant on the subject of underground music, it unfortunately is).

My first band played approx 15-20 minute sets, I think near the very end we were playing maybe 30 minutes. We played a reasonably big outside festival and we had trouble filling the 45 minutes allocated to us. I'm pretty sure we took a request to play one of our songs twice. In SWORD, we play about 30 minutes, maybe 35. I tihink it's 7 or 8 songs. We have one song we can drag out for ever as well. Most venues around here give you 30-40 minutes time slots anyway and threaten to not pay you if you go over. I've always been a fan of if you don't play long enough it gives people a reason to come back and see you, and if they hated it, you've only wasted 30 minutes of their life.

As for packing up... when we play this one place, once the band finishes, the "stage" are kinda disappears, which means anyone that wants to talk to you just wanders over. which is annoying as hell when you're trying to get you're shit packed up quickly, and there's not much room to open hard cases etc... Or when you lend your speaker cabinets to the headlining band cause you thought they were nice people, then they play boring psych music that goes for ever, all you want to do is go home, and when they finish the bass player leaves her bass leaning against your cabs for the hour while she talks to people.

But i'm always the guy with a bass in one hand, amp in the other standing by the stage waiting to get on while the previous band takes forever to pack up.