Quote:
Originally Posted by symbeline
Well, I didn't have the patience for what they had become since HAND so I hit the pause button for some years, but I certainly didn't tell anyone how they should feel or tried to convince them not to support such abysmal albums. I practice what I preach but I don't lecture. We spent the money somewhere else and I didn't regret it one bit...
But my point was that I respect that they want to stay relevant and have something to say and even the people who don't care about them give them props for having had a long and very successful career after hitting their peak. But I also think that they should stand by their work if they want me to treat all that big integrity speeches seriously. Even if I don't like them, ignoring whole albums feels as if they are saying "nah that was shit, we didn't put too much effort, wanna forget about it... next" or at the least just needing an excuse to tour again (I only accept the "it was shit" excuse for Fahrenheit because they really didn't have control over their output at that point).
I've said the same a hundred times here and discussing the band with the couple friends who are still fans: if they had kept the songs that were working every tour and gave a few more chances to the ones that didn't go as well as predicted but they believed in them, now they'd have many many familiar songs to choose from and keep everyone happy. Even if an album/single tanked they still did promo, it was on the radio for a time and it has an official video. Chances are, people who like BJ have heard of those songs, even if they don't buy the albums or don't keep up to date.
It's really simple. You have 2-3 singles for album post-Crossroad, you add them to your non-hits singles list and rotate them but make that section a staple. And then add the album cuts that work live, and you rotate them too (they have plenty to choose from). So now you have almost 20 songs to choose in addition to the hits, the 4-5 new songs and Jon's faves (which to be fair are just a couple). That makes a basic setlist for the usually safe NA leg that casuals will like because it has both hits and familiar songs, and diehards won't probably complain too much because there'll be variety with so many y songs to choose from. And the new songs from that tour will become familiar and hopefully one of the album cuts will work and you can add it to the always growing setlist. Easy peasy!
I know Jon's voice dictates most of what he can sing now so it's a moot point, but in the recent past every tour meant ditching almost everything older than the current album, and then pretending the songs should be forgotten because they didn't work... of course they didn't if you don't give them a chance again! People will forget about them, same as they would forget WGIGO if they stopped playing it altogether. It's not a fun song the audience luuuurves because Jon shake his ass, it's a (horrible) song that it's been played to death, no wonder everybody knows it! And that works for any overplayed post-2000 non hit song.
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Very good arguments.
Just want to add on top of the set list part, well, it's their fault. They could have done exactly what you said and rotate Bed Of Roses, Always and This Ain't A Love Song but they ignored completely TAALS for many, many years. It had a good chart performance in the US market and was huge in Europe, Asia and SA. I'm using TAaLS as an example, but there are many singles that they just ignored and they could have done a better job with it.