Keeping different kinds of fans happy...
 

There has been a lot of discussion around here about how it's very difficult for the band to please everyone at concerts. If we look at it broadly we have
-the casual fans who want to hear the easy to sing along to hits...
-the die hard fans who want to hear the bands deeper material that wasn't written for radio or to be instantly catchy

We saw at the last night of the residency that in the encore they played some rarities in order to compensate for the otherwise static set. I guess this is something they could do every night. Have a goal of playing 2 rarities in the encore.

The other thing to consider would be to have more intimate concerts to cater to the die hards. These should be promoted largly via the internet on Jovi forums like this one, and through fan clubs etc... To make sure that die hards have easier access to these tickets than casual fans. At these smaller non-stadium concerts they can mix it up more and if they do it often enough they get away from having to please everyone with their stadium shows alone. I would like this approach but the problem is Jon does not as he said in the documentary "**** that, I want to play the desert and sell it out".:(

The problem is that most of the die hards dont agree either and some still wouldnt be happy and would still nit pick and find something they didnt like in the set.

Sticking with a core set of songs is not the problem in itself its what songs get stuck- its madness to have Lost Highway, WLOL and Crash sticking around semi-total permanently when songs like Blaze, Runaway, OWN, DC, Always are skipped so often. And these songs would be famililar to the casual fan as well as pleasing the die hards.

They have the catalogue of songs to easily be able to do it in the structure of say 15 core songs, 8 semi-changeable tracks and 2 unique songs unique to each night or rarities.

They play too many downer songs throughout the set. The bulk of the set should be split into four sections this Rock-Rock-Ballad-Rock.

The new shows get into a nice momentum and then along comes a WWWB or Superman. I wouldn't mind if I got a standard set list as long as it was structured right.