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Sustaining that energy is the hard part, which is why even the best bands have lulls in their shows.
"If you get complaints that the bathrooms are overflowing [with people], you know it's a bad song," Coldplay's Chris Martin joked. "We have someone monitoring the door — 'Chris, the gentlemen's is really crowded!' — then we just stop that one."
"The best shows I've ever been to had a beginning and then an end," John Mayer mused. "The worst thing about a show is the middle — and if you [get bogged down] in the middle of the set list, it's time to change the set list and just go to the end."
The best strategy for surviving the middle, according to Killers guitarist David Keuning, is to spread out the hits. "You start with a couple hits, you end with a hit, and you spread a few out in the middle," he said. "It's not random, but it's not complicated either."
With his years of scientific study, Mayer has found what he believes to be the most effective spot for the biggest hit.
"The best place, I believe, is second to last [in the main set, not the encore]," he said. "That's like baseball's clean-up hitter. It says, 'I care about holding this off, but it's not my bread and butter.' "
There are exceptions, however. "If you feel like a rag doll of the industry, if you feel like a puppet — you play your hit first," he explained. "If you ever go to see a band and they play their hit first, they're pissed off. Their record-company people are in the audience, and the band is pissed off at 'em and saying, 'This is what we think of having a hit.' "
Most bands, though, are more respectful of their hits and give them the best slots in their sets. "We owe everything to 'Yellow' and 'Clocks,' and 'Scientist,' a bit," said Coldplay's Martin. "[Ignoring them] would be like slapping your best friends."
"People wonder, if you have a choice between 200 songs, then why are you playing from a list of 35?" Bono said. "There are a few bases you have to hit."
Most bands, including U2, save at least one hit for the encore, although some bands still refuse to take encores for granted.
"You should only ever do an encore if people actually want you to get back on the stage," said Kapranos of Franz Ferdinand, who never save singles for the encore. "It's difficult because you want your encore to be good if you're going to get one, [but you don't want it to be] too planned out in advance."
Franz Ferdinand do like to keep their options open, and have on occasion based entire shows around requests.
"The sound guy and the lighting guy hate that, because they don't know [what they're supposed to be doing], but those can be some of the most thrilling shows to do, because they're so unpredictable," Kapranos said.
Although he's not one for requests, Frank Black's shows are similarly unpredictable. For the eight years he toured with his band the Catholics (before the Pixies reunited), he never wrote out a set list, but rather just called out each song randomly.
The Pixies like to have a list written out, although Black puts it together randomly in the amount of minutes it takes to "remember all the names."
"The science of doing a set list, that feels too contrived to me," Black said. " 'Well, first we'll start off like this, and then we'll hit them with the old one-two, and then we're gonna tug on their heartstrings over here, and we'll get them on their feet at the end.' It feels a little too ass-kissy. We're not from that ilk, the Pixies — we're more anti. It's a little more arty, a little more intellectual."
Black sometimes puts old-school Pixies favorites like "Where Is My Mind?" or "Gigantic" at the end of a show because he knows they make good closers, but just as often he consciously puts them in the middle "just to break out of that."
"I would say we wouldn't put all the fast songs together and then all the slow songs together, but you know what? I've done that before," Black said. "When I go to a show, the only thing I'm paying attention to is that moment — the song that I'm listening to now."
And therein lies the difference between Black and John Mayer, who is always paying attention to the show — particularly when it's going to end.
"I have the shortest attention span known to man," Mayer explained. "I'll wait months to go see a show, and I'll be like, 'I can't wait! Here they come on stage!' And by the second song, I'm doing the math, constantly gauging how long until they're done. And so, when I write the set list out, I'm thinking exactly like that. How can I ADD your ADD?"
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Illustration: Karl Heitmueller
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