Set list
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
A set list, or setlist, is a document that lists the songs that a band or musical artist intends to play during a specific concert performance. Hand-written or printed, on paper, cardboard, or laminate, it is usually taped to the stage, or somewhere the musicians can see it.
Music fans also refer to the set list in the non-physical sense of what a performing artist chooses to play. For many artists, the same set list is played for every performance on a given concert tour. For others this is not necessarily the case, and for their devoted fan bases who follow the artist around on tour, the most variety in the set list from night to night is longed for. Some such artists have pre-determined "slots" in an otherwise mostly fixed show where different songs can be swapped in and out; other artists guarantee that the same song will not be played two shows in a row; and still other artists use no pre-determined set list at all, and just wing it.
Web sites exist to track and report statistics on the played set lists of veteran artists such as the Grateful Dead, The Allman Brothers Band, Bruce Springsteen, and U2. In the case of Springsteen, fans attending concerts even take on the assigned role of set list caller, periodically calling out, or text-messaging from a cell phone to a friend to report the most recent songs played, with the friend then updating a running set list on one of several Internet forums.
So great is the attention to the set list, that the actual physical set list sometimes becomes a treasured souvenir of the show, with fans grabbing one off the stage after a performance or requesting one from a roadie. Instances of deviations of the actual show from the planned one are then spotted; these are called "audibles" after the American football term.
