kgdjpubs wrote:squirt1 wrote:I believe Journey lost 1/3 of their writing power w Perry leaving. They MUST play the hits to survive because that music has such a history. There is evidently little demand for anything written post 1998 or Neal & Jon would play it in a minute.
I don't think writing power has all that much to do with it. You can write the greatest song ever, and without airplay, nobody is going to hear it. This isn't just a "Journey problem". Pick your big band with a large back catalogue and famous hits, and you get the same thing. The majority of people who go to a concert are NOT the ones that have all the albums and know them all by heart. Your average concert goer likes songs they heard on radio/tv, and has never heard and doesn't care about the rest of the catalogue. Go to a Def Leppard concert, you get pretty much the same setlist every time. Bon Jovi will play about 90% hits also. Bon Jovi is lucky in the fact that they are still getting airplay, but once you get away from the hits into the deep album cuts, good luck at seeing it performed live after the tour for X album is done.
Once you break into large appeal beyond the dedicated hardcore fanbase, you pretty much have to cater to that majority--and they want the hits. Otherwise, you play some deep album cut and the audience gets this Twilight Zone trance. I've even seen it happen with Matchbox 20. Take the opposite version, I went to an Elton John concert where he refused to play Crocodile Rock. 90% of the audience went away very angry and hostile towards him ("I can't BELIEVE he didn't play that song....").
Sure, there are some bands that play very interesting setlists and get away with them on a regular basis. Springsteen is one, Jimmy Barnes is another.
...and Metallica. They change their set-list by five songs every single show they play....and avoid playing many of the best known songs which received radio and MTV airplay. Are their fans really more imaginative, open-minded and knowledgeable than Journey fans are?
