FEATURE:
White Math
IN THIS PHOTO: Jack White
Do Fans Expect Too Much from a Modern-Day Gig?
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IT is an interesting…
PHOTO CREDIT: Thibault Trillet/Pexels
question to pose when it comes to gigs. One of the big debates and conversations is the price of tickets. Smaller artists don’t necessarily charge that much, though major artists can sell tickets for a lot more. It depends on the artist and venue, though it is not a surprise to see a single ticket sell for over £100. In some cases, fans can pay a lot more than this! With that sort of price being asked of fans, there is an expectation that the set is going to be epic. Artists such as Taylor Swift putting together these sets that last three-and-a-half-hours. It is a very long time for an artist to be on the stage. When each show lasts this long, it can really take a lot from them. Stringing together so many dates with sets that length, there is this debate between the price of the ticket and the value of the set. I bring it up because Jack White took to Instagram to call out fans who are entitled. Those who expect long sets. This NME feature gives us some more details:
“Jack White has taken aim at “entitled” fans who expect “extra long” shows, arguing that his performances are rock gigs, not “a Marvel movie or a Vegas residency”.
The former White Stripes frontman released his sixth solo album ‘No Name’ last August and is currently in the middle of a North American tour to support the record, with the guitarist set to play the first of two Brooklyn shows on Tuesday (February 11).
On Saturday (February 8), he took to Instagram to share his thoughts on the current state of fan expectations when it comes to setlist length and production values. “Been hearing a lot of chatter throughout the year of this glorious electric touring about how long our sets are “supposed to be” on stage,” he wrote. “As if the length of a show determines how “good” it is.”
“I know that we’re living in a current era where people like to say “so and so played for 3 hours last night!”, and brag about it the next day hahaha, I’ll let our fans know now that my mind has no intention of “impressing” y’all in that context. The Beatles and Ramones played 30 minute (ish) sets, and If I could, I would do the same at this moment in my performing life. That’s actually the kind of show I’d like to put on right now.”
He went on to discuss some fans feeling “entitled” to long shows due to high ticket prices. “I think you’re talking about an arena laser light show with pyro, huge screens with premade videos, singers flying over the crowd, t shirt cannons, etc, that’s not the kind of shows we’re performing.”
“There’s no setlist, and it’s not a marvel movie, or a Vegas residency, it’s rock and roll and it’s a living breathing organism,” he concluded. “See you in the hall tonight friends, love you all so much and thank you for coming to these shows, standing in line and paying your hard earned money to help this train keep rolling. And the crew and the boys in the band are loving y’all as much as me, we are grateful, thank you.”
White’s recent setlists have tended to run between 20 and 25 songs in length, incorporating songs from across his career, including The White Stripes and The Raconteurs.
NME caught his show at London’s Assembly Hall last September, which saw him touch on similar themes. “This is the kind of rock’n’roll you’re not gonna get at Wembley Stadium for £400!” he exclaimed at one stage”.
I guess it is strange that many artists are almost required to do sets that last for hours. However, it comes back to prices. If you are being charged so much, then why would you not want a gig that last a while? It might be wrong for a major artist selling tickets for so much to do a thirty-minute set. For Jack White, whose sets are sharp and spontaneous, he could not play for hours. Maybe it depends on the genre. Also, if White does want to keep his sets to a tidy half-hour, then this has to be factored into the ticket price. As an example, he is playing at London’s Troxy on 28th February. A ticket for that gig is going for £66.41. His recent sets have spanned between twenty and twenty-five songs. That is pretty good value when you think about how long that gig would be. Is White reacting to demand and what is expected of artists today? Think back to gigs years ago and how it was unusual if they lasted for hours. Now, it is almost standard. Can we simply go to a show for half an hour and be satisfied? This desire for everything to be so long. You can see where fans are coming from. They want to see as much as they can from that artist. Jack White has a point when he mentions something like a Marvel film. Fans should be happy with a shorter gig. His ticket prices are not that expensive, so it is a bit much to expect fans to expect White to play for so long. This feature from 2008 argued why gigs should never be over forty-five minutes. The fact that artists would work through every song they ever recorded and you’d get into this test of endurance. This idea of a gig being cinematic in its length and scope. It is not new, however, more and more artists are expected to play for that long. The impact on their physical and mental health could be quite serious. How much it takes out of them.
IN THIS PHOTO: Taylor Swift during her Eras Tour/PHOTO CREDIT: Getty Images
Is there a perfect balance or gig length? If a three-hour set seems insane and something fans and artists should never be expected to endure, would fans revolt if they got a forty-five minute set and were charged a lot for a ticket? This article from The Independent talks about Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour and whether overlong gigs are a bit too much:
“But how long is too long, when it comes to live music? Twenty-two-year-old pop prodigy Billie Eilish recently described the prospect of a three-hour gig as “literally psychotic”, telling followers on social media: “Nobody wants that. You guys don’t want that. I don’t want that. I don’t even want that as a fan.” Of course, that’s easy enough for Eilish to say. If you listened to her entire three-album, two-EP discography back to back, it would still fall short of Swift’s marathon set times. But, while the “bad guy” singer-songwriter didn’t call out The Eras Tour by name, it certainly resonates with Swift’s current maximalist streak.
Let’s face it: overlong gigs can be a slog. There’s no escaping the whiff of indulgence when an artist simply decides to claim squatter’s rights on a stage. It’s also a curatorial failure, of sorts. Only the most ardent of Swifties would argue that there’s no fat to trim, no filler padding out the bangers. A three-hour gig presents logistical problems, too, when it comes to getting home at the end of the night, plus biological ones – the perennial Toilet Break Question. Let’s not forget the economic ramifications, either: a three-hour gig is necessarily more expensive to stage, a cost that inevitably falls on the concertgoers to make up. And that’s before you account for the greater spending on drinks over a three-hour period – not insignificant, especially at big stadium venues where a single pint often requires a small loan.
Of course, it’s not as simple as a gig being “too long”. There’s no denying the formidable physical feat of a three-hour gig; if you feel fatigued as an audience member, imagine being up there on stage. In some cases, the extra hour might elevate a gig from a fun night out to one of the best nights of your life. Bruce Springsteen, perhaps the foremost “long gigger” in popular music, has made it part of his very brand. And it works: his two curfew-straining sets at London’s Hyde Park last year were maybe the standout live music event of the year. But Springsteen has the catalogue to back it up – a full half-century of recorded material, enough great songs to fill a days-long residency with no repeats. (Tunnel of Love didn’t even feature at all!).
Assessing the relative merits of Swift’s catalogue may largely be a matter of taste, but the context for the gigs is entirely different: Swift is 34 years old, and yet still manages to subdivide her career into 10 distinct “eras”, most requiring a total costume change. If Springsteen were to attempt the same concept, he’d end up with two dozen eras, 18 outfit changes, and a performance that probably wouldn’t finish until morning. On some level, the very premise of the Eras Tour speaks to the way music is treated in the modern streaming era: we must have all of it, right there, all of the time. The specificity of a setlist is one of the delicate joys of live music. You go in hoping to hear certain songs; you leave pleased, or disappointed, or surprised, but that’s part of the experience. The Eras Tour promises to give you everything, a definitive show – but that’s antithetical to live music’s unique appeal: immediacy.
The alternative, though, is surely worse: there are few things more disappointing than a gig that feels too short. I personally keep a grudging mental checklist of gigs I’ve seen that were brilliant, but ended frustratingly after 50 minutes or less (mostly American rappers, many of whom understandably don’t really see what the big deal is about playing to a crowd of mostly white Englishmen in, say, Shepherd’s Bush). The ever-rising price of gig tickets leaves you feeling shortchanged if it’s all over in under an hour – even if the performance is flawless.
The whining seems more egregious when we’re talking about movies, when meaty, substantive works of art such as Martin Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon or Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer are slagged off for being indulgently long. Often, there are artistic and narrative reasons for the length: it is necessary to tell the story in the way that the artist demands. But then again, this could be said of The Eras Tour, conceived by Swift – a wannabe filmmaker, by her own admission – as something more structured and narrative-driven than simply your average grab bag of hits. In this regard, maybe there’s justification for the indulgence. Or maybe Swift has simply spent too much time watching her boyfriend Travis Kelce play in the NFL, and shouts of “Go long!” have borne fruit somewhere deep in her subconscious. I guess we’ll never know”.
I can see where Jack White is coming from. That sense of spectacle and overlong that you get now. He is not suggesting fans should be happy with a short gig and count their blessings. However, it is this thing of gigs lasting for hours. Does it rob some of the spontaneity and quality? Keeping things relatively brief without having to dip into the back catalogue too deep. It might depend on the genre and artist you are seeing, though fans demanding too much of a touring artist is a bit entitled. Not considering the impact that sort of set has on their health. This Cosmopolitan article asks why gigs are so expensive now. Things such as streaming services, Brexit, COVID-19 and stan culture are contributing factors. This BBC feature also asks about rising ticket prices. They state that longevity and artists feeling like they could be forgotten is a reason why they charge so much. There are a lot of sides to consider. However, it is clear that long gigs are becoming more normalised and, with it, ticket prices are getting out of hand. Whilst a three-hour set is too much and a short gig might not seem value for money, I guess it is all about finding…
A sweet spot.