How do you feels about an artist's setlist? Do you want to hear the songs from the latest album or the hits from 40 years ago?
In Eagleland, most of the recent news has been about Don Henley and his tour to support the new album. He plays a lot of the new songs and some hits from his solo career, a few covers but no Eagles songs. It seems to be working for most people to write reviews and post reports but what about the rest of the audience.
Joe Walsh has also been touring. He promised some different songs but it seems he's stuck to the tried-and-tested for the most part and the audiences are ecstatic.
Meanwhile, Jackson Browne is touring, playing songs from his 2014 album and some more obscure songs from his back catalogue and finally playing a few of the old favourites.
This reviewer describes the audienced as "bemused".
Next up is JD Souther who has a stripped down band (I'm not sure if it's just 3 or 4 of them). He's also playing songs from his newest (and really good) album but includes a few of the songs he wrote with and for the Eagles, singing them in his own way. Maybe he has an advantage of never being a huge star so expectations are different. There aren't many reviews but those I've seen have been positive. Here's
review from a show this summer.
When Don Felder toured behind his 2012 album, he only included one or two songs from that album in a set that was very Eagles-heavy.
In his rare concerts, Glenn Frey seems to have a mix of old, new and covers.
When it comes to the Eagles setlists, I see a lot of complaints about its predictability. As the HotE tour was a retrospective, it was to be expected that they'd play old songs but they did bring back some that hadn't been played from decades - possibly as many Desperado songs as they played back in 1973. And the LROOE tour played quite a few songs from that album. Perhaps one of the issues is that the setlist doesn't change from one show to the next and with the tours being so long, that means they are playing the same songs for years.
Should audiences be expected to prepare for a concert by listening to the latest release from an artist?
After thinking about these artists, the show I'd really like to see is JD Souther with its mix of new songs, old songs with a new treatment and few covers of standards thrown in. I'm not a big Henley fan and I'm not keen on country, so Henley's show doesn't really interest me. I'm sure I'd enjoy Joe Walsh and I'd really like to see Glenn, especially if he didn't play too many Eagles songs. If Don Felder was to team up with a good singer and limit the Eagles songs to just a couple, I'd be interested but I'd rather see a tribute band than spend an "Evening at the Hotel California".