Structuring a set list

Whether you're a bunch of school kids banging out your first gig at the Pony & Trap, or the Arctic Monkeys "doing their thang" for the Glastonbury masses, the set of songs you decide to hang together for the all-important night has to work — for you and, most importantly, for them.

To help make sure you've got the best chance of winning over whoever you find yourselves up against, we've enlisted the help of a select few musos from right across the gigging spectrum. Enter: Jon Bretman (guitar hero with pumped-up indie rock & rollers, the Foxes); country blues garage diva Miss Holly Golightly; hotly-tipped singer-songwriter Pete Molinari; Jonn Penney (lead singer with influential '90s indie band, Ned's Atomic Dustbin); Gypsy (lead singer and guitar slinger with up-and-coming noise trio, Popular Workshop); and, last but not least, Rick Nunn (lead shouter with rising-star Essex mod soul rockers, Vinny Vinny).

"From the off, what we want people to understand is that, [being] the sort of band we are, we want them to get involved. We want the people to start dancing," says Rick from Vinny Vinny, "It's just all about starting the set with a strong pulse, and trying not to let that go."

"We always start with the more upbeat, dance-y type stuff — the shorter songs, the more catchy stuff," says Jon, of the Foxes. "The songs that have had radio play always go at the beginning. A while back, we did try to build it up slowly throughout the set, but if you haven't got the audience's attention in the first 30 seconds, you can see people walk out or you can see them lose interest."

Holly Golightly, who has released an astonishing 14 albums in 10 years, has a transient band when she tours, with a pool of bass players, drummers and guitarists. And, because they live far apart, they don't actually get much time to practice. For her then, as well as drawing the audience in, the opener also has the advantage of warming the musicians up and getting them into the groove. Therefore, nothing too complicated, where mistakes can be made. Popular Workshop follow a similar formula. This is an important point to take on board, especially if you haven't played many gigs. Choose something that you're totally comfortable with — a romper stomper that you can play blindfolded.

"The openers are usually quite peppy, a bit up-tempo, so everyone's playing about as loud as they're going to play for the rest of the set," explains Holly. "I suppose it's not really for anyone's benefit other than the band to do those songs. It's not because they're popular, or because people are shouting for them or anything. It's because they're the peppy ones that we all play really well. And if there's anything missing in anyone's monitors — if we're lucky enough to have monitors — then everyone gets to hear each other, straight off the back."

"We choose the song we open with carefully in order to feel confident on stage," says Gypsy, of Popular Workshop. "They're usually very easy songs to play and very easy songs to sing, and they're also very powerful. They're the strongest songs we've got in terms of power and violence!"

It's perhaps even harder to select your opener when you only play one or two gigs a year and you've got three albums plus of material to choose from. This is the situation Ned's Atomic Dustbin find themselves in — after splitting in 1995, they play the odd reunion Christmas show for their diehard fans, as they will be doing this year in Wolverhampton.

"You do have songs that are obvious starters and obvious finishers", says Ned's lead singer, Jonn Penney. "I suppose the real constant is a batch of songs that you'd choose between to start your set, and a batch of songs you'd choose to finish your set. Obviously, we like to make a fair old racket and we like to be quite powerful and punchy with our live shows, so we'd always choose something fairly up-tempo to start with, something familiar."

One difference between a band like Ned's, and a band that's just starting out and finding their stage feet, is that Ned's know that when they're headlining they're going to get an encore. This plays a key role in their thinking when starting a set, because they will save their most popular live songs and hit singles for the encore, so they end the evening on a big bang. Smaller bands will often play their better known songs first to grab a possibly indifferent crowd with something they might recognize from the off, perhaps a track that's had some radio play.

"With the kind of gigs we're doing at the moment, we haven't really had the opportunity to do encores," says the Foxes' Jon. "Even when we're headlining, we get quite strict times. If we were playing half-hour sets, we wouldn't leave something like a big radio-play song 'til the end, like I think bigger signed bands would do. They can afford to, but we can't guarantee that we'll get an encore or that the venue will let us. So we start with them."

"When you're writing the set, you've just got to get your intentions across really quickly," says Vinny Vinny's Rick. "Personally, when I go and see a gig, I don't get a lot of enjoyment from still trying to figure out where a band's coming from three or four songs into the set. I like to hear the first songs and think, 'Yeah, I'm gonna stand and listen to this,' or, on the flipside, I like to be able to listen to the first song and go, 'Actually, this ain't my thing,' and then fuck off to the bar!"

Ned's Atomic Dustbin maintain the impact by sticking their biggest hit near the beginning of the show, and leaving their other big singles for the encore. "'Happy', we often put in second in the set," says Jonn, "so you're smacking people straight after a big opening song!"

"Towards the middle of the set we move more into the softer, slightly slower songs and the longer songs," says Jon, of the Foxes, "We've got some songs that've got long intros, with just vocals and guitar. They take quite a while to build up five-minute songs or so and we always keep those in the middle of the set. People have had a bit of a chance to sink in and then we always try and build it up again at the end. In the last three songs, we always try and keep the pace upwe went through a phase of playing some of the softer stuff at the end. That didn't go so well because you get to halfway through, or you get towards the end, and you start dragging it down a little bit, and your last song's not got any emphasis or any oomph in it!"

The same goes for new songs or more experimental songs. Popular Workshop have released a handful of singles so far, so they have a lot of unreleased new material that audience members will not have heard in the comfort of their home surroundings.

"At the moment, we're working set-list-wise on a pretty standard formula," says Gypsy. "We're playing a pretty heavy one to start with and then we play songs from the EP second, third and fourth, pretty much. Then we play a couple of new ones and close with our first single. Our sets tend to be pretty short as well, because we believe that we give our best with a half-hour set."

"I look at a set list as a nice big 'W'," says Ned's Jonn. "Basically, there's a peak at the start, a peak in the middle and a peak at the end. You ease your way down to a bit of a trough in between your peaks and you get yourselves a nice 'W'. The lucky thing for us is that we do have some nice solid and powerful medium-paced songs as well, so, although we take the pace down, we don't necessarily take the power down."

Last summer, Ned's Atomic Dustbin released 'Hibernation' — their first new single in 11 years — as a download. Although they're really proud of the fact that it sold well, it can be difficult deciding where to play it in the set when their diehard Christmas show fans turn up, wanting to hear all of the old material.

"I think we do what other bands like ourselves do when they write new songs," says Jonn. "It's very difficult with a lot of your audience, when they're there to a large degree for nostalgic purposes. It's difficult to introduce new stuff, especially if they've never heard it. It was something that was always a problem when we were a full time band, but we've only written a couple of songs in the last ten years, so it's not that difficult really. But we'd never start the set with them — and we'd obviously never end the set with them — so we stick 'Hibernation' in the middle somewhere."

So far we've been looking at artistes with a full band, and in every case the peak/trough effect comes into play. However, for an acoustic singer-songwriter, you're not necessarily going to be able to go for the louder, more upbeat openers. Although Pete Molinari does still go for a peak/trough pattern by starting with one of his better-known songs (usually the first song off his first LP, and then in the middle), he likes to showcase his new songs, as he's a very prolific songwriter.

"I'm one of those people that, when I've written a song, I want to play it," says Pete. "Usually, I just want to play a new song and, depending on how it goes down — and depending on how I'm enjoying it — then I'll keep it in the set. But, I am generally one of those people that changes sets quite a bit. I'm always putting new stuff in and I might play a song that I just wrote on that day. I don't think a lot of people do that. I think they'll tour, and they'll gig their album and they'll start playing the new album when it's released. Usually, I'm chopping and changing things, which is probably a bit crazy for people. But then, a lot of my gigs are with the acoustic guitar and I haven't had to rehearse them with a band, so it's easy for me to just stand up and do my latest song."

Things will, however, be changing, with the release of Pete's second album towards the end of the year. The LP, recorded with Liam Watson at Toe Rag, has a full live band almost all the way through. So, Pete is planning to halve his gigs between a solo acoustic set and full electric backing band.

"Like with there being four songs to start with, there's also usually about the same amount you could finish with," says Holly Golightly, "And, if you get an encore, there's another couple of songs you can pull out of the hat after that. We end up doing standards and stuff that people want to dance to. If people shout for stuff and we know it, then we'll play it at the end of the set."

As far as Ned's Atomic Dustbin goes, they know they're going to get an encore. They opt to leave their most popular live tracks until the encore, so that people literally go crazy — big singles, such as 'Grey Cells Green' and 'Kill Your Television'.

Pete Molinari will go for a few covers to finish things off, get people singing along.

"One of the things I always like doing is ending on a nice cover," says Pete,."Something I likewhether it's Woody Guthrie, Hank Williams, Leadbelly or an old blues song. I do like to do that a lot."

Pete Molinari, for instance, sometimes finds himself playing small, intimate folk club nights.

"Sometimes, you can go to them — folk gigs — and they can be very silent and attentive as you can imagine," says Pete. "And then, after two or three songs, if the crowd's still great and paying real attention to you, you can afford to change the set list — do things a bit more intimately, try something a bit more low-fi blues. Things that people are going to listen to. I tend to change sets depending on how it's going."

Then the next night, Pete might find himself supporting garage punk rocker Billy Childish.

"Some of the gigs where I've supported Billy Childish," says Pete, "It's been a real punk rock crowd, and I tend to try and do the more harder-edged bluesy stuff with a bit more of an up-tempo beat to it, even if I'm on my own with an acoustic guitar. Some of the gigs I've supported Billy on, I've thought, 'They're gonna hate it!' and they end up really liking it! It's strange!"

Vinny Vinny have had the bizarre mix of playing to 2000 mad-for-it people at Ibiza Rocks one week, and a small pub gig the next.

"With Ibiza, you could tell from the off that people were just boogying, and it's great for us to see that because it shows that what we set out to do is finally coming across," says Rick. "I mean, it's a bit different when you're playing the Rat & Parrott in Bradford on a Tuesday night and there's one man and his dog there. We've got a few ballad-y numbers. We're really into our Dusty Springfield, so there is that side to us every now and again and, if the hangovers are pretty intense that day, then we may chuck a couple of ballads in if they're quieter venues!"

Out of anyone, however, Holly Golightly undoubtedly sees the most variance in her crowds. She can play anything from a pub or social club gig, right through to major festivals or big support slots with The White Stripes or grunge gods, Mudhoney. But it doesn't matter to her. As far as Holly is concerned, they'll get what they're getting, and they'll get the same set and stage show as everybody else. Take a typical Mudhoney audience, for instance.

"Well, they look totally baffled don't they? As you can imagine," laughs Holly. "They don't know why we're there and they're not even sure why they're there! Opening for Mudhoney's quite funny because you've got my lot wearing bow ties, making sure we all look nice and smart. And then you've got all these kids in Nirvana T-shirts up the front row, against the barrier, looking at you, completely bewildered. And you play this stuff that sounds really tiny and bears no relation to Mudhoneyand then they quite like it, but they don't know they're going to by the look of us!"  0