Reply To: JoCopedia
Several complicating factors (not to be a naysayer):
– Shorter concerts call for shorter set lists. Numbers may fluctuate due to concert length, and longer concerts give more opportunity for him to play less common songs.
– Newer songs (e.g. “Still Alive”) will get artificially low percentages based on how many shows he played before the song in question got written. We could account for that, but it would become hairier.
– The presence/absence of Paul & Storm, Kristen Shirts, etc. might skew the songs played. I imagine he considers this when putting together a set list; at the very least, he’ll arrange the songs with guest performers as a sequential subset of the set list so they don’t have to keep running back and forth to the green room.
– Some songs (well, mostly just “Flickr”) work best with special facilities. The venue will have some influence on whether “Flickr” gets played.
– He may take the age of the audience into account; some venues are going to draw younger audiences who might be less interested in songs chiefly targeted to parents, for example. Then again, I don’t know that he’s ever done “Stroller Town” live.
– He certainly takes geography into account in a few cases: “Over There” in London, “I Hate California” in Los Angeles. If he were to play “Brookline” live, it would probably be in Massachusetts. Hey! Maybe he can play Coolidge Corner!
I’m not saying I’m against the idea; I’d love to see what kind of information falls out of a reasonably complete historical collection of set lists. Clearly some songs almost never get played live (“Bacteria”), while others are almost invariably played (“Code Monkey”). As for the middle ground, I’d be curious to learn how often he adds an older song to his regular live rotation. The most obvious example is “Mr. Fancy Pants”, which became something of a live standard shortly after he acquired the ZenDrum. I’m also curious to see whether “Dance, Soterios Johnson, Dance” (which he played twice last week) will become a standard.