Blog: What Kind Of KRAZY ROCK SHOWS Are We Talking About Here?

Yesterday we looked at the songs played overall, so today we're going to look at how that varied in different TYPES of gigs. By TYPES I mean what configuration I was playing in e.g. solo, with Steve etc etc. Here's a TABLE to show the varieties available:

Types Of Gigs By Number Gigs Played

Type Of Gig	Number Of Gigs
Solo	562
Hibbett & Hewitt	163
The Validators	132
Voon	60
The Council	19
Mark & Simon	14
The Masters Of Nothing	5
Other	45

The category "Other" here refers to various odds and sods including several of the various other bands I've played in over the years. "Mark & Simon" was the (VERY IMAGINATIVE) name of the double act I did with my friend Mr S Wilkinson in the early 1990s - we hosted a student comedy club called "The Casbah" (GRATE name!) and went on to do a couple of other gigs which were, not to put too fine a point on it, very clear signs that we should perhaps keep our activities to our own club!

Other than that we can see that the majority of ALL my gigs have been solo ones, followed by the Steve shows and The Validators, and then the historical BANDS that have been discussed before. This, however, is an ALL-TIME list of gigs, but if we want to delve into the songs PLAYED at those gigs we need to only look at shows from 2005 onwards, as that's when we've got the setlists.

Types Of Gigs By Gigs Played From 2005 Onwards

Type Of Gig	Number Of Gigs
Solo	461
Hibbett & Hewitt	163
Validators	101
Other	14

COR, that's a rather dramatic SHIFT in type isn't it? Interestingly (NB I keep saying "interestingly" - to avoid confusion what I mean here of course is "interestingly for people who like FASCINATING THINGS") the vast majority of my solo gigs occur during this period - 82% of them, in fact - indicating that my early days in ROCK pre-2005 were very much more likely to be cocooned within the comforting warmth of BANDS. In the past couple of decades, however, I have STRUCK OUT solo much more often, and have also PARED DOWN the type of act I am liable to cavort with. But what was I PLAYING in these solo gigs? Here's the FACTS!

Songs Played At Solo Gigs, By Number Of Gigs

Rank	Song	Gigs
1		The Lesson Of The Smiths	267
2		The Peterborough All-Saints Wide Game Team (group ...	242
3		It Only Works Because You're here	197
4		Boom Shake The Room	174
5		Easily Impressed	154
6		Hey Hey 16K	116
7		My Boss Was In An Indie Band Once	111
8		The Gay Train	99
9		Do The Indie Kid	97
10		I Did A Gig In New York	81
11		Billy Jones Is Dead	78
12		Theme From Dinosaur Planet	70
13		Clubbing In The Week	66
14		Being Happy Doesn't Make You Stupid	61
15		20 Things To Do Before You're 30	61
16		Totally Acoustic	49
17		(You Make Me Feel) Soft Rock	45
18		Fucking Hippy	40
19		Red and White Sockets	40
20		A Little Bit	40
21		The Perfect Love Song	34
22		That Guy	34
23		The Fight For History	33
24		We Did It Anyway	32
25		Sod It, Let's Get Pissed	31
26		I Come From The Fens	30
27		Never Going Back To Aldi's	30
28		Don't, Darren, Don't	29
29		The Theory Of A Dinosaur Planet	24
30		In The North Stand	24

I've done the top THIRTY here because, to be honest, the top TEN isn't particularly interesting, as it's pretty much the same as in the OVERALL list we looked at yesterday. However, once we get past them things get VERY interesting with a whole bunch of songs from different periods of my ROCK life. For instance, Fucking Hippy and Red and White Sockets are songs I used to play ALL the time, but haven't done live since 2011 and 2017 respectively. That Guy and The Fight For History are similar former BANKERS that don't get out much anymore, and I was AMAZED to see Sod It, Let's Get Pissed got played 31 times. This seemed unbelievable, until I remembered that it was part of My Exciting Life In ROCK, so got done a LOT when that show was on the go. Similarly, just below the top 30, all the songs from the solo version of Dinosaur Planet start to pop up.

Talking of shows, I was going to do a similar list for songs done with Steve... but that just brought up a huge pile of songs played around 40 times, as the setlist for each show was pretty much the same every time! The only big difference was that We Did It Anyway got played twice as often as everything else because it was in two different shows. We liked it!

So instead, for today's final table, let's see what I was playing with The Validators, with a more traditional TOP TWENTY.

Songs Played With The Validators, By Number Of Gigs

Rank	Song	Gigs
1=	Easily Impressed	88
1=	The Lesson Of The Smiths	88
3	Billy Jones Is Dead	58
4	Hey Hey 16K	55
5=	Do The Indie Kid	53
5=	Being Happy Doesn't Make You Stupid	53
7	The Gay Train	47
7=	My Boss Was In An Indie Band Once	47
9	Better Things To Do	26
10=	Leave My Brother Alone	25
10=	Quality Of Life Enhancement Device	25
12	It Only Works Because You're here	22
13	20 Things To Do Before You're 30	21
14=	We Did It Anyway	20
14=	(You Make Me Feel) Soft Rock	20
16	The Fight For History	19
17	Things'll Be Different When I'm In Charge	16
18=	Theme From Dinosaur Planet	15
18=	Can We Be Friends?	15
20=	Never Going Back To Aldi's	11
20=	Tell Me Something You Do Like	11
20=	Please Don't Eat Us	11

This one takes a little while to get FUNKY too, with the only real surprise for me being the appearance of Quality Of Life Enhancement Device at number 10. Did we really play it that often? I guess so - STATS don't lie! Shortly after that it's very pleasing to see It Only Works Because You're here creeping up the Validator charts as it took me AGES to persuade them to do it!

Right at the bottom there's Please Don't Eat Us, which I seem to recall we did quite a lot because Tim liked it. Never underestimate The Power Of TIM in Validators setlist-making, for he is usually WIELDER OF THE PEN and also EXPERT at Looking Sad if we don't at least have a couple of goes at new songs. This is partly why we have done SO MANY different songs - 104 altogether over this timeframe, but with only 35 of them being played more than five times and, amazingly, exactly half of ALL songs we've ever played (62) only being played once. I must make a mental note of this STAT to quote back to him next time we have a setlist meeting - if it was up to me we would probably have been playing EXACTLY the same Validators set for the past five years!

There's be more of this sort of thing next week, with some RANKING comparisons, a look at how MANY songs get played in various line-ups, and if time allows maybe even some SALES figures. Before that, however, I'll have a whole new VIDEO to show you - see you for that on Monday!

posted 10/2/2023 by MJ Hibbett

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