In November 2005, I went to see Senses Fail/Saves the Day/The Early November/Emanuel at the House of Blues in Chicago. The show was memorable for a lot of reasons — for instance, when TEN’s guitarist jumped off several stacked-up speakers at the end of “I Want To Hear You Sad” and absolutely crushed three girls standing next to me. Good times.
However, another thing that continues to stand out clearly in my memory from that show is the annoying fan who after every Saves the Day song yelled out for them to play “Sell My Old Clothes, I’m Off To Heaven.” Although I’d never heard the song (a b-side from the Stay What You Are sessions) and the band (not surprisingly) did not end up playing it, by about halfway through the set I would have gladly sacrificed hearing “Rocks Tonic Juice Magic” just to shut the kid up.
Point of this story is: I’m still bitter.
But more importantly, a new website just might put an end to such behavior. Although it’s been around since 2006, PickRSet has recently started to gain momentum with bands and concertgoers in the punk and rock communities.
Operating under the motto “Pick the band. Pick the show. Pick the set.” PickRSet allows visitors to the website to choose the songs they want to hear from the bands whose concerts they will be attending. Although the site’s creator claims that it is still in the Alpha stage (get it? not even Beta, yet), his innovative concept got a high-profile boost when The Starting Line decided to let its fans choose what songs would be played on the group’s final headlining trek before starting its “indefinite hiatus” in April.
Currently, artists including Angels and Airwaves, Bad Religion, Silverstein, Foo Fighters and numerous others have all signed on to take advantage of the opportunity to further blur the line between fan and band. (And even put a little extra money in their pockets, as PickRSet graciously lets bands take a cut of the site’s ad revenue).
What’s more, rumor has it that LiveNation recently tried to purchase the site for $1 million. Interestingly, though, the offer wasn’t made with the intention of pouring more resources into the site, but rather of shutting it down entirely. To me, it’s not much of a surprise that an entity that used to be owned by Ticketmaster is not too keen on the idea of placing power in the hands of the people.
Luckily, the people behind PickRSet saw the intangible (read: not financial) value in their idea and decided to continue with their own vision for the future.
Ultimately, while there’s no guarantee that a participating band will play all of the most requested tracks, it does open up the possibility that the one song you’ve always wanted to hear live might finally make it onto the set list.
And if all else fails, you can still do the tried-and-trued method of obnoxiously screaming out the name of the song you most want to hear. As long as it’s not “Sell My Old Clothes…” Or Freebird.
Chris Hassen: I goes to shows.
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Chris Hassen
I goes to shows.
Chris Siglin (Chris Siglin) says:
(Posted June 3rd, 2008 at 1:17 pm)
Thanks for the kind words. We are always trying new and different things to make concerts more interactive between the fans and the bands. We are glad that you have enjoyed the site.
Chris