The Music Man -- Rick Rubin

[Mykozo]

Ten songs, between 2:30 and 4:00 is the perfect album imo. Go out and try to find an album that follows this format that doesn't knock your socks off.

35-40 minutes of strong material is just about perfect for me. I can't even stand going to see some of my favorite bands when they do 1.5 or 2 hour sets. For instance Jawbreaker; I love that band, and I love every song they played in their set, but at about an hour and a half I just wished they had cut a few songs and left me wanting more rather than overdoing it.

About the merchandise contracts. With the amount of people out there that manufacture, a band would have to be REALLY stupid to let someone else control their t-shirt sales. I can imagine some bands do it anyway, but shit... why?

Well, it's a matter of scale. Most bands, with the help of a couple friends can manage their own merch sales at shows, but for the bands that are selling out arenas, there is just no way. Someone needs to set up,man, and break down the tables/booths, do the books, coordinate stock and shipping, etc. A band on a bigtime national tour thats playing every night has no chance of taking care of all that stuff.

[Josh]

I'm not saying songs can't be long... they just have to be really good to hold my attention that long. 21:13 by Coheed and Cambria is a great example of this. Its kind of wanky sometimes though...

[Josh]

Well, it's a matter of scale. Most bands, with the help of a couple friends can manage their own merch sales at shows, but for the bands that are selling out arenas, there is just no way. Someone needs to set up,man, and break down the tables/booths, do the books, coordinate stock and shipping, etc. A band on a bigtime national tour thats playing every night has no chance of taking care of all that stuff.

Then its a matter of hiring someone, or a couple reliable someones. No need to fuck yourself.

[Anthony]

I'm not saying songs can't be long... they just have to be really good to hold my attention that long. 21:13 by Coheed and Cambria is a great example of this. Its kind of wanky sometimes though...

Yeah, I agree that most people shouldn't be making long songs, they don't have enogh ideas, and well, exactly what weeman said for the most part.

Still though, limitations in general piss me off.

Edit: I usually only like 30-45 minutes shows too, unless I REALLY like the band.

[Doc Holliday]

Ok, I only read Destin's post earlier. It seems like you have the idea longer is not always better, but can be done.

For what it's worth, there's been few blues musicians that I've seen play 90 min to 2 hrs that I got bored of. If you're a talented blues or jam band you pull it off with no sweat. On the other hand, 90 mins of blink-182 would be a bit much... maybe even 60.

[jyoung]

Honestly, I can not think of a single show I've been to where I wasn't left wanting more from whatever band(s) I originally came to see (and most headliners at metal shows these days tend to play for at least an hour and fifteen minutes, if not an hour and a half).

Then again, most of the bands I go to see have been making albums for at least a decade, which gives them tons of high-quality material to choose from.

Morbid Angel, for example, played for a good two hours on their "Twenty Years of Madness" tour and still left out at least another hour's worth of material that I (and the majority of crowd members) would have liked to hear, and that was even with a set list that stuck almost exclusively to their classic material.

Really though, appropriate concert lengths are just like appropriate album/song lengths: how much you can tolerate is often a result of whether or not the band's music is, in every sense of the word, formulaic (see: Bad Religion, AC/DC, Motorhead, etc.)

The only exceptions I can think of are bands who make the type of music that is just so physically exhausting that your brain/body cannot handle more than a brief rush.

[Mykozo]

Then its a matter of hiring someone, or a couple reliable someones. No need to fuck yourself.

That is exactly what a merch deal is. You are hiring someone to take care of all that shit for you. You'd need more than a "couple" reliable someones to handle all that shit if you are at the "selling-out-arenas" stage. At that point, you need a whole team of people that are dedicated to doing your merch, and you can't expect them to take something like %15 off the top or something like that because the economics of it just doesn't add up. Merch contracts are basically selling a merch company the rights to use your name for merchandise that you approve them to manufacture and then give you whats left after their expenses and their cut of profit gets taken out. And yes, no need to fuck yourself, but that doesn't mean that the merch contractors aren't going to TRY to fuck you. You just have to make sure that you don't sign anything stupid.