Michael,

That's a great question. Here's my recipe, others may vary.

1. Play your best tune first, no matter what. It doesn't matter if it's a fast song, a slow song, an instrumental, a ballad, whatever...play your best tune first. 2. Look over your list and categorize according to things like speed, key, who sings lead vocals, etc. In my band, we literally take turns in a certain order on lead vocals. I lead, Mike leads, Dorothy leads, we play an instrumental. Then we start over, etc. John and Jim don't ever sing lead, so they don't go into that equation. Your band may do it differently. 3. Let's be honest, many songs sound a LOT like other songs. Don't do those similar songs back to back. Break them up. 4. End with your OTHER best song. You know you've got at least two that you do better than the rest. Start and end with your absolute best. 5. Don't take request. Here's the deal. You look stupid if you (as a band) don't know the song. If you know it, you probably aren't going to play it the way they were expecting to hear it. Even if your version is technically better than "the signature version" of that song, you will dissappoint the requester.

That's what we do. For the record, we play a few originals, but for the most part, we're playing other people's music.

Vince

Michael DeBusk