Set Lists...Not As Easy As You Think!

Until I was in a band I never realised how crucial a good, balanced set list is! There is an art to it. An art that comes with experience, sometimes painful! :) SkaFinger play clubs, pubs, festivals and parties. Sometimes these are dedicated Ska events, some are birthday parties for Ska fans, sometimes we just play a pub as 'this week's' band. In every case we have a different audience with different (or, sometimes, no) expectations. A dedicated Ska fest will want some trad stuff from the likes ofToots and the Maytalls, Prince Buster, Alton Ellis, The Skatalites...the list is long...and our catalog of tunes can meet that demand easily. Pace isn't necessarily a consideration here but a recognition of and respect for the Ska greats is. A Festival? Well we've played a few and the key is oomph! Get out there and set the crowd alight. With luck, and a good spot in the running order, they are already alight and ready to move, but if not it's our job to light the touch paper. The set list needs to be fast, furious and well paced! The slower Ska grooves are dropped in favour of the faster paced, better known stuff from the 70s/80s

And a party is maybe the hardest gig for which to create the right set list. A party - wedding, birthday, anniversary - is a mixed bag of folk who may or may not know Ska. Maybe the birthday girl or boy do and that's exactly why they booked us but you can guarantee Uncle Arthur and Auntie Doris, or Cousin Timmy and best friend Betty have no idea what Ska is and probably don't care....they just want something to dance to. So we bring out the the well known stuff, balancing upbeat stuff with the slower stuff to allow the aforementioned Doris and Arthur a smoochy dance.

So putting a set list together is a tricky game. Get it wrong and you're playing to an empty floor, get it right and the floor is full from first chord to last drum beat - which of course is what we aim for and, thankfully, most times, get!