?I was amazed to find that people act drastically different in the studio world than they do in the live sound world. For whatever reason, musicians are much more defensive and less likely to be helpful when it comes to dealing with a live sound man vs dealing with a recording engineer. I don't know why this is because both jobs take an extreme amount of knowledge and skill to even barely pull off. To be good at either takes an enormous amount of talent, hard work, and skill. Either way, it appears that this behavior isn't unique to the sound man situation. It also applies to how bands treat other bands.

I realize that deep down every band wants to be the best band. We all want to stand out and dominate. This is how the best bands end up in arenas eventually. While a little competition is healthy, things can turn ugly very quickly when a band starts playing dirty. One way to do this is?to extend your set list way over what it should be, particularly if you are an opening band.

It may seam like you are really rocking when you have fans up front dancing and having a great time, but if you look just a few feet further into a crowd, you will find that, in most cases, people are there for the headlining band. When the opening band steps over their bounds and intentionally plays a long set, not only do they make a lot of enemies, but they burn a lot of bridges.

Generally, the headliner is not only the band pulling in the?crowd, but they are also the band that has done the most work to promote the show. They generally have to be responsible for every facet of the show. They may have put in an enormous amount of work to get the show together. If your band happens to hop on stage with the full intention of stealing the show, you are already playing for the wrong reasons. If you plan to play dirty and essentially steal time away from the headliner, you'll find that your fame will be short lived.

The idea with touring and playing live shows is to get your music, in it's hardest hitting state (the live show) in front of as many new faces as possible. The idea is to possibly win over some new fans that would have never even knew about your band before. In order to do this, you need to leave a good taste in their mouth, so to speak. You need the other band, the fans, and the people that just happened to show up to be glad that your band opened up.

When you obviously play a grossly extended set in order to knock the other band out of the water, you've done nothing but shoot yourself in the foot. When you hear overwhelming boos in the crowd you probably haven't made any new fans. Even if they liked your music, they hate you personally. So by playing an extended set for no reason than malice, you've completely wasted your time playing the show in the first place. You've also burned a bridge with each member of the headlining band for life. Not only that, but depending on how rowdy the headlining band's fans are, you may even be in for some psychical retaliation (even though no one wants it to come to that).

Conclusion

If you want to have any success at this music thing, you need every advantage and every friend you possibly can. When you are intentionally rude and confrontational to the headlining band (and the fans that came to see them )?you not only failed at promoting your music, you actually took a step backward. Good luck ever having any success that way.