A Different View: Do the fans want new music or smash hits?

In fairness, they’ve made this well-known in advance but if you didn’t read the small print and you turned up expecting to hear West End Girls or Suburbia or It’s a Sin or What Have I Done to Deserve This, then you’d have gone home very disappointed.

And it must be said that this doesn’t appear to have caused mass disappointment which is either a sign of the engagement of the fans who knew what to expect, or an acknowledgement that even their obscure tracks can carry the night.

But it begs the bigger question – when you go to see your favourite band, do you want to hear new or rare material or do you just want them to bang out the hits like a living jukebox?

One of the greatest nights in the history of the Galway International Arts Festival was with Burt Bacharach as, despite being in his nineties, he methodically and melodically worked his way through one of the greatest songbooks of all time.

Burt had so many massive hits that he didn’t have time to play them all in full – so he ended up doing medleys of his showstoppers, throwing three or four into the one mix when anyone else would have stretched that to a full night’s show.

Say A Little Prayer, Walk on By, Look of Love, I’ll Never Love This Way Again, What the World Needs Now, Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On Me Head, Alfie…if he played them in full, we’d be there yet.

Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys – now, like Burt, with us no more – also has a songbook to fill more than a few hours, but by the time he appeared in Galway, he was already in decline and, unlike Burt, he didn’t seem hugely aware of his surroundings. But just to hear the Beach Boys classics in the Big Top in the Fisheries Field was an experience to live forever.

There are still a few living artists who have enough hits to fill a week’s shows. Paul McCartney is one of them and he knows how to play it out – although, having been privileged to see him live a couple of times, as soon as he says ‘this is one I’ve written recently’ it’s like he told the audience that it’s time for a toilet break.

Bob Dylan was in the 3 Arena recently and you could count on one hand the number of his classics that he performed. But the audience didn’t seem to mind. And why should they? They were privileged to see greatness.

Mark Knopfler was once the frontman of Dire Straits, of course, but these days he’s more of a North of England folk singer – and mighty fine he is at it too.

But, again, if you go to see him expecting to hear those big hits from the seventies and eighties, you’re in for disappointment.

He was at the Bord Gais Theatre a couple of years back and it took a bit of persuasion to get my fellow attendee to go, because she was warned that this wasn’t a Dire Straits gig.

Knopfler’s more recent work has been reflective of his childhood; the shipbuilding sector of his native north-east and ploughing a rich vein of social commentary.

But it’s not the Sultans of Swing.

In fairness, after about an hour of music she didn’t know, she took herself off to get us drinks at the bar – which was precisely when he launched into three of their biggest hits, including the Sultans, Romeo and Juliet and Money for Nothing.

By the time the drinks returned he was back singing about growing up in Durham – and that was the end of the Dire Straits section.

A couple of years ago, there was a spellbinding night in St Nicholas Collegiate Church, when Tim Finn – who with his brother Neil, gave us Split Enz and Crowded House – staged a multi-media reflection on his youth.

White Cloud, a mix of music, poetry, video and photography from the family vaults – was about growing up as a white boy in New Zealand while also reflecting on his Irish roots because his mother was from Limerick.

But a few people seemed to think this was a Crowded House gig when that wouldn’t have been possible in the Big Top, never mind the iconic church. It wasn’t until the encore that they heard what they came to hear – a stripped-back, acoustic version of Don’t Dream It’s Over. And then it was.

Robert Plant played in the same church more recently with his wonderful Saving Grace project, but this time nobody expected Led Zeppelin. Which in fairness would have been a sight to behold in St Nicholas’.

This was Americana at its finest with Plant – by reputation the nicest man in the music business – just enjoying himself with a group of equally wizened musicians and wonderful female vocalist called Suzi Dian.

Sometimes, it seems, when you’ve conquered the world, you just want to go back to the start – and equally for others, why bother trying to reinvent when you’ve done the hard work already?

Therein lies the musical dilemma – a new departure or a greatest hits roadshow.

More often than not, it’s the latter because if you shell out seventy quid or more for a ticket you want to go back to the time when you first heard those big songs, not listen to something written last week.

Pet Shop Boys did the B-sides and album tracks this time but you’d probably think that’s that.

If they’re ever back at Glastonbury, it will be all the big hits.