I remember Blink 182 at Riot Fest years back. They did the whole “we’ll be right back!” And they very over sold it. My now wife and i waited for about 3 minutes before realizing they were fucking with us and we should just leave.

We could hear the venue for miles as we walked back to our hotel. They never came back

I saw Jonathan Richman the other week and when he finished the crowd was cheering for more and he came out and said “I thought that was a good place to end things.” and walked back off stage.

Man a long time ago I saw Reel Big Fish at a small venue and after the first song they thanked us, walked off the stage, and waited for applause to do an encore. They then did that for every. single. song.

And one time, they just didn’t come back. It was so fucking fantastic.

I was at a Hobo Johnson concert once. It was like watching a two hour long panic attack major props to them for powering through it. Anyway he got to the end and was like “I don’t have any more songs, I’ve played them all, please I’m serious don’t ask for an encore I have nothing left”. Dude looked like he was about to drop dead and the crowd respected not calling for an encore lol

One of the reasons I like seeing smaller shows is sometimes you get more genuine interactions.

One time I saw Sincere Engineer and near the end someone in the audience shouted "play corn dog sonnet #7.

The singer was like "we played that one at the start "

The fan went, “I was late! I missed it!”

The singer asked the crowd, “Do you all want to hear it again?”

Everyone cheered, so they played it again.

This is done to condition the audience that the end of the show is coming.

After driving out of state, paying $36 for a bottle of water and rocking out to your favorite band only to have them turn up the lights and fuck off to the airport without even playing a full set can lead to an angry crowd…

And then the venue owners have to deal with a Dylan goes Electric style riot.

Richie Kotzen just says “just pretend I went backstage and came out again. This is the last song.”

I appreciate that tool gives a countdown. It’s like 10-15 mins I think?

There was this special episode of a German comedy show. And they planned on everyone being psyched at the end and wanting an encore and they had a special encore song and one of the lines was something like “and everyone is shouting for an ENCORE ENCORE”. The expectation was that the audience would shout that. Nobody shouted anything. They started that song while everyone was already leaving. It was super embarrassing.

I work in live events. A few people have mentioned it. But it allows the band to have a quick bathroom break/regroup. Sometimes, venues have noise curfew so it allows the band to end the show early. Other times they have to loadout fast due to venue scheduling. Then not always, but often it allows the crew to reset lighting and other gear for the cues during the encore set.

I saw Jesse Welles a few weeks back and his encore was almost as long as the show before. He left stage and I figured “that was a decent length show, he’ll probably do 2-3 more songs and call it a night” and then he came back and did another hour or so, it was awesome.

I’m honestly on the fence about this. On one hand, we know that the band hasn’t played The Song so we know that they’re coming back, and they know that they’re coming back so it’s a pretty dumb charade. On the other hand it’s such a tradition.

I was at a Charlie Cunningham show and he explicitly mentioned that he could not come back because some of the equipment was already shipped off so he said something like: “That’s not me playing our little game of whether I am coming back, I won’t because I can’t but here is a last song anyway”

It’s worse if the audience leaves and the band wants them to come back but they don’t

I think it’s mostly so the band can have a pee break. You gotta stay hydrated when you are under those lights and jumping around. But if you stay hydrated, an hour on stage could make your bladder situation rather uncomfortable.