The photocopy approach is standard for about 75% of the bands I have seen. It is very common. For a musician it has benefits as it is familiar. And likely the people attending multiple shows are a small set of people who are likely also in the set of your most die hard fans so likely to forgive. It's only really obvious now in the age of shared setlists where someone like me can go with a previous one and know what is coming next.
If you go back many pages in this thread, I posted the setlist for the 2 nights Dave Matthews Band played Great Woods (Mansfield) outside Boston. No songs were repeated. We were there for one show, they were awesome. DMB has enough "crowd pleasers" that they can play some at one show, and some at the other show.
Seems to me that somewhere there is an executroid somewhere that said 'if we do 2 shows with a no-repeat playlist, we will make about twice the revenue'.
I guess the diehard fans, knowing they'd do 2 different shows, might go to both. But for the person going to just one show, they don't know what's going to be played. So there's always the chance of letting some of them down.
It's something I picked up from Dr. Johnny Fever on WKRP. He used the term to describe in a derogatory manor a middle management executive.
If Journey had done that, and I was buying the tickets, I would factor the cost of both shows into my decision as to whether or not I would want to go. There is no way I want to only hear 1/2 of their songs. I would likely wind up just not going as usually 1 concert ticket is at my price range ceiling already.
Journey was free. I won the tickets.
