there is no way to determine what "people" want to hear, unless you want to be a virtual jukebox that can call up any request exactly as it was recorded. i know there are some that try to become that, but i don't think that's why most of us became musicians. even then, only a few usually make requests, so it's impossible to know what everyone wants to hear, and how they want to hear it. i remember playing new years eve at a country club about 10 yrs ago, all were codgers of similar age and class and ethnic background. yet we would no sooner go into a tune/tempo/style requested by one, then another would come up and say, how about something slower, and in the middle of that someone else would try to get us to stop and play a cha-cha, and the slow dancer would get teed off, and this went on all night. if we started playing Sinatra requests, somebody would scream "Elvis ! Elvis". now that's an extreme case, but illustrative. I think there are certain things we have to keep in mind to please an audience, but these are just things that make good sense for us as well as them: nothing too loud or too fast unless everyone has a head of steam on -- play the kind of tunes that most of the crowd would recognize, don't get too far-out, play appropriate length, etc. After those I think we should try to play our best in our own fashion, and try to have as much fun doing so as we can so the crowd catches our joy. There is no reason we can't be creative, or throw in an occasional original if it has a good groove for the occasion, and play things WE like. The audience will move in our direction if we do that. We can make them like what we like of we do it right..We don't have to be automatons and/or grinning patter-masters or have mercenary musical schemes as we perform

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Miami Mo