Tori Amos Setlist Database - Frequently Asked Questions

1. How do I navigate this site? What are the main sections?
2. What are the codes in the album column?
3. Why is the site so ugly?
4. Speaking of ugly, what's with all the stupid colors?
5. I'm a geek. What are some of the technical details of the site?
6. The site is freakin' slow. What's up?
7. How can I get access to the data or the databases?
8. Why are there so many errors in the database?
9. I know she played [some obscure song or fragment] on [such and such a date]. How come it's not in the database?
10. I see a blatant error. Fix it now!
11. Who died and made you king of the setlists?
12. I want to help. What can I do?
13. Aren't you a little obsessed about this Tori thing?
14. I want to send you lots recordings of shows you don't get to go to any more since you're old and employed and live in Fargo, North Dakota and the only reasonable place you can see a Tori show is Minneapolis. To whom should I send them?

1. How do I navigate this site? What are the main sections?
   

   Here are some navigation tips:

   • All pages and all views are "bookmark-able" -- if you find one that you like, bookmark it and return to it frequently.

   • Click on any column header on the main page to sort alphabetically by song, numerically by number of times played, or by date and album. Click again to sort the column in the opposite direction.

   • Click on any date to get information about that particular show. Click on any song title to get a list of shows at which the song was played.

   • An asterisk before a date means the concert was "non-traditional" (radio appearance, benefit concert, etc.). A letter after the date means an early and late show was played in the same day.

   • Use the filtering drop-down lists to change your viewing options for your statistics pages. Alternatively, use the quick links on the left-hand side of each page.

   • You can view the date column in three ways: all dates played, only the debut date for this song, or the most-recent date at which the song was played. If either of the latter two is selected, the date column can be sorted. If more than 30 dates are available for a song, a link will be shown to get a more detailed list.

   • Select the "Tour Summary" page for any tour to get a quick listing of all shows on a particular tour. You can use these pages as a quick way to get to MikeWhy's reviews and setlists.

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2. What are the codes in the album column?
   

   Le = Little Earthquakes -- Utp = Under the Pink -- Bfp = Boys for Pele -- Ftch = From the Choirgirl Hotel -- Tvab = To Venus and Back -- Slg = Strange Little Girls -- Sw = Scarlet's Walk -- Yktr = Y Kant Tori Read -- '-B' = B-side from an album -- Sdtrk = Movie Soundtrack -- Cover = Song written by someone other than Tori

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3. Why is the site so ugly?
   

   I'm the first to admit that I'm by far not an artistic person. Furthermore, I desperately needed to get this thing up and running before the end of this current tour. Obviously the look and feel and graphics of this site suffered in the process. Please see the 'How You Can Help' section if you wish to provide an artistic vision for this site.

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4. Speaking of ugly, what's with all the stupid colors?
   

   The first thing someone mentioned when they saw the sight was "There's too many colors." Each album has a color associated with it. On some pages it's rather busy, on other pages it makes sense. One of the ideas for the future direction of the site is to give the option to remove the color-coded album legends.

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5. I'm a geek. What are some of the technical details of the site?
   

   This is always fun for me:

   • The machine is a whopping P-180 with 64 megs of RAM.
   • Everything is running on good old-fashioned Linux (Debian flavor: www.debian.org)
   • Database is powered by MySQL (www.mysql.com)
   • Of course the web server is Apache (www.apache.org)
   • All programming logic and active server pages are done with the PHP module (www.php.net)
   • The best damn text editor ever made: Ultra Edit (www.ultraedit.com)
   • I have a Cable Modem account with a dynamic IP address, so: www.dyndns.org

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6. The site is freakin' slow. What's up?
   

   Cable modem upload speed is part of it, the machine specs are another. Someday it'll be upgraded but it's not a priority. But hey, at least it's free (and no banner ads!). Thanks for your patience.

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7. How can I get access to the data or the databases?
   

   One of the best things about this database is that I designed it to be used in a number of ways. With all of the hard work of creating the database schema and logic behind me, the fun part begins. I want to open this up in as many ways as possible. See the Future Direction page for some of my ideas, but please contact me if there is a particular view you want of the data. I can export the data to an spreadsheet on an automated basis, or possibly even open the database to be linked to directly.

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8. Why are there so many errors in the database?
   

   Once again, see the 'How You Can Help' section...

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9. I know she played [some obscure song or fragment] on [such and such a date]. How come it's not in the database?
   

   Fragments are a huge problem for me right now. See the 'Future Direction' section for how I hope to handle song fragments.

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10. I see a blatant error. Fix it now!
    

    Please be as specific as possible when pointing out errors. Specific dates and changes would be very helpful.

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11. Who died and made you king of the setlists?
    

    This site has a long history. It started out as just a personal desire to see what songs to expect when I went to the '96 shows. I grabbed the data from MikeWhy (see the Home page for my acknowledgement for his hard work!) and just ran a couple Perl scripts on them. Once I saw how helpful the results were and what kind of trends I saw, I decided to start sharing the summaries with others. The site became more and more complex and I finally committed to create and actual database with the setlist information. This site is the result of that work.

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12. I want to help. What can I do?
    

    Ahhhh, I was hoping you would ask. See the 'How You Can Help' section for ways that you can help...

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13. Aren't you a little obsessed about this Tori thing?
    

    Not as much as I used to be. Not as much as other people are (not that that's a bad thing!)

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14. I want to send you lots recordings of shows you don't get to go to any more since you're old and employed and live in Fargo, North Dakota and the only reasonable place you can see a Tori show is Minneapolis. To whom should I send them?
    

    Ok, twist my arm. Contact me and I'll get you my address.

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