sock monkey
30 years of using sequences here. I now mix them down to waves and use Win Amp for play back. Bass in right channel, the rest in the left. 
 
Question-- how much time did he take between songs? 

It wasn't long, maybe 20-30 seconds. He used the playlist and before every set he would drag the songs we were going to do to the top of the set list. It seemed to work seamlessly.

bitflipper
 
Plus it seems to be the way it's done nowadays. My friend and I have a couple of regular gigs we do where we're the only non-sequenced entertainers that play there. Everybody else is fully programmed, and the regulars have often said they find that to be boring. We let customers come up and sing, sometimes spontaneously. I'd like to see the other acts try fitting that into their scripted MIDI shows.

Seems to me that would be the hardest thing to avoid, to be boring after a while. Once the novelty wears off, how do you keep it interesting to the audience?
On the other hand.....
 

sock monkey
I also play in a "real" duo where we switch off on Banjo/ Mandolin/Dobro and Guitar. I love how every time we play it's different and we mess up the arrangements. I'll play a song on the guitar one time and next on the mandolin or dobro. 
My other act is for dances only and nobody gives a monkey's arse about how I make the music..This is the place for structure and banging them off.
 
Different crowd, different approach. A band promo/ booking agent once told us " Those people know Zero about music, do what your told and you'll get paid"  The other side of the coin in the music world.
SOme places you need to be creative and actually know how to play,,, the others, your just a bunch of actors looking like a band and making music like sounds...

 
Same for our gigs. Some places the folks really appreciate musicianship and an effort to entertain them. Other places they just want to drink and dance and a DJ would suffice for them.
So flexibility is the key....

It's funny we are both bass players. Both with miles of stage time on bass. We really miss having a bass player, but no one 'round here knows how to play our type of stuff. We tried a few. 
One gig this summer we cheated and I made a backing track using the real bass tracks from our album we recorded. I panned the bass right and ran that to my Yorkville 200 Watt Bass amp from the Laptop. It sounded just like a live bass! Why shouldn't it? 
From the Left channel I ran a hi hat click track to the floor wedge only. We found all we really needed was the count in and then it was easy to follow the bass for timing. We couldn't really even hear the click track much. I used Win Amp for playback.
It was excellent to have the "real" Bass and it was a very serious listening crowd. Only a few observant people commented afterwards that they all of a sudden noticed there was bass and asked how we did it. They said it was excellent and did not seem phony at all. They never noticed me messing with anything because I control my laptop with a USB foot control. 
 
That's why I asked how quickly did he seem to be able to switch songs. I would use Sonar but seems it would be slow and involve not focusing on the crowd. 

sock monkey
A band promo/ booking agent once told us " Those people know Zero about music, do what your told and you'll get paid"  

My theory is that "most" people hear you strike up those first chords of Jumping Jack Flash, or VH's Jump etc. and from that moment on they are hearing the original in their head while they dance around the floor trying to look cool for their partner.

Let's hear the train wreck stories, I'm sure everyone has had...playing with backing tracks.  Over the many, many times I've played with them, it happened only once, but it was a whopper.  We had drums and bass as .wav files.  After that incident, that particular song was immediately dropped. ;-D

You get good at jumping to the second line in a verse when you realize there was only a 2 bar turnaround!!!! Playing to sequences/ tracks is a learned skill. Musicians who have bad timing, don't listen to what's going on or bad memories will fall on their arse. Those can use Karaoke :) 

Well, my all-time favorite was when I had to reboot the computer on a song that heavily featured a bunch pf backing keyboard tracks, after we already had started the song.
 
The singer's historic comment to the rest of the band: "Just keep playing - he'll catch up".
 
Never played that place again......
 
Not in that band anymore, either...
 
 
Bob Bone
 

Our song was asking for trouble, with a 5 beat turn around measure and waaay too much syncopation in the bass and drum tracks to easily feel a beat...  It was a song that needed the rest to really pull it together.

Did you eve learn about the interface? I need to do a piano bar concept for a charity event where people will sing along like karaoke. They need to see the words and I would like the words to move in real time.

I want to be able to structure the song my way and not via a download purchase karaoke song.

LanceJ
Did you eve learn about the interface? I need to do a piano bar concept for a charity event where people will sing along like karaoke. They need to see the words and I would like the words to move in real time.

I want to be able to structure the song my way and not via a download purchase karaoke song.

He uses a laptop running Sonar 2 and a Korg x5dr sound module.