SHOWS

SHOWS is the workhorse of GDQL. It returns one row per concert and lets you filter by venue, year, era, segues, set positions, played songs, guests, and more — then shape the output with ORDER BY, LIMIT, and AS.

Synopsis#

SHOWS [ AT "venue_or_city" ] [ FROM date_or_era ] [ WHERE condition [ AND | OR condition ... ] ] [ ORDER BY sort_spec ] [ LIMIT n ] [ AS format ];

Every clause is optional — SHOWS; on its own returns every show in the database.

How it works#

SHOWS queries the show table and returns date, venue, city, state, and tour for each match. Combine clauses freely: AT narrows by location, FROM by date, WHERE by anything that happened during the show. The clauses don’t have a strict order — SHOWS FROM 1977 AT "Winterland" and SHOWS AT "Winterland" FROM 1977 mean the same thing.

Clauses#

Examples#

Everything#

SHOWS;
SHOWS LIMIT 20;

By year, range, or era#

SHOWS FROM 1977;
SHOWS FROM 77;  -- two-digit shorthand
SHOWS FROM 1977-1980;  -- year range
SHOWS FROM 77-80 LIMIT 10;

SHOWS FROM PRIMAL;  -- named era
SHOWS FROM EUROPE72;
SHOWS FROM BRENT_ERA;

By venue or city#

SHOWS AT "Fillmore West";
SHOWS AT "Winterland" FROM 1977;  -- combine with FROM
SHOWS AT "New York" LIMIT 10;  -- matches all NYC venues
SHOWS AT "Madison Square Garden";

By tour#

SHOWS TOUR "Europe" FROM 1972;

Heads-up: the TOUR keyword is part of the language but tour data is not yet imported into the embedded database — these queries currently return zero rows. Use FROM EUROPE72 or an explicit date range as a workaround.

With WHERE conditions#

Filter by segue, set position, played songs, or guests. See WHERE for the full vocabulary.

SHOWS FROM 1977 WHERE "Scarlet Begonias" > "Fire on the Mountain";  -- segue
SHOWS WHERE SET1 OPENED "Jack Straw";  -- set position
SHOWS FROM 1990 WHERE PLAYED "Eyes of the World";  -- played
SHOWS WHERE "Help on the Way" > "Slipknot!" > "Franklin's Tower";  -- three-song chain

Order and limit#

SHOWS FROM 1977 ORDER BY DATE;
SHOWS FROM 1977 ORDER BY DATE DESC;  -- newest first
SHOWS FROM 77-80 LIMIT 10;

Output formats#

SHOWS FROM 1977 LIMIT 3;  -- default format
SHOWS FROM 1977 LIMIT 3 AS TABLE;
SHOWS FROM 1977 LIMIT 3 AS JSON;
SHOWS FROM 1977 LIMIT 3 AS CSV;
SHOWS FROM 1977 LIMIT 3 AS SETLIST;  -- inline setlists

AS SETLIST expands each show inline with its full setlist — handy for quick browsing without a follow-up SETLIST FOR call.

Tips#

• Combine AT and FROM to narrow fast. A city + a year is usually a few dozen shows at most.
• LIMIT is your friend. Without it, queries against the full archive can return thousands of rows.
• The order of AT, FROM, and WHERE doesn’t matter — pick whatever reads best.
• Use AS JSON or AS CSV to pipe results into other tools.

Try in Sandbox · Scarlet→Fire · AS JSON