New DS Live Box Set, 3rd November 2023!

[ds1984]

On the other hand, PONO is a song that was played much more on the tour than Iron Hand, Fade to Black, When it Comes to you, YTILTM, even Wild Theme, as it was present in the set of that tour between August 1991 and April 1992, practically nine months..

Somehow the 'Wild Theme' was missed by these sites, or renamed on some set lists. From my memory we always closed the show with Mark, Alan and Guy playing the theme from Local Hero.
Some set list sites have us playing 'Calling Elvis' fewer times than shows, but we always opened with it. We always played at least one encore, while set lists sites claim we didn't play an encore at 55 shows.
It is an error of information gathering, that's all.
All the other songs you list above were (yes) hardly ever played. After the initial UK leg, which felt experimental, there was pretty much a core set with two or three songs coming in and out of the set from time to time.
Core songs:

Calling Elvis

Walk of Life

Heavy Fuel

Romeo and Juliet

The Bug

Private Investigations

Sultans of Swing

Your Latest Trick

On Every Street

Two Young Lovers

Telegraph Road

Tunnel of Love

Money for Nothing

Brothers in Arms

Wild Theme/Local Hero/Going Home - whatever you call it....Mark playing a theme from Local Hero accompanied by Guy and Alan.

That a bit stressful for me to have to contradict you again.

Man your memory is not perfect. But it was so long ago

The encore for most of the shows before Europe '92 was Solid Rock.

Alse we Dire Straits nerds are doing the difference between Going Home and Wild Theme.

Again Oneverybootlegs is serious and he always names it Wild Theme - so no confusion and consistency

Wild Theme went regular during  Europe 1992

I won't do the stat again for that one it is too time consuming but the early typical setlist in europe 92 was :

Calling Elvis
Walk of life
Heavy fuel
Romeo and Juliet
The bug
Private investigations
Sultans of swing
Rotating title
Your latest trick
On every street
Two young lovers
Telegraph road or Tunnel of Love
Money for nothing
Brothers in arms
Solid rock

The case of Wild theme : we have one recording from 1991, the opening night in Dublin on 24th August 1991
Then recordings from may 8  and may 9 in Barcelona do feature it before Solid Rock
Recordings from may 13 in Madrid has it performed after Solid Rock
Then Wild Theme is performed the three nights in Nimes, but missing from Nantes and Werchter recording and reappear on Rotterdam recording from 30th May 1992.
I personaly attended Werchter and I can say that it was not performed there - the show ended on Solid Rock.
It is clear for me as it was same setlist but only one change with my Paris show (Paris = Iron Hand, Werchter = When it comes to you)

From Rotterdam onward, Wild theme is on almost all the known recordings so I assume it was performed every night after that.

[Love Expresso]

I dunno.
He seemed to me a very cerebral, calculating kind of guy. Solos seemed constructed rather than off the cuff.
Nothing wrong with gradually working your way towards the perfect solo.
The older songs with long solos had evolved over many years and several tours. The OES song solos started based on the studio solos and only slightly evolved from there (in my opinion).

Perfect observation, fully agree.

LE

[Chris W]

That a bit stressful for me to have to contradict you again.

Man your memory is not perfect. But it was so long ago

The encore fro most of the show was Solid Rock.

I never stated Wild Theme was an encore. Just that from memory it was a long standing show closer. It only involved three people and was specifically designed to get the band off stage and into cars ready to do the post show runner.
Across the whole tour we rarely walked backstage to the dressing room after the show. It was always a car drive to an airport or hotel.
If you wait until the crowd are leaving you sit in traffic for hours (in sweaty clothes) just like everyone else. So you get out of the venue while the crowd are still walking to their cars.
This is the reason most outdoor shows end with a big firework display.
I totally agree, my memory can be fuzzy. It maybe we only adopted this runner method (all the band apart from Mark, Alan and Guy) when we started to mostly play large outdoor stadiums.

[Love Expresso]

Ok but how did Mark, Guy and Alan leave then? During the max. one or two minutes between the last note and the end of fireworks? It must literally been a "runner" for the three of them. Honestly asking.

LE

[Chris W]

This is one set list I have, from 6th June 1992.

[ds1984]

Yes I remember the firworks after the show and time it took me to leave Werchter.
Well as I was first row so I had to cross the concert field all the way to the back.
Then to retrieve what parking field I had left my car 
There was parking fields everywhere around... 

[Love Expresso]

Man, they could have written the full titles. Very challenging for my OCD 

LE

[Chris W]

Ok but how did Mark, Guy and Alan leave then? During the Max. one or two minutes between the last note and the end of fireworks? It must literally been a "runner" for the three of them. Honestly asking.

LE

No problem.
The whole band had previously bowed and wandered off stage. After 'Local Hero' really only Mark needed to linger, accepting the final ovation.
So two ran from the stage and into the last car, followed quickly by Mark.
Takes less time to usher three people into one car, than nine people into multiple cars, each undecided which car to jump into.
At the open air shows we always had fireworks too, to buy us some more time.

[Chris W]

By Summer of 1992 Telegraph Road was the official end of the set.
Money was the first encore.
Then Brothers in Arms, Solid Rock (and almost always in my memory) Local Hero.

You couldn't end the show without playing Brothers In Aarms, so in my opinion, there were always two encores.

[Robson]

"The song is the king" is his mantra and it seems a too self indulging solo would be something that sets a spotlight on the player too much and distracts from the song. I personally find that attitude rubbish"

For me, these words have always had a different meaning. Certainly not in the concert sense.
It's natural that the live versions have always been different, developed and longer

[Chris W]

15 minute versions of songs with pretty lengthy guitar solos would suggest that too.

[iorch82]

I dunno.
He seemed to me a very cerebral, calculating kind of guy. Solos seemed constructed rather than off the cuff.
Nothing wrong with gradually working your way towards the perfect solo.
The older songs with long solos had evolved over many years and several tours. The OES song solos started based on the studio solos and only slightly evolved from there (in my opinion).

Not the case with PONO solo IMO, much faster, having a much wider variety of licks and sophisticated phrasings that were not to be found in any other song of the repertorie:



I mean, compare that crazy Worcester solo with the recording one.

[Chris W]

That was my point. He was still experimenting with PONO, rather than repeating the solo formula like he did with Sultan's, Telegraph etc...

[Chris W]

This was my point....but people seem more intent on arguing:

Anyway..... all I said was that it was 1) a new song and 2) was not played often enough to cement in a repeated guitar solo.

[Marnix]

Although with the re-release of OTN I was also hoping for an official live version of PONO but that didn’t happen. At least I am really happy with the bonus tracks and I think this will be the most complete what we will ever get from the OES tour.   
I am really fortunate the I have seen that tour live and have now a professional recording of almost all songs I have heard live in Rotterdam 91 and 92.