OK, I still use a music-stand on this jazz gig I’ve been playing for months. There often are new tunes but mostly it’s there out of laziness as I haven’t bothered to learn the changes of some of the tunes, though I’m sure I’d know them at a push. What do you think of musicstands on stage?
Phil Wain 
always puzzled me why classical and big band players use stands but jazzers don’t seem to like them. Melody Gardot’s string section all use stands including the 2nd bass but if Ken Prendergast (1st bass) used one he would probably get boo-ed offstage
I like to have one, but it’s such a small club it gets knocked over mid-song. The thing is I solo batter when I don’t think about the chords and I like to internalise song melodies and progressions.
I did a funk gig recently as a dep and ‘sight’-read the whole gig with huge long charts – that did look weird on a funk gig and I was heppier when we came to the vamps!
stands always feel like cheating to me, and if you cheat, you should be more subtle about it. Write it out big so you can have it on the floor or wall like a set list 😉
🙂 We play a lot of tunes on longer gigs that we’ve never played before though so they are necessary for some tunes – just trying to phase out using them on the more familiar jazz tunes.