Haha, I could never remember the song titles (originals). I’m not a lyrics man at all and never even knew what our songs were about! I don’t even know the titles/lyrics/meanings for most of my favourite tracks ever! Hahahah.
At gigs I would look at the set list for the next song and go WTF is that? I’d then see my band mates waiting for me to start an intro! It got to the point where I started to offer the other guitarist to do the intros! As soon as the first note is struck I know where I am at!
To this day I have an appalling musical memory… I barely have a repertoire, chord vocab etc. I suck bad! yet I can still play tunes on recorder (schools in my day always made you play the recorder for some reason) from memory…
Ah the good old days of not knowing what’s going on, no setlists, badly setup guitars that can’t be tuned and hearing people laugh between songs… I miss it
I ask because my band mates in a cover band thought that they sounded like crap when they played sober for the first time, but I’m always sober and it actually sounded better than usual.
i can’t really weigh into the second part, beyond noting that sometimes, from the audience perspective, that tradeoff and giving a little from Performer to improve Frontman may be worth it if it makes a more memorable show.
For the first, I don’t know if anyone is old enough to remember the Guitar9 Records and their Chops From Hell columns, but back in college back in in the dawn of internet time I rememered reading a very tongue in cheek piece from someone who advocated practicing under performance conditions - crush a couple beers, run around the block to get sweaty and out of breath, and then jump around and headbang while doing scale runs. This may be taking it a little too far… but, if you’re going to be performing standing, at a bare minimum you need to be practicing standing. If the difference between sitting and standing is enough to impact some of the mechanical aspects of your picking hand, then if you’re doing all of your practicing in a different orientation than you’re performing in, you’re shooting yourself in the foot.
I’ve, pretty much ever since, done almost all of my playing, practice and otherwise, standing up and in normal gigging playing position. Jamming for fun, practicing, even recording, I do all of it standing. The only differrence between me jamming in my bedroom and me playing on a stage (back in the before times when we did things like that, lol) is the rush of adrenaline as you walk out… and that gets easier the more you do it.
Well, I envy you for that. I find my straps way too long to feel comfortable, I’m really thinking about making a fake wedge like Petrucci has to rest my left foot while playing solos.
I think this is one of the biggest issues I see with “bedroom guitarists” when they try to transition to the stage, but at least it’s one of the easiest to fix.
When you realize how impactful small changes in angles can be, it only makes sense that everything that can be a variable matters. Most people limit their focus to the way they hold the pick and the positions of the wrist, but I’ve found these other variables to be just as important, if not more:
Your posture. The more you hunch over, the body of the guitar will start angling backwards, changing all kinds of angles.
How far you tilt the neck / body of the guitar away from your torso. Having the guitar perfectly perpendicular to your legs will be much different than a position that’s more towards parallel.
How high the leg you’re resting the guitar is. I noticed when I started playing that if I sat on a very low stool or couch, my thighs would be angled sometimes past parallel to the ground, pushing the guitar higher up on my body. I liked that feeling more compared to sitting on a high stool or chair, which would lower the guitar noticeably (pretty much the same way strap length affects playing).
Early on when I used the cliplok straps, I found them to be way too long. The nylon was easy to cut, and strong enough to support rivets through them. I loved that super short strap!
I would highly recommend taking the time to either find a strap that fits you perfectly, or modifying one so that it does. I never liked the idea of a fake wedge because it’s just something else that you “need” (and has to be taken to gigs, unless you know there will be floor monitors or something).
Gotta second @Pepepicks66 here - either modify your current strap, find a different one that fits you better, or consider changing your playing position and accept there will be a period of evolution.
There’s a WIDE range of what I would consider a “normal” strap length for a guitarist. If your strap is choked all the way up and you still look like this, though:
…I’d at least consider modifying your strap or looking for a different one, so you’d have the option of going shorter (Slash’s length can still work, but it requires a much steeper neck angle for a relaxed fretting hand position).
Ah the good old days of not knowing what’s going on, no setlists, badly setup guitars that can’t be tuned and hearing people laugh between songs… I miss it 
