Allot of people have standard starting points when it comes to a mix. But why? every song is differnt, and every song has a differnt focal point. What you should do is listen to the mix and pinpoint what the focus of the song is. If its a vocal track with a main acoustic guitar, that should be the starting point. What allot of people end up doing is spending 8 hour mixing drums and getting them to sound just right, then add every thing else in and at the very end add the vocals, which they only get to spend a small amount of time on. and this may not be a big issue if its a rock number, but if its a ballad, why the hell would you be starting with the drums?
for me it just makes sense to start with what is most important, get it sounding the way I want it, then start adding the other parts.
Drums are an easy starting point, so I can't really blame people for starting with them, but it should not be what you are spending allot of time on if the drums are not a crucial aspect of the song.
Make what ever is most important the best sounding. thats the short end of it.

I'm by no means a pro, but what I usually do with live concerts is during the soundcheck, zero everything, fix the immediate problems, (go see if everything is working onstage) then make multiple passes at rearranging things, shuffling them about for each song.
When it comes to the concert itself, I generally keep the headphones on, and just make adjustments until it sounds level.
OK, it's live. The entire methodology is different, but I would use a repeated approach. Set the lead and make a few passes at shuffling the backing/extra instruments about.
(But don't make any passes at the band members! Unless...;))

THnks for the input codemonkey,but the question is dealing with studio,not live.