Welcome to my Gigs section.
I went to my first concert in 1974. That was Alvin Stardust at Batley Variety Club. In 1977, I saw XTC, and in 1978 The Buzzcocks, The Stranglers, and Stiff Little Fingers. In 1979, I went to my first rock concert, Gillan, at Bradford St. Georges Hall. That kindled something inside me and it has been a long, slippery slope since then. I don't know how many gigs I've been to over the last thirty years, and I don't know what happened to my early ticket stubs; back in the day, they didn't always give you your tickets back, or I just didn't think I would want to be looking at them again more than thirty years later. Or, maybe my mum just chucked them out when I went to uni... Who knows?! I didn't actually go to that many gigs between 1984 and 1998; young children, family, and so on, and some of the gigs, I never had tickets for in the first place; some would have been pay on the door, others (Demon and Diamond Head, particularly, I was on the Guest List. Still, I do have around 250 ticket stubs, nevertheless.
In 2001, I borrowed a digital camera from work and went to see Demon. I took some photographs of them and wrote my first review. In the last ten years, I have taken photographs at, and written reviews of, most of the gigs I've been to, and I know that I have 152 sets of photographs today, which will be 154 by next Tuesday. All of these are now done. Over the years I have used five different cameras, the first was a 1MP Kodak. Today, I have slightly better equipment and even my Panasonic Lumix point-and-shoot is 10MP. Still, some of those early ones are still good photos, even if I can't blow them up to poster size.
Before 2000, it had never occurred to me to take photos at gigs, or write reviews. There just seemed no point. Consequently, all I have is my memory and the InterWeb. Whilst the former is pretty good, it is not perfect. I enjoyed the shows at the time, but detail is a little scarce in parts. I have tried to find setlists for the older gigs and have been reasonably successful. Where I have not been able to find an exact setlist for a gig, I have tried to assemble something akin to what they probably played around that time. So, choose a gig from the menu and take a trip back in time.
I went to my first concert in 1974. That was Alvin Stardust at Batley Variety Club. In 1977, I saw XTC, and in 1978 The Buzzcocks, The Stranglers, and Stiff Little Fingers. In 1979, I went to my first rock concert, Gillan, at Bradford St. Georges Hall. That kindled something inside me and it has been a long, slippery slope since then. I don't know how many gigs I've been to over the last thirty years, and I don't know what happened to my early ticket stubs; back in the day, they didn't always give you your tickets back, or I just didn't think I would want to be looking at them again more than thirty years later. Or, maybe my mum just chucked them out when I went to uni... Who knows?! I didn't actually go to that many gigs between 1984 and 1998; young children, family, and so on, and some of the gigs, I never had tickets for in the first place; some would have been pay on the door, others (Demon and Diamond Head, particularly, I was on the Guest List. Still, I do have around 250 ticket stubs, nevertheless.
In 2001, I borrowed a digital camera from work and went to see Demon. I took some photographs of them and wrote my first review. In the last ten years, I have taken photographs at, and written reviews of, most of the gigs I've been to, and I know that I have 152 sets of photographs today, which will be 154 by next Tuesday. All of these are now done. Over the years I have used five different cameras, the first was a 1MP Kodak. Today, I have slightly better equipment and even my Panasonic Lumix point-and-shoot is 10MP. Still, some of those early ones are still good photos, even if I can't blow them up to poster size.
Before 2000, it had never occurred to me to take photos at gigs, or write reviews. There just seemed no point. Consequently, all I have is my memory and the InterWeb. Whilst the former is pretty good, it is not perfect. I enjoyed the shows at the time, but detail is a little scarce in parts. I have tried to find setlists for the older gigs and have been reasonably successful. Where I have not been able to find an exact setlist for a gig, I have tried to assemble something akin to what they probably played around that time. So, choose a gig from the menu and take a trip back in time.
