Concerts Of A Lifetime

Why put this list together

I’ve been wanting to put this list together for a while to document the concerts I’ve been to through the years. This list is intended to spark memories of all the good times I’ve had seeing live music, because let’s be honest, after almost 30 years of concert-going it is easy to forget the details or forget entire shows altogether. It definitely helped that I saved as many ticket stubs as I possibly could; the oldest being my first Lenny Kravitz concert back in 1996. In more recent times, I’ve had to search through my Gmail “concert tickets” label as more and more shows want to do mobile ticketing. I’m still not certain this list is 100% complete as my wife, Sarah, reminded me of some opening acts that I had forgotten.

It was interesting to put this list together from a data standpoint. The 1990s are a decade I most closely identify with musically due to that being the decade I graduated from high school and university, met my wife and got married. Grunge and the Alternative Rock scene happened. My musical enlightenment years. What I find most interesting is how few concerts I went to back then even though I was very much into music. I had amassed a CD collection in my UW - La Crosse years (1991-1996) that totaled well over 1000. I attribute it mostly to living in small-town USA, the lack of a robust internet, and general laziness. Sure, I went to some really cool Lenny and BNL concerts, but where are the Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, Alice In Chains, Counting Crows and Stone Temple Pilots concerts? The other data point I find the most interesting is what I’m now dubbing the deaf years; 2004-2014. It is no coincidence that Sarah and I started adding to our family with Colin and Olivia arriving in 2001 and 2004. 2004-2014 was a decade full of work, kids, and not much else. Around the summer of 2014 Sarah and I made a concerted effort to go to more shows. We’ve been making up for lost time and attending a lot of concerts ever since. Sarah always jokes that she usually doesn’t even know who the band is because I’m always finding new music to listen to.

This is intended to be a living, breathing document in which I’ll update as we attend more shows. Hopefully I’ll put more of a review spin on things as details are much more fresh in my mind after going to show rather than trying to fill in details from the cobwebs of memory after years of neglect.

Leave a message in the comments below and tell me a band I HAVE to see before I’m dead.

Without further ado … the list

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