Good old Facebook. Without it, I really wouldn’t have a life. OK, I’ll qualify that: without it, I wouldn’t consolidate what makes up my life in such a structured fashion. I’m not “into” autobiography (I found writing my own “about” section for this blog and for a State featured writer blurb hugely difficult) but the older you get, the more you realise that you are the sum of your memories. And what defines a person like me more than the things I collect – namely, books, CDs and ticket stubs.
Three friends ‘tagged’ me in a Facebook reminiscence about listing the first 50 gigs you went to that come into your head. I know I’m terrible for accentuating the negatives at times but sometimes they’re the funniest memories. However, all my great gigs came flooding back to me as well as some truly terrible ones, and, as always, I couldn’t simply list them, I just had to explain myself. And, after I’d written them out, I realised there were some silly omissions – but rewriting and rejigging weren’t in the rules. The other rule I applied to myself was not to include gigs I reviewed when I first became a journalist – so the list goes up to 2003 only. The hardest part was actually assembling them in chronological order, as I’m writing this on holiday without any ticket stubs or diaries to even check; however, I know I’m pretty much on the button with most of them, such is my peculiar type of memory – great for trivia, crap for remembering birthdays, phone numbers, appointments and what on earth I went upstairs for.
So here are those 50 gigs which which make up my so-called life story – self-indulgence sometimes rocks. Continue reading
