Just the tickets

One thing you can say in favor of hanging onto all your old concert ticket stubs is that at least they don't take up much room. But what do you do with them? Mount them in shadowboxes? Laminate them? Scrapbook them? Stick them in some box and tuck it in the back of some closet and let them get sorted out by the poor saps responsible for your future estate sale?

Probably the latter.

These tickets all date to my high school days, when going to concerts was an absolutely essential part of life. It's what I lived for, it was why I sold cigarettes and lottery tickets at the drugstore for minimum wage ($3.35/hour). This was before I moved to NYC for college, when I'd be able to see live music at clubs and other smaller venues, finances permitting. In high school, we mostly went to arena shows—though NYC's much-missed Pier was fairly intimate—and my brother usually drove. Now I hardly ever see live music! It's sad. Next month will mark a year since I went to a show—Lucinda Williams at Gruene Hall. The place was chock-full of old people—folks who've probably amassed their own fair share of ticket stubs—and I felt downright sprightly by comparison. Sadly, I don't have a stub from that show because I purchased my tickets online. Didn't save the online receipt either. Why bother?

Following is an annotated list of the ticket stubs recovered from the storage facility. (Note: I saw way more shows than this so I can only assume more stubs will materialize in the future.)

Yes at Forest Hills Stadium (1)*
The Roches at Town Hall
Crosby Stills Nash at the Pier
Peter Gabriel at Madison Square Garden
Stevie Nicks at Garden State Art Center (2)*
Bob Dylan and Tom Petty at the Meadowlands
The Smiths at the Pier (3)*
The Real Thing at the Plymouth Theater (4)*
Miles Davis (and Kenny G!) at Avery Fisher Hall (5)*
Bob Dylan (and the Alarm) at Jones Beach
Velez, Gorn, Fedman at the Knitting Factory (6)*
Dire Straits at Madison Square Garden (7)*
Stevie Ray Vaughan at the Pier (8)*
Squeeze at Garden State Art Center
The Kinks at Madison Square Garden (9)*
Tina Turner at Madison Square Garden (10)*
The Rolling Stones at Shea Stadium

(1) My first concert—Owner of a Lonely Heart!
(2) The Hooters opened
(3) Best. Concert. Ever.
(4) As in the Tom Stoppard play. Starred Jeremy Irons and Glenn Close.
(5) Kenny G opened for Miles. I can't believe I saw Kenny G!
(6) No idea who this is.
(7) Yes, Sting was on hand to sing "I want my MTV..."
(8) Joe Satriani opened. It was billed as a battle of the guitar heroes. Stevie won.
(9) My second concert ever; the "Come Dancing" tour. Tommy Shaw of Styx opened.
(10) A private dancer, a dancer for money!