It might seem like a small thing but I wish I’d kept my concert tickets from the 70s and 80s. Many people have, of course, perhaps forseeing the archival benefit of doing so.
It’s not just to jog the memory but because they’re an important part of an era now gone. You’d keep your ticket, often for months, in your bedroom, on a table, in anticipation. And they all had different colours, usually pastel shades. Some craft had gone into these things. Most were printed in the same type of font but others incorporated the headliner’s logo. I recall one for April Wine at Newcastle City Hall being emblazoned with their logo of the time. Whose decision was that, I wonder.
Now that we largely print tickets out at home, it doesn't feel the same, hasn’t got the same feel of significance about it. All my early tickets, whether for Newcastle City Hall, Middlesbrough Town Hall and Crypt of Newcastle Mayfair usually all looked pretty much the same. With the same font and the same sort of information. And it’s funny to think, just flashing these on the door to the bouncer got you in.
I know of plenty of people who gained entry to many gigs by just keeping old tickets and using the same coloured one, quickly showing it on the steps of the city hall in the middle of a crush when they would often not check the details or tear it, especially if it wasn’t sold out. Then they’d stand at the back of the stalls waiting for the band and then join the crush down the front when they did. Not me of course, I wouldn’t dream of doing that. Didn’t work every time, like. I’m told.
The first gig we went to in California were those computer, daisy wheel printer strips. No romance at all and that was the beginning of the end. But even now, when I see an old ticket, I wonder what the weather was like, what I’d had for tea, who I went with and did I buy any merchandise. The ticket is a turn key for a whole host of experiences that just get washed away in the tides of life otherwise.
