Catching your favorite bands live, whether at a massive festival or an intimate club show, creates truly unforgettable experiences. To ensure these special moments are preserved and can be relived, we’ve put together a practical guide to keep these concert memories always at hand.
1. Setlist.fm: Statistics for All the Shows You’ve Attended
If you love cataloging every moment of your concerts, you need to delve deeper into the features of the site Setlist.fm. Beyond just checking setlists – a common practice – you can create a free account and log the concerts you’ve attended.
Here’s what you can do:
Registration and Contribution: Sign up on Setlist.fm to start marking the shows you’ve attended. Look up the setlist of the concert and, at the end, you’ll find a green button that says “I was there.” Click it to add it to your personal list. If you can’t find the setlist for a specific show, you can contribute your own information.
Personal Statistics: This is the best part. With the concerts you’ve attended logged, you can view fascinating stats, such as the artists you’ve seen the most and even the songs you’ve heard live the most.
General Statistics: You can also access other statistics about artists, festivals, and venues listed on the site.
2. Ticket Binder: A Timeless Classic
If you’ve been attending rock concerts for decades, you might have tickets scattered all over your house. A more tangible and classic way to preserve these memories is by keeping them in an “old school” binder. This can be a plastic binder (very 90s style) or even an elastic one. But if you want to go a bit further, here are some tips:
Organize by Band, Year, or Country: Creating categories to sort your tickets in the binder can make viewing these memories more interesting over time. For instance, I have my tickets sorted by year, with a separate section just for Pearl Jam tickets – my favorite band.
Memorable Additions: Besides tickets, include brochures, photos, or small collectible items from those concerts. Wristbands, badges, guitar picks… Or those devil horns from the AC/DC show, the 3D glasses from a Kiss concert.
Extra Information: Write down some notes on a piece of paper or on the back of the ticket about your experience at the show to remember in the future. Whether it was because it rained or you made new friends.
Digitization: Protect your memories against time by digitizing your tickets and creating a backup, either on an external hard drive or Google Drive, for instance, to ensure the memories last longer. Especially nowadays, with many tickets being digital and older ones losing their ink over time.
3. Concert Diary: Documenting Your Experiences
If you have a special fondness for the concerts you attend, keeping a diary dedicated to these experiences can be a great idea. It doesn’t have to be anything super elaborate. Just get a good notebook, keep a pen handy, and when you return from the concerts, jot down some thoughts about what you felt.
Essential Details: You can create a template for every concert to make documenting easier, such as noting the date, venue, setlist highlights, who you went with, and your personal impressions of the show.
Include Travel Experiences: If you traveled to see the concert, also note the cultural aspects that caught your attention, beyond the experience of visiting a new venue.
4. Video, Audio, or Photography: Capturing the Spirit of the Show
With the rise in quality of phone cameras, taking photos or videos during a concert has become a ritual for many. But what do you do with all those photos and videos afterward? Here, I suggest taking a few intentional videos and/or photos for your archive rather than recording and photographing everything, which can detract from enjoying the show hands-free.
Here are some strategies for capturing the essence of the show:
Favorite Song: At every concert, there’s at least one song that holds special meaning for each of us. When that song plays, record a short clip – about 1 minute – not only of the stage but also doing a 360º pan of the audience.
Best Time for Photos: With the lights so low and the band moving quickly, photos usually don’t turn out well. If you want to take a photo, take advantage of moments when the artist is speaking to the audience, when the lights are stronger. If the concert is memorable, you might capture the artist visibly moved by the crowd.
Audio: Have you ever thought about just recording the audio of a moment? It could be your reaction, the audience singing along at a specific moment, or the artist’s speech. It’s a very interesting record, especially if you’re not keen on taking photos and videos or if your phone doesn’t have good quality in low light.
Storage: Create a folder on an external hard drive and/or Google Drive to store this material from each concert. You can name the folders however you like. Here’s a suggested format: Year_Month_Day_Band_Venue, which makes it easy to find.
5. Personalized Playlists
Was the setlist from that concert killer? Create a personalized playlist for each special concert you attended. On Spotify, you can do this and even create a custom cover. It’s easy to listen to and relive that moment whenever you want.
6. Social Media and Personalized Hashtags
For those who love to instantly share their concert experiences, it’s worth creating a personalized hashtag just for concert posts and materials. This way, when you want to look back, just click on that hashtag to filter only the content posted from concerts.
Since social media is about sharing, encourage your friends to use the same personalized hashtag when you’ve attended the same concert. This way, you can also relive those memories together in the future.
Do you have different ways of preserving your concert memories? Share them in the comments below!
