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20 Years Of Concerts

By Eric | June 11, 2017 8:00 am

June 11th, 2017 – 20 years since my first concert. Where does the time go? It was only yesterday that… No. No it wasn’t. It was 20 years go. You’re old, Eric. Get over it.

Anyway, since I’m a dork I thought it would be fun to run the numbers on the Concert Chronology and look at some basic stats:

* 355 shows over 20 years. It works out to an average of 17.75 shows a year, or a shade under one and a half per month. This doesn’t include the countless local bands / bar bands either, just the major stuff. I’m not even hazarding a guess as to dollars spent. I don’t wanna know,

* 2001 was the banner year – 37 shows, and 2009 was right behind that at 33. 1997 only had 4 (I was just starting!) and 2006 had a lowly 3, all in March (Thanks to the year of weddings and bachelor parties. Literally, they all happened that year.)

* 587 different artists at 101 different venues, in only 3 different states/provinces (PA got a handful). I even accounted for name changes! (Same building = same venue. Looking at you Marine Midland / HSBC / First Niagara, and also Milestones / High Fidelity / Flour City.)

* Bands most often seen: The Tea Party and Sevendust are tied for first at 17 shows apiece, Our Lady Peace is right behind at 16, Staind at 12, Theory of a Deadman and Cold at 11 each, and Econoline Crush and The Tragically Hip are at 10 each. Inexplicably, I’ve suffered through Velour (even when they tried to disguise themselves as the Turnstones) 10 times as well.

* “Weirdest” artists seen would probably have to be Wang Chung and/or Vanilla Ice (during his nu-metal phase). Can’t think of any others that are that LOL-worthy.

* Venues most visited: Water Street Music Hall (RIP) runs away with this one – 48 shows, with another 6 on the club side. Montage is next at 21, Darien Lake had 20, Town Ballroom had 19, Showplace Theater had 18.

* Rochester beat Buffalo 141 to 109. Darien was a distant third with 20.

* There’s no way in hell I could do any kind of ranking, not even of just “memorable” shows. There’s simply too many.

I wrote a little piece for 10 years worth of shows, and while most of those sentiments still hold true, however, with age supposedly comes a little bit of wisdom. I no longer wait in lines if I can help it. I now will gladly pay for a VIP meet and greet instead of waiting outside for hours by the bus, mainly because my time is more valuable, but also because that money goes directly to the artist that I’m there supporting in the first place. I’m forced to be a bit more judicious in which shows to go to, so I try to wring a bit more experience out of each one.

Finally, I hope I’m still doing this for another 20 years, hopefully with the boys! Nothing like being the old guy in the back complaining about the “kids these days” and how much better these shows used to be!

Topics: Blog | Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 1 Comment »

One Response to “20 Years Of Concerts”

  1. Nestordamus Says:
    June 12th, 2017 at 11:03 am

    Hi.

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