For a few years, I was pretty obsessive about keeping a record of every band I saw perform. I tried to get at least a couple decent shots of every set at every show and festival I attended, and saved details in the metadata of my photos.
I started doing that partly to become a better writer and blogger, and partly because I was old enough to realize that I could no longer remember all the great music I saw when I was young. You know, “What was the name of that band we saw at that club that doesn’t exist anymore the time when X happened?”
But I guess I forgot the second reason and at some point decided that the documentarian approach was keeping me from fully experiencing the moment. So when I went to Eistnaflug in 2016, I didn’t take as many pictures and I didn’t take notes at all. When I got home, I didn’t spend weeks cataloging images. I just used my new energy to hop right back on the pitching treadmill.
Now I have dozens of photos of bands I can’t identify because I only saw them once at festival four years ago, half a world away when I’d probably been awake for 18 hours and seen 12 other bands that day and had beer instead of meals.
