It's a Thom McAn shoebox. It has been in the closet of every place I've lived since I was seventeen, and every time I've come home from a show I've taken the stub out of my wallet and dropped it in. My wife thinks this is the one organized thing about me. She's right.

Last winter I was home with the flu and I dumped the box out on the bed and started putting them in order, and then I started writing down what I remembered about each one, and then my son said "Dad, put it on the computer," and so here it is. Sixty-one shows in twenty-one years. That works out to about three a year, which doesn't sound like much, but I was raising kids and paying a mortgage for most of it, and I'd say three a year is about right for a guy who works at a printing plant.

I grew up and still live in the Chicago suburbs, so unless it says otherwise, these were all in the Chicago area: the old Stadium, the Amphitheatre, the Horizon out in Rosemont, Poplar Creek, the World out in Tinley Park, Soldier Field for the stadium shows, the United Center since it opened, and a couple of trips over the Wisconsin line to Alpine Valley. I've put the city, the year, the price on the stub and one line of what I remember. I have not tried to write down what they played, because I'd get it wrong, and there are people who keep better track of that than me. This is about the stubs.

The prices are what's printed on the ticket. Some were bought at the box office, some at a record store with a Ticketron machine, some through the mail, some from a guy in a parking lot. The first one was $8.50 in 1978. The last one, this summer, was $45. More on that at the bottom.

$8.50 in 1978. $45 in 1999. That's a little more than five times, and I know a lot of things cost five times what they did in 1978, but I looked it up and inflation over those years was more like two and a half times. So concerts have gone up about twice as fast as everything else. The big jump, on my stubs, was 1989: that's the year I first paid $30, and after that nothing was ever under $20 again except the ballroom show in '93.

And it's not just the face value anymore. The stubs from the '70s and early '80s say the price and that's the price. The stubs from the last ten years have a "convenience charge" and a "facility fee" and a "handling" on top, so the $45 was really $52 and change by the time I hung up the phone. I've written the face value on this page, because that's what the stub says, but I want it on the record.

I'm not complaining, exactly. I keep going. But I notice that my son's first show cost more than my first fifteen combined, and I notice that when I was 17 I could see a band on a week's pay from bagging groceries, and I don't know that a 17-year-old can do that now. Somebody should think about that. It won't be me; I'm just the guy with the shoebox.

The Eagles, 1994. The reunion. The tickets went for over a hundred dollars, and I said no on principle. My wife went with her sister. She reports it was very good. I stand by the principle and I regret it a little every time the song comes on the radio.

Led Zeppelin. Their last American tour was 1977. I was 16 and my parents said no. My parents were probably right about a lot of things and I have never forgiven them for this one.

Everybody who played the Amphitheatre before 1978. I was there in spirit. In actual fact I was in junior high.

Woodstock '94 and Woodstock '99. Too far, too much, and by this summer I'd seen the pictures and figured I'd been right. A nice campground in Wisconsin is my idea of a weekend outdoors, not a runway.

1. If there's no stub, it didn't happen. I know I saw a few bar bands in college. No stub, no entry.
2. The price is what's printed on the ticket, not what I actually paid the guy in the parking lot.
3. No setlists. I don't trust my memory and I don't want to get it wrong in public. There are people who keep those.
4. One line of memory each. If it takes more than a line, it goes in a different box.
5. The stub goes in the shoebox the same night. Not the next morning. That's how you end up with 61 instead of 40.

If you've got a shoebox too, I'd like to hear about it, especially if you were at any of the same shows. And if you're the kind who collects the records and not the stubs, there's a Vinyl Junkie here on GeoCities who'll understand you better than I do.