My Concert Archive
I went back to watch a video I took at a concert last week. I spontaneously saw Gigi Perez at the Fox Theater in Oakland. Tickets were cheap day of & I had nothing to do that night, so I said fuck it. I’ve been wanting to see her live. I obviously knew Sailor Song & a couple of her other songs but didn’t know much outside of that. I’d seen her performances on TikTok, saw the way she could sing live, & wanted to witness it. Let me tell you… it was worth it to spend my Monday night at that concert.
Replaying those videos got me thinking about other live performances I'd seen at the Fox. Then I proceeded to go down a spiral of all the concert videos I had in my phone.
I don’t know about other people… but I’m one of those people who loves to go back & watch videos I took from concerts. It feels like an artifact that’s unique to my experience.
People were also posting videos of Chelsea Cutler on TikTok last week because she performed over the weekend & said she probably won’t play her song nj live again since she’s moved on from that chapter of her life. I went back & found a video of her singing that song live, & I’m grateful I did.
I’ve seen people say “No one gives a shit about concert videos.” While some might not, I can tell you I’m in the camp of people who do. Share it if you want. I share mine.
I think there’s a balance between being present at a concert & filming the whole thing. A show can be ~90 minutes, so if you spend 5–10 of those taking intentional videos that will mean something to you, I’m in total support of that. Live streaming the whole thing is a whole different thing though.
Music & artists can mean so many different things to people. Every person in that audience experiences the show through their own lens. There are parts they may connect with more than others, songs that hit differently, moments that maybe only they captured the way they did.
So here I am sharing some of my favorite, imperfect concert moments I’ve captured over the years. Some of these I hesitated to post before for the reasons I mentioned above. Maybe no one will give a shit or they aren’t good enough quality (which some of them really aren’t), but who cares. They capture the camera quality of the iPhone at that time & you can still hear the music, which is what matters.
During this, I also thought about the moments I don’t have on video. I remember them in my mind & that’s where they’ll have to live. One of those being that I saw Kendrick Lamar open for Mac Miller & Wiz Khalifa right after Swimming Pools dropped. What was that performance like? I wish I had it on film. I wish I had a video of seeing Mac Miller that night. I lived it, but sometimes those videos just bring back a snapshot of a moment you didn’t realize was going to be so special.
Rick Rubin says, “The goal of art isn’t to attain perfection. The goal is to share who we are. And how we see the world.” That’s exactly how I feel about these clips. They aren’t perfect, but they capture what it felt like to be there from my point of view… & that’s what matters.
