I Miss Paper Concert Tickets

Over the past weekend I found myself disassembling one of my old scrapbooks that I kept during my early teens up until I got married. Since it was made of one of those older types of photo album books with the “sticky glue” sheets with a thin plastic sheet over it, I figured I had better do it sooner than later. I have seen what those pages can do to old photographs while scanning old family photos in the past. Fortunately for me, everything came out OK and nothing was lost. At the end of breaking this old book down, I was left with various stacks of paper ephemera divided into movie tickets, newspapers clippings, sporting event tickets, concert tickets, then a lot of miscellaneous paper pieces. What really sent me down memory lane were the movie and concert tickets. As I stared at these nice stacks of tickets, it dawned on my how the idea of a “ticket stub” is pretty much gone! It makes me sad. I’m sure for most people their movie, concert, and game tickets are casually discarded from their pockets after the events and no thought is ever given to them again. But I’m one of those “Keepers”. I store it away as souvenir of a wonderful time and as a physical memento of a great memory. I’ve been blessed to have many!

A few weeks ago a good friend of mine made a post on social media about the time he drove himself, me, and a few other high school friends to see The Black Crowes live when they were supporting their first album. We were barely 16, and for me it was the first concert I went to without my parents. To this day it is a core memory as one of the best concerts I’ve ever been to! The Black Crowes were young, rough, and played like they were hungry… I thought the ceiling was going to come down in that old theater! Ironically, the Crowes were also one of the WORST concerts I had ever been to as well, decades later, as it was a time with brother’s Chris and Rich Robinson seemed to be at each other’s throats and it showed on stage. Thankfully, they appear to have moved past that now! When my buddy brought up that first concert when we were young, I dug out my old scrap book and pulled out my ticket stub from that night. I also was able to dig quickly and find the shirt! I still had that Black Crowes concert T-shirt from 1991. Of course, I can’t wear that thing… it’s been many moons since I’ve worn a MEDIUM T-shirt!

This social media exchange left my old scrapbook open at the house and I started looking through it again. Music being one of the most important things in my life, live concerts quickly became "my" thing to do. I kept every ticket from every event that had a ticket for me to keep and stuck it away. But eventually, those scrapbook pages became blank around when I started to date my wife and got married. There were two things that I recall happening in that time, which was around 2002 and a few years after – first was a new married life and busy with a first home and our work, but the other was the advent of “Print At Home” tickets. I hate those things! By this time, of course, we were no longer standing in line or waiting on the phone to purchase most concert tickets, but instead buying them on the internet. And a lot of places started having you print your ticket at home, since most people then had some sort of home printer by that time. I guess thinking back I COULD have saved that sheet of copy paper as a stub, but it was just not the same and seemed so “disposable”. They ended up in the trash – with no real memento to keep. I remember one time going to see virtuoso guitarist Steve Vai in concert and I had printed my ticket on a black and white laser printer at home. In a time when most people were using these cheap $40-75 home inject printers, the ticketing agent accused mine of being a fake photocopy because mine wasn’t in COLOR! Luckily, I was able to explain to another agent and we worked it out and I had a great time at the show. I sure wished that night I had an OLD SCHOOL paper ticket from the ticketing agents though!

Then came the cell phones. Ugh. And even worse, Ticketmaster and Live Nation dominating (or should that be destroying? Maybe that’s another article?) the live concert industry. The option for “mail your tickets to your home” or “print your ticket at home” slowly started to disappear. We were left with emails and printed QR codes and digital wallets or apps you had to use to access your tickets. Sharing tickets with friends who might not have the app, may not even have a phone, or were simply not technically savvy became an issue. And at the end of the night, you were left with nothing. No stub. And eventually, many of those ticketing companies and agents did not keep a long history of your shows on your app or their servers, or a history at all. You have the memories of the show of course, and maybe you bought a $60 t-shirt - but heck, I want a paper ticket stub!

Warren Haynes of Gov't Mule, Huntsville, AL

As I am writing this in 2026, the last time I got a real paper ticket was a Collective Soul concert in early 2021. I am sure when I bought it there must have been a “mail ticket” option that I paid a few extra bucks for postage. But besides being the last real stub that I have, it will be remembered for being the first concert we went to post COVID lockdown. Before that it was seeing KISS in 2019 during their “End of the Road” tour. It was a long musical drought because of the pandemic. We’ve since made up plenty of time seeing great shows, as well as having several upcoming shows my wife, son, and myself are looking forward to! But, they are all stored on a few different apps on my cell phone… not a single paper ticket. Very sad.