FAQs - More About Marc’s Concert Blog

The concert blog is part personal journey, part historical archive.

Why a Concert Blog?

To share some of what the concert experiences were to me, as an individual, given my own musical interests and experiences, many of which are shared by like-minded fans of music and live concerts. One can easily see how connected much of the content is on this site. I would contrast it with the typical way in which much of the bands, music, concerts and related information is grouped and categorized online - by carving pieces up in isolation. A chunk of history is documented here. I get a lot of enjoyment and some pride from looking at my collection of concert photos, and wanted to share some of that.

At its core, this is a recognition of the bands and musicians. There are a dozen or so bands that I've seen many times, and I’ve attended over 400 shows; this reflects my deep appreciation and respect for the musicians covered here - some of the greatest bands in history. There are many well-known shows and tours covered in my list of All Concerts Attended, and many of these already have received much attention on fan sites, or in the case of bands like Grateful Dead, Rolling Stones and Dave Matthews Band, through the bands' own live concert releases and other publicly available materials. In those cases I only hope that I add a little more or different perspective on these events.

Why is this Site so Big and Complicated?

For better or worse, its a lot in one place. Its more of an archive or a book than a drive-by web site.

I wanted to highlight my concert photography online, and also had the idea to put together, in digital format, my collection of ticket stubs, programs and other items from concerts. After looking at all the stubs after many years, I thought about all the old shows that I’d nearly forgotten. I decided I wanted a list of my concerts on my site. To do a fairly complete list I went back through calendars and datebooks to confirm things - dates of shows without stubs, etc. I started doing research and found that some shows were not documented anywhere online, or were referenced with some inaccuracies. I did a lot of research to verify information about the shows, and (with only a few exceptions noted on the blog) was able to compile a fairly complete and accurate list of about 400 shows over 40 years. (In a few cases I had to go with TBA - to be added - for the location.)

Site format came together after assessing various ways to list all shows and add my photos and other content; after considering some other possibilities I decided to do the list with summary blocks coming off a blog which holds a post for each show. Although my photos are spread out among the hundreds of blog posts, the navigation tools make it simple to find all posts from a given year, or for a given band, or to see only those with photos.

There are thousands of images, and due to its complexity I put Marc’s Concert Blog and Galleries on its own site. A separate marcalstudios website will cover other topics, and display other photography, related to topics other than concerts. There are no videos here yet. I may add some original video along with video slideshows.

Why Not Just Use Social Media?

It was important to me to show content without advertising and data mining, and without commercial distractions. The site format is designed to be powerful yet pretty straightforward so that it stays out of the way of the content. I intentionally tried to avoid the superficiality, lack of control, and lack of personal responsibility that sometimes comes along with today's online world and social media.

With a post for each show, and all the various navigation tools that are possible with blog pages, I found a way to combine my photos with my stubs and other content for each show, and add the type of navigation that makes searching specific content (and finding posts with photos) very easy.

Do You License and/or Sell Your Photos

I am making a limited number of photos available for sale as prints in select formats. To see these please go to my online store with smugmug, which is linked here and at the top of the concert blog home page. For the time being there is just one mixed gallery called “Concerts’,” but in the coming weeks the smugmug site and galleries will be updated for better access and selection of prints. (A note about prints: at least initially, I have not had the chance to designate a correct or appropriate print size for each print. Smugmug lets the purchaser choose. Notice there is only one schedule of available sizes right now which applies to all photos. Depending on the photo sometimes the right size is found in the uncommon sizes groups, including but not only the panorama sizes. At least one of the available sizes should fit for each photo. The most common photo sizes I used to create and save photos are 5x7, 6x9 and 6x10 formats.)

To license or purchase any other images or other content, please feel free to contact me.

Are you interested in Photographing or Promoting Other Events?

I may be interested if its to help original bands, working musicians, not-for-profit organizations within the arts, and other good causes.

Why List Every Show, if there’s no Photo or Stub for Some?

I may publish highlights from the concert blog as a book, in the meantime the concert blog has a lot of good information. I noticed that I found little online about certain concerts I attended (or in some cases, found either misinformation or only superficial information). As a student of history, I think its a good thing to add to the historical record by documenting these shows. Also, a list of shows is a way to show the progression of one fan’s musical interests and it provides a backdrop for viewing the content.

Its not like I think I saw more or better shows than many other people; but its clear there’s been lots of interest in many of the bands and specific events documented here. After years of effort I thought I had an exceptional collection of rare reggae records and then I went to an event where Roger Steffens displayed what (just some of) his “complete” collection of Bob Marley music looks and sounds like - a very humbling experience! There are a bunch of little digital items among the blog posts that (who knows?) some people might find interesting. Anyway, its all part of the history.

How do you get the Photos? What Photography Equipment Do You Use?

All marcalstudios photography is marked as such, and all of it is my own fan photography, taken from the audience. All marcalstudios images posted on the site are copies at standard website resolution. With only a few exceptions, most of the images should look very good on a full size computer monitor. Larger resolution versions are always possible and are used on my smugmug site when available for purchase as prints.

In cases where I attached memorabilia like tour programs, I denoted the documents as “Collection of..” in the watermark, to distinguish from my own photos which all bear the watermark “Marcal Studios LLC.” (“Collection of..” means that I am showing, for reference, an item I physically have.)

In the 1970s I was taking a regular SLR camera and telephoto lense into some shows. During the last 10 years I would usually try to use a portable camera that complies with the venue rules - which usually exclude SLRs and any other detachable lense cameras. In a few cases I had an SLR because it was allowed. Way at the bottom of my list of options is the dreaded cell phone camera. Although they are getting better today, these devices generally underperform portable cameras costing less.

In all cases I do post-processing work that is typical to modern digital photography.

What types of Post-Processing?

I start with minimal post-processing on all photos and then go from there. In some cases I try black and white, or I might try different visual effects that (at least in my opinion) enhance the visual characteristics of the image. In some cases the effects are very pronounced. You may see that more in the galleries than on the blog, in any event its only certain cases. There is no set convention or uniform visual style, and the photos I placed in the various blog posts and galleries vary in style.

Which Bands / Concerts are Your Favorites? What’s the Best Concert You’ve Seen?

I've sometimes referred to bands and musicians that I've seen many times as "great" and that's about all I want to do. There is a lot of commentary on this site (and lots of photographic and other “evidence'“) bearing upon what I think about various bands, eras, tours etc.

My own musical values and/or level of “musical satisfaction” is reflected in the choices I made in terms of which shows to go see in given years. My choices sometimes contradicted the common "wisdom." or preferences of my friends. But one of my intentions here was to show the many connections among these bands and their music, and also to document some of the smaller shows, and less-heralded musicians, that were equally wonderful to me but which do not enjoy as much attention.

I am not sure which show was my absolute favorite, but it sure wasn’t the Grateful Dead show at Cornell on 5/8/77. As we now all know, courtesy of Bob Weir, that show never even took place.

Is this a Current and Ongoing Blog? What Content will appear on the Main Website?

The main purpose of the Concert Blog is to archive and display part of the history of great music with my materials. Its got most of what I’ve seen but not all, and I will update as appropriate. There are a few more jazz shows, Grateful Dead shows, and others I haven’t included because I didn’t have enough of the dates and details. I’ll keep updating the site with any new information and additional memorabilia I want to post.

Additional materials on my main site will relate to other topics of photography and photojournalism. World War II correspondence, photos and other materials will be on my main site so that this unique, historically important (and currently relevant) material can be viewed by the public. Check back, there is more to come...

Thanks for your time and interest in this site.

- Marc

December, 2019