THE LOST ART OF THE GIG TICKET

A selection of picture tickets from 1987-2007.

My dad kept most of his gig tickets, mostly existing loose in a drawer for 25 years or thereabouts. Eventually, he decided to buy a photo album to place all the gig tickets in chronological order, a task I gladly helped with as a kid. I had been to a few gigs by this point (and my tickets were kept too) so I sort of knew what I was dealing with, but even then it was fascinating to see in their physical form - the art of the gig ticket. Spanning from 1985 to 2013, this photo album of tickets was left to me after he passed and has always been a great thing to have both as a memory of my dad, and as a fellow gig-freak. It is a habit I picked up due to compiling the album with him, and I started my own photo album in 2014. But even though these are the gigs I personally went to, have the memories of and (most) are bands I am glad to have seen, it’s just a bit shit compared to my dad’s one.

Why? The tickets themselves. There are barely any tickets produced anymore, now it’s all QR codes on your phone. QR codes look shit! Pre QR-demic, it was always disappointing to me to have a print-at-home ‘e-ticket’ instead of a colour card ticket with perforations, holographic stickers for authenticity and variations on venue ticket designs. Now an e-ticket is an exciting prospect, as it is not just a shite QR code on a screen. Determined to continue my ticket album against the odds, I have been screenshotting these QR codes and printing them to put in my ticket book. Of course, they look dreadful.

Looking at both mine and my dad’s ticket books is interesting for many reasons, the obvious being who you saw and where you saw them (does that venue still exist now? Is it now part of a hideous corporate venue group and given a new name?), the cost, the support act(s), the promoters listed on the ticket. But mainly, seeing the devolution of the gig ticket design from 1985 to present. Of course, gig tickets existed long before 1985 but until the ‘80s they were mostly of the text-kind with uniform tickets for different venues or promoters, with just the key information - artist, venue, date, price, seat (if not GA) changed per ticket. The ‘80s into the ‘90s is the peak of picture gig tickets, where almost every ticket looks different. Artist logos and pictures are abundant, the shape and size changes every ticket, even more ‘basic’ tickets without graphic embellishments are interesting due to the uniform venue ticket having their own designs. Bigger shows such as stadiums, arenas or outdoor gigs had the most lavish tickets (they are the most expensive overall) with heavier-stock card and full-colour printing that look like no other ticket other than that gig or tour. The theatres and halls were still unique looking, until the mid-2000s, that is. By then, most gig tickets seemed to be the venue’s standard designs, which had become more boring and generic. They were initially identifiable by the venue, but only slightly.

Sadly I have never seen You Am I (or visited Australia), that classic ticket fell out of the booklet of the 2CD edition of You Am I's 'Convicts' that I imported from Australia.

In this specific collection, the tide turns in 2004 for many reasons: a Paul Weller ticket (21/11/2004 - subsequently rescheduled for March 2005). A completely dull ticket that is exactly the same as the two after it in the book, The Hives on 20/04/2005 and Beck on 02/06/2005. What’s the venue? ‘Carling Apollo Hammersmith’. What the fuck is that? Oh! Hammersmith Apollo, formerly Hammersmith Odeon. And from 2004 onwards, other than the outdoor, stadium and Ally Pally gig tickets, they all look utterly boring. ‘Carling Academy Brixton’ and Shepherd’s Bush Empire soon suffer the same fate as Hammersmith - the dreaded rise of corporate shitlords the Academy Music Group, who have since taken ownership of 23 significant venues across the UK in partnership with vile multinational corporation Live Nation.

They have a uniform ticket design which, like the venue signage and promotions, prioritise the forced similarities of them, and promoting AMG and whoever their shit sponsor is at any given moment over the differences in the venues. The Kentish Town forum (formerly the Town & Country Club) by this point is not owned by AMG but has its own uniform ticket, and it is the same for every venue at this point onwards other than Ally Pally: same ticket design, different information. In 2009 begins the dark reign of O2's sponsorship over AMG venues, but it is not until at least October when they start plastering their logo all over the tickets. Three in a row at ‘O2 Academy Brixton’ (it’s Brixton Academy, for fuck’s sake!) look exactly the same: Franz Ferdinand, Yeah Yeah Yeahs and The Cribs. ‘O2 Academy’ is the colour-printed logo and is bigger than the names of the artists playing there, in generic black type.

The O2 Academy plague...

The ticket for Prince at the O2 Arena (formerly the Millennium Dome) from August 2007 is classic 90s-style picture ticketing, with the venue in significantly smaller type (and no logo) to the Purple One himself. It’s actually a nicer ticket than Prince & The New Power Generation at Earls Court in June 1992, funnily enough. But by 2010, the O2 Arena bypasses the unwritten gig ticket rule of ‘special ticket design for big expensive gig’, with Gorillaz and Arcade Fire looking exactly the same - a generic text ticket with a picture of the ugly dome, the O2 logo and laughably, ‘your ticket to the world’s best venue’ on it. The O2 Arena is the most soul-less, corporate venue devoid of any atmosphere I have ever been to! A 2011 ticket for Jimmy Cliff at the IndigO2 (the smaller venue inside the dome) has a different picture on the ticket (of the dome, not the Indigo) and also says ‘your ticket to the world’s best venue’. They are different venues! But of course, they don’t see the actual space where music is being performed as the venue, rather the dome filled with shops and restaurants. Cunts. By 2011, generic Ticketmaster tickets appear for the Coronet, Roundhouse, Palladium and Wilton’s Music Hall. Another devolution - a uniform ticket for the website you got it from!

Your ticket to the world's best venue?

By the time we get to my ticket book past 2013, Kentish Town Forum is now ‘O2 Forum Kentish Town’ and Shepherd’s Bush Empire is now ‘O2 Shepherd’s Bush Empire’ (thankfully not O2 Empire Shepherd’s Bush’), and both share the same ticket design with Brixton. In 2016, we start to see more e-tickets - they had long been available as a cheaper option to print at home rather than get tickets posted, but by the time I saw Fidlar at Electric Brixton (formerly the Fridge) in July or Slaves (now ‘Soft Play’) for an extortionate £2 at the Horn in St. Albans in September, e-tickets were the only option. No physical tickets being printed and posted was becoming increasingly common. Now, the uniform boring tickets were something I wanted to receive, and I always paid the extra few quid to have the proper tickets posted to me. Printed tickets for Simon Munnery’s Alan Parker farewell tour, ‘Richard Herring’s Leicester Square Theatre Podcast’ and ‘JG Thirlwell + Ensemble’ never happened due to the COVID-19 lockdowns.

My first non-festival ticket back from the pandemic is an e-ticket for Stereolab at Bedford Esquires in September 2021. And there’s the pattern: it is mostly all e-tickets from this point on. Then, a very significant gig in this book - Kristin Hersh Electric Trio at Jimmy’s in Liverpool. There was no ticket issued! A booking confirmation email let you in through the door. What do I put in the book? I have to screenshot the order confirmation that luckily includes the same information that would be on a ticket, and have to put that in the book. A printed screenshot of an email! My god. Sadly, this would be a common occurrence from this point on, with many venues going completely ticketless. Many venues introduced emailed QR code for entry, which I print and fold down to include the gig information and hide the vile QR code.

Printed venue tickets stick out like beacons of hope in a losing battle, for example Spiritualized at the Roundhouse in May 2022, but it would not be long until the Roundhouse went QR-only. Blur at Wembley Stadium in July 2023 is a wristband! A printed one with their logo on it nonetheless, but it is significantly shitter than my dad’s 1994 Ally Pally Blur ticket (the show recorded for the ‘Showtime’ VHS). I had the option to pay for a ‘souvenir ticket’ for a gig in 2023 which I gladly did, and of all gigs it was Steve-O from Jackass fame. It is my last proper ticket until June 2024 to see CSS which was initially at the ‘O2 Academy Islington’ and then moved to Islington Assembly Hall. The venue change is on the ticket, and Islington Assembly Hall is not an O2 venue, but it is still an O2 Academy ticket. Why?! The The at Cambridge Junction in August 2024 is a printed ticket but The The at Ally Pally in September 2024 is a QR code. Ally Pally! The longest standing good-ticket venue. Heartbreaking.

Unfortunately, my gig ticket book has become a book of printed screenshots of QR codes, a sad decline in the 40 years of gig tickets I have in my possession. I accept that the majority of gig-goers do not care about this - they have paid to see an artist perform and that’s that, whatever method of entry to see the artist perform is meaningless. The purchase of tickets went from a physical transaction in a record shop or ticket agency premises (maybe a long queue of people, maybe sleeping overnight) to the online realm in the 2000s and now a lot of it is on apps such as DICE - these bastards don’t even send you emails with the tickets. The ease (certainly not the cost) of seeing a band announce a tour on a Monday, presale (fuck presales) on a Wednesday and general sale on Friday, with a purchase being possible from the bed or toilet in a few seconds is nothing to be sniffed at, but it has definitely removed some of the excitement from the act of a successful ticket purchase, even in the online era. The early morning anticipation of a successful purchase, the arrival of a ticket in the post weeks later as a physical artifact for a future experience/memory, kept safely for months until the day comes. The mod cons of these apps are notable, but for fuck’s sake, please give us the option to have printed tickets, even if they have to be collected from the venue’s box office on the day of the gig. QR codes are boring, ugly and shit.

QR code hell! Sadly, that Bully gig was cancelled.

This article appears in Issue One of SECRET SAUCES. Buy it here!