Ever wonder why some gigs tattoo themselves on your memory while others fade as the lights come up? We sit down with two lifelong friends and serial gig-goers to trace a fan’s journey from teenage awe at the Brighton Dome to the organised chaos of modern stadium shows. Their stories move fast: queuing for Led Zeppelin at Earls Court, discovering Rory Gallagher’s fire, and catching Deep Purple tearing up the Half Moon in Putney. Along the way, we weigh what really matters — rooms that sing, mixes that breathe, and the crowd energy that turns a setlist into a shared event.
The debate gets spicy where performance meets production. Stadiums bring scale, but do giant screens make you a spectator instead of a participant? From Oasis at Wembley to Coldplay’s LED spectacles, we unpack when visuals elevate and when they steal the show. Then a pivot to the pure: Bob Dylan’s phone-free theatre, where every phrase lands because there’s nothing else to look at. We talk queues, exits, and the odd miracle ticket, but keep coming back to sound — the tone, separation, and punch that made the Brighton Dome a revelation and Rush a byword for precision.
No fan’s tour is complete without guitar heroes. Jimmy Page for invention, Rory Gallagher for heart, Gary Moore for bite, David Gilmour for melody, Prince for the solo that still silences rooms. Thin Lizzy’s revolving door of players, Wishbone Ash’s harmonies, and the support acts that later exploded — Def Leppard under AC/DC, Bon Jovi under KISS — all feed a bigger question: why did so many bands from the 70s endure while newer acts struggle to jump from clubs to arenas? Fewer venues, different economics, and the vanishing art of earning a following onstage are part of the answer.
If you love live music — the sweat, the surge, the note that lifts a room — this conversation is a reminder of why we keep showing up. Hit follow, share it with a gig buddy, and tell us: which concert still lives rent-free in your head?

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