By Marc Fischer
Public Collectors, Chicago, IL, 2026
Pages: 12
Dimensions: 5.5 in x 8.5 in
Cover: Paper
Binding: saddle stitched
Process: Risograph with black handwritten text on cover.
Color: Medium Blue, Black ink
Edition size: 186
ISBN: none

The 123rd Public Collectors publication is an attempt to list every band/artist I've seen in concert since I started seeing shows as a 13 year old in 1984. From the back cover:

This is a list of every band/musician I have seen, starting in 1984. It is certainly incomplete but more comprehensive from the mid-1990s—when I started trying to keep track—until the present. The website concertarchive.org helped jog my memory a bunch of times. 

Lists like this are imperfect autobiographies. There are entire genres of music I love but rarely see live and there are genres that I see live but rarely listen to at home. There are also musicians and bands I listen to all the time that I was too young to see when they were active, or that are from other countries and rarely, if ever, perform in the United States. Some artists also release a lot of music but rarely or never perform live. 

There are bands on this list that I have probably seen 14 times, but no one is listed more than once unless the group played in a different configuration. In general, I listed a band the first time I saw them. I’m sure many hardcore bands from shows with five groups on the bill were missed. Likewise with improvised music sets that had many individual performers. The list is roughly chronological but a lot of this is out of order. 

The three cities I have lived in are Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and my longtime current home Chicago. I rarely travel to see live music. I still attend shows, but once or twice a month is typically enough for me. I get fatigued by sound and crowds more easily in my mid-50s than I did in my 20s. I avoid festivals. Two or three bands at a concert is plenty for me.

Many people like to rank concert experiences: the best show, the loudest, which artist they have seen the most, etc. Concerts are not a competition. I’m purposefully presenting this information without that kind of hierarchy. What I like about lists like this is that they invite the reader to compare experiences. You should go through this zine with a highlighter and mark all the groups you have also seen and then take pictures and send them to me. What experiences do we share? How many times have we been in the same room together whether we knew it or not? What bands did I see but forget to include? Who will I see next? Who will you see next?