The Lean-Forward Listener

Part of the impetus for this site was to give myself a more sensible platform for sharing the ( hundreds if not thousands of ) concert photos and videos I've amassed over the course of my show-attending career beginning circa 2012. Mostly, I regard this collection as reference material, maybe helping the reader to gauge my own music tastes, venue preferences, and aesthetic sensibilities in determining whether or not you wish to give a damn about anything I write. From a music discovery standpoint, I helpfully include links to band pages, album reviews, and venue sites throughout the collection as is relevant. Lastly, it serves as a nice diary for me, giving me an excuse to sift through my experiences for the best shots, arrange them under a reasonable theme, and list them chronologically for my own memory-jogging and enjoyment. Make no mistake--these are not particularly great photos, resolution wise. I'm not oblivious to that. These were almost all taken via iPhone cam

Lean-forward listening can be defined most urgently by what it is not. To encapsulate it in a single sentence: in the Big Tech-dominated era, it's not anything that is passively funneled into your ears by Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube, Amazon Music, Pandora Radio (for my middle-aged readers), Tidal, or any other algorithm-based streaming platform. It's not opening up the Spotify app and selecting anything on the Home Page from "Made for [Your Name]" down to the asinine mood playlists (not "Deep focus," not "Genre-bending blends," not "Sing-along," three choices that happen to loiter on my page at time of writing). It is ESPECIALLY not " Discover Weekly ." It is not feebly shouting across the room to your Amazon Alexa or Google Home to " play happy music " or "play party bangers." It is not allowing, once your streamed album or video of choice has ended, the Autoplay feature (cleverly dubbed "Radio"