Recording history. I have a kind of fascination with things that are lost to history:

The loss of the Library at Alexandria -- almost inconceivable.

Two whole Shakespeare plays -- Love's Labour's Won and Cardenio -- didn't survive to the modern era.

Lennon and McCartney sat down, early on, and knocked out about fifty songs, which have vanished into the mists of time.

Countless early movies have been lost, or survive in only partial or edited form. (I for one would love to see the orignal ending to The Magnificent Ambersons.)

Many movies are in the process of being lost. There are people trying to prevent that.

Most of early television is gone. People just didn't think it would ever be considered important. Even recently, most of The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson from the 1970's is nowhere to be found, I understand.

Those who don't learn from history, they say, are doomed to repeat it. So, I often wonder if there's anything happening these days that's being lost, because we don't realise that future generations might be interested.

Which brings me to an idea for a web site I'd like to implement, if I had more time. It would be appealing in the present mostly to music geeks. In fact, most would consider it frivolous at best.

What I would like to create is "gigography.com", a web site that archives concerts. It would list the band, venue, and date at a minimum, but also trivia, band line ups, set lists, opening bands, audio files, etc. Not just new concerts but shows dating back in history. You could easily browse back and check out the Woodstock lineup, or the Beatles set list on the Ed Sullivan show.

Until recently, this would be an impossible task for one person. But now with the concept of wikis, where anyone can add content, it's quite doable. You would be surprised how many fans have already compiled similar lists (cough) for their favorite artist. But so far, nothing has been centralized. It would be a simple matter to put the plea out there to various music lists to get the ball rolling.

Pointless? Maybe. Historically necessary? Well, doubtful. Fun? Surely.