ISSUE ONE:
MEMORY

Welcome to the launch issue of MIDDLE 8 Magazine. This first issue takes a look back at live music and the space we lend those experiences in our memory. From the stage to the crowd, the road, behind the sound desk, from inside our imaginations to outside the festival gates - live music is an experience that sticks hard in our memory.

In fact, music is the strongest memory trigger when that memory is tied to autobiographical data. That’s why live gigs can be particularly emotional or nostalgic. Petr Janata, a Cognitive Neuroscientist at the University of California, Davis, says music acts as a mental soundtrack for a movie that starts playing in our head when we hear that song. "It calls back memories of a particular person or place, and you might all of a sudden see that person's face in your mind's eye,” he says. Interestingly, that area of our brain is one of the last to atrophy as we get older, proving that musical memories will be the last to go.

In this issue we talk to artists, fans, engineers, and roadies about their experience of live music and why nothing can take its place.