Chris Leckness

A couple weeks ago Hannah Montana announced her concert tour dates.  Now, I'm not a big fan, but my kids are.  The tickets went on sale at noon, and I was logged on to Ticket Master and was ready to go.  All I wanted were 4 tickets for the best available seats.  I didn't get too specific, so that I wouldn't limit myself.  So at 12:00:01 I hit the search button to acquire my tickets.  "None available, please try again."  Huh!  Nothing available, nothing at all?  Not even some crappy seats all the way at the very top of the amphitheater? 

I kept trying, thinking someone ahead of me may have had tickets on hold and would release them.  After 30 minutes of futility I gave up.  I then tried StubHub.com.  How about $128 per ticket?  The most expensive face value is $64.  I was in a world of hurt.  I love my kids, but 4 tickets plus parking and food would make that a $600 outing.  Sorry kids. 

But wait, Ticket Master has a service called Ticket Exchange.  Maybe they have tickets?  As a matter of fact, they do.  The cheapest one is $353.  I smell something bad here.

What does it take to get tickets? 

Now I see that my favorite band, Rush, will announce concert dates on April, 2008.  I will see them.  But what's it going to take? 

It's one thing to pay these outrageous fees to Ticket Master just so I can buy a ticket.  What do they call them, convenience fees?  But how come a scalper like StubHub can get tickets and I can't?  Why don't they have to wait in line like I do?  Why should they be able to buy any tickets at all?  It's obvious the public wants them.  If someone buys the tickets then decides they can't use them, then they should sell them to StubHub. 

I have a better idea.  Last weekend I saw one of the best concerts ever.  I was in the front row for Elevation, a U2 tribute band.  They rocked for almost 3 hours.  It was easily the best $7 I ever spent on a show.  And that is about half of the "convenience fee" that Ticket Master charges!

I'm going to look for a Hannah Montana tribute band as well as a Rush tribute band.  Yeah, that's the ticket.

frankenbike

In the days when I actually went to large concerts, before online ticketing, I wondered the same thing: how could scalpers always get the good tickets when I was the first in line and the best tickets I could get were 40 rows back?

I'm all about any kind of alternative to mega concerts, and thieving bastids like Ticketmaster ;)

There are other forms of entertainment, like modern roller derby. In most towns and cities there are at least one all women roller derby league that takes it seriously as a sport, and many of those games have rock acts to boot (music type usually reflects the skater's taste in music). Usually a great value at $5-15 a ticket. A lot of non-sports types who are fans say "it's more rock and roll than rock and roll is these days."

One of our local leagues in LA(pics are mostly work safe, language drops some f-bombs):
Derby Dolls: The Best Event In L.A | La.Cityzine.com
Blood & Fishnets: L.A. Derby Doll Championship Bout @ The Doll Factory, 12/8/07

(both of those reviewers are entertainment reviewer converts to the sport, maybe with some passing familiarity of the game from when they saw it on TV as kids)

That league (the Derby Dolls) are a 21 and over crowd, and not a good substitute for Hanna Montana ;) Most leagues are probably more family friendly, are all ages and play on the more logistically simple flat-track:
List of roller derby leagues - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
(active leagues start 1/10 of the way down the page)

I agree about the tribute bands. Many are not only as good as the original band in their club days (unless they were totally artificial constructs like HM, Britney Spears, et al), but some are better. Held in smaller venues, it's always a better show if respectably executed because of your proximity to the stage.

Some have their own take on their band combining Abba and the Ramones, or the Beatles and Metallica, or Reggae and Led Zeppelin. Our best in LA is Atomic Punks, a Dave Roth era Van Halen tribute band that Dave Roth has poached guitarists from when he was solo. We also have a hilarious hair band tribute band called Metal Skool with some of the members from Atomic Punks.

Google has a page where you can do searches within the category of tribute bands:
Google Directory - Arts > Music > Bands and Artists > Tribute Acts

Of course, if your kids are the ones steering the entertainment dialogue (and why else would you want to see Hanna Montana?) I don't really think they're going to be willing to settle for some alternative. It's like the reaction girls have when you give them some knockoff of Barbie ;)

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Frankenbike

imported_Nonante

Hi Stevenator65,

Not sure that this will make you less angry but this stuff is in fact well organised to maximise return on stars' concerts. There was a very good article by John Gapper on 10th October in the FT Europe about tickets sales and grey market. The article must be copyrighted and accessible to subscribers only but you might find it here:

Similarly, australian tourists made a lot of money and covered all their expenses for holidays in Paris for the Rugby World Cup. They sold their tickets for the final to English (who had never thought their team could play the final) supporters. Tickets were at thousands euros to be compared with an "official" price of less than 100 euros...

Best.