TicketMONSTER

OK....soooooo.... as we have discussed in the past I am... of course... an idiot. They announced that Bob Dylan was coming to town the 22nd of October WITH Elvis Costello. I do not know from day to day who I like better but along with Neil Young those three make up the Mike Becker Rock and Roll Trinity. So my birthday is on the tenth and I am at work on Saturday and I think “daddy is going to splurge for some expensive tickets.” Why do I need expensive tickets?

Well if you have not been in another time zone this week and you can read and or listen to the news then you now know (because prior to this event I did not know) about the Hannah Montana craze. Evidently she is Billy Ray Cyrus daughter (in what universe can this be considered a good thing? I have never seen the girl but assume she must have back hair.) and is a Disney TV star and is evidently the next big thing. So it is generally not a big deal that in reserved seat concerts (most of the bands I see and venues I go to are general admission) you simply cannot get good seats. I used to blame ticket master (and certainly that is an evil empire that must be destroyed) but they were just a pre-cursor of where we are now. You see formerly with Ticketmaster and now in all reserved seat shows you can get on line or get on the phone, have your credit card ready and at the moment the tickets go on same buy “best available” and find that 1 minute after tickets went on sale you are in the 45th row on the far right. Lining up at the venues ticket window is even more stupider (I love more stupider). The venues are hooked up to the same computers as the ticketmaster people. But where did the tickets go? When you went to the show they were always filled. often with very well dressed middle aged guys and their younger girlfriends. They were “pre-sold” to special clients...for a premium. So, I could never get good tickets.

And neither could anyone else. But really...who cares? There cannot be more then like a 1000 live music junkies in any given has been dying downtown (no matter what anyone sells to you) midwestern city and 80% of those guys don’t vote... or have girlfriends...or jobs and their voices, even if unified cannot be heard that loudly from the muffled, well insulated subterranean bastion of their parents’ basements. So we were ripe for abuse and abuse we received and no one cared when they were just abusing us. But the Ticketmaster model worked too well. Venues and artists took notice and in the name of the true fan they took action...to get those profits themselves. And they have done really well mastering the model. The venue has “special” friends of the venue who pay a premium for the shot at these tics and the artists have their fan club web sites where...they just want to help.

So no one really cared until Hannah Montana. This teen superstar had a base of pre adolescent young ladies who NEEDED those tickets and every lousy suburban mother and father, trying to buy their children everything their little blond heads might desire NEEDED these tickets. “What if the neighbor girl got to go and our Brittany didn’t?” Disaster! I can see boob jobbed housewives telling their husbands with their words, eyes and body language that daddy better score some tickets. What can a man do under that kind of pressure? Stand in line? Call ticketmaster? Go on line with ticketmaster? No, no and once again...no. None of those places had tickets. No normal vendor had tickets because the ticket-brokers had learned how to game the system with their computers and their shills so that whenever the tickets went on sale...none really went on sale. They flooded the computer with a Million ticket requests for 15,000 seats against the requests of 45,000 people who want the tickets what happens? you do the math. And these tickets turn up quickly on Stub Hub. Right now for this show: Hanna Montana / Miley Cyrus - Best of Both Worlds Tickets 11/7, you can buy tickets for $9,630.00. Each. Nice.

They have tried all kinds of things including allotting tickets for real fans and putting them on sale where the buyer has to come pick them up but not much has worked. Real fans do not matter. Cash matters. So in this unhappy circumstance I decided I was going to acquire some expensive tickets and got on the Dylan web site and popping and clicking and pressing and reading through all the BS I thought I had purchased two tickets for the Fox on October 22nd for 180 bucks each. Pricey indeed. I immediately got a notice saying my card was being dinged for $760.00. When tried to rescind the transaction I was told ALL sales were final. I figured I had somehow clicked for 4 tickets and perhaps I could find some clients to take and have the firm pick up part of the cost.

But... 10 days before the show I received a little box containing two tickets, two pocket watches and some beautiful lanyards with hard plastic passes which made very clear they were not backstage passes and provided no special access or anything. The pocket watches looked like they might bring 5 bucks each in a pawn shop. I think these special tchotkes are the rationalization for the high price. They just make me feel like more of a prostitutes “john”. My wife solved the riddle about why I only had two when she said “these tickets are for October 20th”, which caused me to ask “are they even for St. Louis” and she said...”no...they are for Bloomington Illinois.” I still do not know how I did it but it has permanently soured me on expensive tickets. Some people like myself are not meant to live well. The good news.... two Dylan Concert reviews.