(Except in the case of Pearl Jam. I will spend a lot of money and go to a lot of concerts for them. There is a new album coming out in the next 12 months, which means tour, which means saving pennies and planning the list of cities willing to travel to see them.)
What this means is that we have to be selective in who we see. For example in a couple of weeks Travis are playing one venue and Kings of Leon (with The Walkmen opening) are playing another. We've seen both headliners live before and enjoy each band but for different reasons. We wound up with tickets for both, so decided to go to the Kings of Leon show since The Walkmen ARE AWESOME.
Later this year U2 will be coming to Toronto. Devotees know how I feel about The U2s, but concert watchers also know that Kaiser Chiefs might be opening for them, and I loves me my Kaiser Chiefs. There was a Death Cab for Cutie show, and it's not a preferred way to spend an evening, but Cold War Kids were opening. Cold War Kids are all that, and all that with a bag of crisps live. Coldplay is coming to the Rogers Centre, Tickets are very expensive and we don't really want to see Coldplay (as much as we love them), but Elbow are opening. ELBOW! There are times I think I'm the only person in Toronto who knows or who has heard of Elbow. And now they come to Toronto, and they'll play, and people will spend the whole time looking for Gwyneth and ignoring Elbow. THE GUYS HAVE WON A MERCURY PRIZE!
We've talked about this and boiled it down to this: What do you do when there is a band you WANT to see, and they are opening for a band you DON'T really WANT to see? Is there a ticket price where you can say "Yeah, it's worth it for a 30 minute set and then we'll watch a little bit of the headliner and then go home"? If there is, it has to be a very small price because once you add all the Ticketmaster fees and everything it gets very expensive.
What if you could do the following: Take the Death Cab show with Cold War Kids opening. Tickets for that were $40.50, and there were two opening acts. Give 60% of the value of the ticket to the headliner and 40% to the support acts (this might be generous, but wait and see where I'm going with this). Now, set up a little area to the side or the back of the hall, cordoned off from everyone else. Put a small dry bar there and a small merch counter that sells only stuff associated with the opening act(s). Now, two weeks before the concert the promoters open that area up. This means that they sell a limited amount of tickets at the price of $16.10 (40% of face value) and people can see the opening act(s), and then get the bum's rush between sets. The area is dry because (1) they're there for a good time, not a long time and (2) it will be easier to move them out if they're not too drunk. The merch counter only sells opening act stuff because that's all you've paid for and not for, as the French say, poseurs trying to pass off as people who saw Death Cab.
Is this a perfect solution? No, not at all. But with some tweaking by people who do this for a living I think it's perfectly possible. The venue would have to be larger than a certain size; You couldn't do this at Lee's Palace or The Mod Club. It couldn't be too big; The logistics of doing this at Rogers Centre make my skin crawl. But at Kool Haus or The Sound Academy this could work.
What this means is that we have to be selective in who we see. For example in a couple of weeks Travis are playing one venue and Kings of Leon (with The Walkmen opening) are playing another. We've seen both headliners live before and enjoy each band but for different reasons. We wound up with tickets for both, so decided to go to the Kings of Leon show since The Walkmen ARE AWESOME.
Later this year U2 will be coming to Toronto. Devotees know how I feel about The U2s, but concert watchers also know that Kaiser Chiefs might be opening for them, and I loves me my Kaiser Chiefs. There was a Death Cab for Cutie show, and it's not a preferred way to spend an evening, but Cold War Kids were opening. Cold War Kids are all that, and all that with a bag of crisps live. Coldplay is coming to the Rogers Centre, Tickets are very expensive and we don't really want to see Coldplay (as much as we love them), but Elbow are opening. ELBOW! There are times I think I'm the only person in Toronto who knows or who has heard of Elbow. And now they come to Toronto, and they'll play, and people will spend the whole time looking for Gwyneth and ignoring Elbow. THE GUYS HAVE WON A MERCURY PRIZE!
We've talked about this and boiled it down to this: What do you do when there is a band you WANT to see, and they are opening for a band you DON'T really WANT to see? Is there a ticket price where you can say "Yeah, it's worth it for a 30 minute set and then we'll watch a little bit of the headliner and then go home"? If there is, it has to be a very small price because once you add all the Ticketmaster fees and everything it gets very expensive.
What if you could do the following: Take the Death Cab show with Cold War Kids opening. Tickets for that were $40.50, and there were two opening acts. Give 60% of the value of the ticket to the headliner and 40% to the support acts (this might be generous, but wait and see where I'm going with this). Now, set up a little area to the side or the back of the hall, cordoned off from everyone else. Put a small dry bar there and a small merch counter that sells only stuff associated with the opening act(s). Now, two weeks before the concert the promoters open that area up. This means that they sell a limited amount of tickets at the price of $16.10 (40% of face value) and people can see the opening act(s), and then get the bum's rush between sets. The area is dry because (1) they're there for a good time, not a long time and (2) it will be easier to move them out if they're not too drunk. The merch counter only sells opening act stuff because that's all you've paid for and not for, as the French say, poseurs trying to pass off as people who saw Death Cab.
Is this a perfect solution? No, not at all. But with some tweaking by people who do this for a living I think it's perfectly possible. The venue would have to be larger than a certain size; You couldn't do this at Lee's Palace or The Mod Club. It couldn't be too big; The logistics of doing this at Rogers Centre make my skin crawl. But at Kool Haus or The Sound Academy this could work.
Posts
1 comments:
You're old.
Post a Comment