There is a moment that any fan can
recall when they fell in love with a band.
While parts of my record collection I have been given for free – and I
mean in a physical way (my iTunes account is made up completely of music that
I’ve personally downloaded from CDs and vinyl). But each record that I’ve
bought, and some that I’ve been given have a very specific purpose. They remind
me of someone, or some particular life event, or resonate with a part of me
that I can’t quite explain, but somehow that album can make whatever I’m
feeling make sense.
I am not the only person who feels
this way, and I think most of my friends would agree – I can say that because
most of my friends and I are friends because of a common love for a certain
band. It’s kind of a litmus test when I meet people, not because I’m trying to
be a dick, but because an interest in music and a love for it is often a
quality people that are curious and observant and well, interesting, have.
They get it.
I don’t remember the first time I
heard Pulp, but I do remember when I realized that those songs that I had been dancing to were by them. Spinning to
the chorus of “Do You Remember The First
Time” – there aren’t words for that.
That probably seems silly to a lot of you, and that’s okay.
Today tickets to see Pulp at The
Warfield here in San Francisco went on sale at 10 am. I set three alarms, just
in case I slept through the first two (I didn’t) so that I would be up and have
my information plugged in as their website allows. This was followed by an
invitation to the “waiting room” – a virtual line of some kind before tickets
went on sale. I did this on two computers – not because I had an interest in
buying 293487 tickets, but because I wanted to make sure I had a decent chance
of getting tickets at all, and I called their ticket provider AXS, and stayed
on hold for a solid 20 minutes before I was told that they had sold out in five
minutes.
Five. Minutes.
I looked around the internet
yesterday to see if any tickets were for sale elsewhere, maybe leftover from a
presale and there were. They were. I posted on The Warfield’s Facebook page
asking when the presale had occurred. They said there wasn’t one, unless there
had been one on Pulp’s page without their knowledge. I couldn’t find anything
that would lead me to believe there was one of any kind.
I digress. The scalping. The
website allowed for you to buy eight tickets at a time. I know it’s up to the venue, but to allow the
sale of such a high quantity plays right into the scalpers grubby little hands.
I have been to a lot of concerts, with and without other people, and I’ve never
known of anyone to need that many, let alone be able to afford it off that bat,
and let their friends pay them back later. Maybe I just have poor friends.
One would think that if you own a
venue, you do it because you love music, because you’re a fan. And The Warfield isn’t an arena, it is a dedicated
music venue, with a capacity of about 2000. If you’re really a fan of music,
and enjoy sharing that experience with others than why would you allow policies
that fuck over the fans? With big names, you won’t lose money by restricting
the quantity – people will still buy their tickets, though probably not quite
as fast.
Which brings me to scalpers.
Whether you’re charging ten or a hundred dollars more, you’re still making it
that much more difficult for fans, presumably poor bastards like me who spend
all our money on rent and going to shows, from seeing a band we love. You can’t
love music, or really anything and willfully fuck over other people.
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