Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

A niece of mine just got tickets today fairly easily for either Albany or Buffalo. She signed on early into the waiting room and got in the queue quickly. Someone else I know got Baltimore tickets. So maybe it’s slightly easier in smaller markets ( although they’re still using variable pricing in those places as well and not capping price limit)

By sign on early, do you mean, just sign in to TM? Because I signed in to TM, and see the countdown, but obv it's too early to enter any code, so not sure what signing in early gets me. Saves a step?

OK, I see. I am now in the waiting room. (Cue Fugazi.)

his response was something like "I *could* ask for less money ... but I won't."

LMAO. I'm not really a Mel Gibson fan but at the height of his fame, I think he took a pay cut to work with Wim Wenders on The Million Dollar Hotel (co-written by Bono of all people). But according to Wenders in a recent Guardian interview...

The movie’s prospects were hardly boosted when Gibson called it “as boring as a dog’s ass”.

“Oh, Mel killed the film,” Wenders agrees. “He’s very, very good in it. And he thought so. But his next project was What Women Want, and his own people said: ‘If you want to really kill What Women Want then show Million Dollar Hotel – it’s not helping you.’ He decided to turn against the film. It didn’t survive the blow.”

In the queue. "2000+ people ahead of you."

Eh, fuck it, I just don't have the heart to pay even $100 for nosebleeds. I'll check back in (looks at calendar) 7 months.

I ended up paying $132 total - $104 + fees - for the cheapest ticket I could find that wasn't behind the stage. If I'd ever seen him before maybe I would have skipped this one, because that's too much money. ugh.

Yeah, I've seen him at least 20 times, always great seats, so I feel very lucky. This time, I just closed the tab and went straight to buying tickets for Meshuggah/Converge/Torche in September. Total price for two tickets to that awesome triple band bill, even with lame (but at least not hidden!) fees, was much less than the cost of a single shitty Springsteen seat.

I have a ticket to see him in Hamburg as well, but so many things could happen with that, I don't want to count on getting to go to it. The appeal of being able to walk down the hill and go see Springsteen is hard to resist, even when the seats are terrible and the pricing is bullshit.

Lily, you've never seen Bruce in concert before?

Bruce was on my bucket list to see someday but lol, so not gonna happen.

xp No, he wasn't even on my radar at all until 2010 or so, and at that point I was living in Alaska and it never occurred to me to travel to the lower 48 for a Springsteen show. Plus I was barely a fan - I mean, I knew the hits and had a couple of albums but that was it. I became an actual fan in a sort of bolt-from-the-blue Sudden Conversion three years ago.

Oh man, I had no idea. If you're ever in the NY area in hopes of seeing a Springsteen show, let us know - if by some chance I can land an extra affordable ticket, I can definitely save it for you. (Whenever I've gone, I always had the chance to get another ticket as well.)

Oh wow, thank you!

Curious, I logged back on to look at Milwaukee. It's still the verified fan presale, but prices have now gone up to between $500 and $1500 each. On the other hand, that means 3 1/2 hours after going on sale, verified fan presale did not sell out.

Oh by the way when I joined the Ticketmaster queue this morning it said there was 1 person ahead of me. And then it instantly let me in and pretty much all the seats were available. Is that normal or did I get insanely lucky?

For shows that had enough to demand to create a queue, I've never had that happen to me, so yes, you were insanely lucky!

all i care about now for this tour is that Lily sees a show, even if she hates Bruce by that point

just to read about it

And 24 hours later ... hundreds of "verified resale tickets" already available for the Milwaukee show.

Pretty sad that Kid Rock's organization is doing a far better job of doing what's right for the fans than the Springsteen camp.

Kid Rock is a man of the people.

Just hopped on to one of the two Long Island pre-sales (the only one I got into). It's been three full minutes and STILL 2000+ ahead of me...

Still 2000+ and this popped up:

10:13 AM
Due to demand, ticket availability is limited and ticket options may vary throughout the venue.

Man, still 2000+ and this popped up:

10:19 AM
Due to high demand for today’s sale, ticket availability is extremely limited. As you continue to shop some options may be unavailable. If you are unable to find tickets today, we recommend checking back frequently as additional tickets may become available.

I don't remember it being this hard to get tickets before - maybe I just lucked out in the past?

No, this whole situation is fucked in a new sort of way.

"Verified resale" tickets for the Milwaukee show exist for the *entire row in front of the soundboard.*
https://i.imgur.com/sBq5RwG.png

Like, how was that entire row purchased, who purchased them, and how are they able to place an *entire row* up for sale just a couple of days after the official sale?

What's weird, is good affordable tickets DID pop up...but they were already taken even when I tried to get them right away. Like tried a nosebleed for $70, tried a good lower tier for $100, but nada.

Took 32 minutes to get through FWIW

Also noticed that I can't buy one ticket on Verified Pre-Sale they only allow pairs, FWIW.

Yeah, I ran into that trying to get a single ticket for another show earlier this year. Just love to see the entire ticket buying process get worse and worse.

I hope whoever goes bootlegs the shit out of everything. I want full-length videos on YouTube the next day!

Bruce TwitchStreams

I'll thank my partner for being a big Coldplay fan. At least we got to see Bruce from a good seat, if only for two songs.

Bruce made $500 million from recently selling his publishing, and already had plenty of $, so he could have said no to variable pricing but he didn't.

^^ future of the music industry

That's if Bruce was even aware of variable pricing. Most likely, he just told Landau he wanted to tour, said he wanted to do x dates in these locations, come home with $x, and Landau's people made it happen. I would be surprised if Landau himself was even made aware of variable pricing by his team. And why should he be bothered about that? Dates are booked and tickets are selling, so as far as Landau's concerned, the tour is already a success.

Any backlash would only be strong enough to get Landau's and Bruce's attention if some/most dates were half-full by showtime. Sadly, that probably won't happen.

The fact that Landau made a (defensively BS) statement means that Springsteen is aware, and the fact that Springsteen himself as not made any statement, let alone any moves to remedy the situation, means he doesn't really care.

Part of him died when Wrecking Ball didn't sell very well.

Oh they’re definitely aware of it now. I was speaking about when the tour was being planned, and was responding to

he could have said no to variable pricing but he didn't.

But yeah, neither Bruce nor Landau give a shit at this point.

xp

I was reading up on the first reunion tour in 1999, and came across this article:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-1999-09-28-9909280043-story.html

The low prices (and unsold tickets) obviously look stunning in light of the past month, but when they're talking about ticket vendors, who are they referring to? I would think scalpers but they open with an anecdote involving a record store clerk - is the clerk a scalper or was it common for people to buy tickets to shows from record stores circa 1999?

Ticketmaster used to have outlets in chain record stores that were staffed by their clerks.

They also were available at the customer service windows at grocery stores and big department stores.

Couldn't read the rest of that article (paywall), but judging by the opening paragraph I'd say it was playing out at one of those record store ticket windows.

Iirc, that Bruce tour wasn't quite the hot ticket you'd imagine it would have been, and there were post-gig fan reports expressing disappointment about how they were only playing 'the early stuff'.

Man, I was completely oblivious to that. I vaguely remember a ticket counter at the local grocery store, but the only things I remember my family getting from it were lottery tickets, some special stickers that you had to put on large paper bags containing yard refuse (like cut grass, leaves, branches, etc.) and maybe postage stamps, but it never occurred to me that the very same desk had, say, SPRINGSTEEN tickets available.

FWIW, here are the two relevant parts of the article:

The record-store clerk with the tattoos and bleached white hair was baffled when Judie Gillespie, a 42-year-old Milwaukee schoolteacher, ponied up more than $420 to buy six tickets for Bruce Springsteen's Monday concert at the United Center.

"What's up with people like you and Bruce?" the clerk had asked.

Gillespie, a mother of four boys ages 14 to 21, saw her first Springsteen show in 1977 and was hooked. "He was just a regular guy throwing a party, and he seemed grateful we were there having a good time with him," she said before making the drive to Chicago. "I've been to a lot of concerts I can't recall anymore, but I've seen him four times since and I feel like every one of those has contributed to my quality of life."

Her 15-year-old son, Luke, who also attended Monday's concert, has the words to Springsteen's 1975 song "Thunder Road"--"It's a town full of losers, and we're pulling out of here to win"--scrawled over his bed. "He can relate," his mother said with a laugh.

And this part:

Reuniting with the E Street Band after a decade-long hiatus spent with session musicians and on solo acoustic projects, Springsteen has sold out every show on his North American tour, including Monday, Tuesday and Thursday at the United Center. After only 20 dates, including a record 15-night sold-out stand in his native New Jersey, the rocker has piled up more than $24 million in gross revenue.

Despite these hardy sales, at around 8 p.m. Monday, many below face-value, and some free, tickets were easy to come by for the 8:15 p.m. concert. One independent vendor was offering a 12th-row seat, face value $67.50, for $40; another couple offered their extra $60 seat for $30. Word among those selling tickets outside the venue was that ticket brokers had returned a large block of unsold seats that morning, and the sale of those extra tickets had driven down scalpers' prices.

The only time it was really obvious was on mornings and afternoons when people lined up for a show that was going on sale.

Or not. I remember hanging out at a Blockbuster Music one Friday afternoon after school when an Oasis show (Be Here Now tour) was going on sale, and they sent a clerk around asking all the customers if they were waiting for tix. None were.

I wonder when exactly that practice stopped… surprised it was still going in the Oasis era.

I’ve mentioned this on here before – in high school, my pals and I had front row seats to a Lou Reed concert, because we showed up at our local record store before it opened, and stood in line awhile. (We were two seats off from center… the guy with front-row center seats was in line in front of us. No clue why our particular suburban record store was ground zero for this show.)