Bruce Springsteen - Classic or Dud ?

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.)

Just realized 1999 is after the Oasis era… I’m all mixed up, lol. ’99 must’ve been near the end; e-commerce ramped up soon after that.

Was there any advantage in getting tickets that way versus the internet (at least at the time...I doubt they had anything like dynamic pricing then).

I bought Wilco tix at a Fiesta (local supermarket chain) ticket window in 2006. You could tell then that it was on the way out, as the window lady was really unacquainted with accessing and printing tickets for a show already on sale.

My first real online ticket experience was having my best friend's Dad get me Radiohead
lawn tix on the net in 2001 after hearing about all the reserved seating for said show selling out at a MTV-promoted online presale.

Now I’m wondering if there was any other way to buy tickets in the pre-Internet era, OTHER than at those ticket windows. I remember upcoming shows and on-sale dates being listed in the newspaper…

I went to a couple of those Chicago reunion shows, and iirc it involved going to the United Center the day before to line up and get a numbered bracelet that would then let you line up in that order the next day to buy tix at the box office. Unless I'm misremembering.

In high school in the mostly early '90s I want to say we either lined up at the local store (for the best chance at good seats) or iirc bought tickets over the phone. Obviously Ticketmaster fuckery had kicked in by the mid-'90s, when Pearl Jam made its big stink (and also around when the Eagles pumped ticket prices up to then historic heights), but I want to say the Ticketmaster situation started getting worse once Live Nation took over in 2010

http://www.snakkle.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/robert-romanus-fast-times-ridgemont-high-1982-photo-GC.jpg

"You remember Bruce Springsteen and his legendary E-Street Band? Max Weinberg holding down the beat? The passionate sax of Big Man Clarence Clemons? The competent basswork of Garry Tallent?"

Oh yeah, via phone… duh.

I remember my stepdad had Springsteen tickets in ‘84, before I knew Born in the USA backward and forward (by listening to it in the truck with my actual father). I was like, “You’re going to see the Dancing in the Dark guy?

relevant

Thanks for posting the relevant bits of the article! Different times. I also see I mis-remembered the popularity of that tour...I always think the big Bruce comeback was post-9/11 and then with the release of The Rising (which was 20 years ago now!?!).

Jesus, that's right! As of today (or what's left of today) I think - Pitchfork posted something about it today. I guess it was the full comeback because it was their first record since getting back together (not counting the live album even though it had two new songs - "American Skin" is still awesome).

I was actually disappointed with The Rising, but it's grown on me over the years. I still think of it as maybe 8 or 10 good songs with too much filler burying them, but I was surprised to find out that O'Brien urged Springsteen to cut out songs and Springsteen made a point NOT to cut down the sprawl. I'll have to revisit the whole thing again because what I've found in the past is that I'll regret questioning Springsteen's choices when sequencing his albums. There are a ton of great songs that got left in the vault (at least until Tracks et al), but when I go back to the albums, I'm struck by how much they gain from their chosen sequences, even when they include "lesser" material. They're not meant to be broken down track by track - he clearly knows how to make an ALBUM and how they can flow like narratives.

he clearly knows how to make an ALBUM and how they can flow like narratives

I agree. But I'm not sure he ever quite figured out how to make a CD.

FWIW, Jimmy Guterman suggested cutting it down to these eight, writing "there was enough first-rate material to fill a superlative but much shorter, quieter, and coherent record. (Hey Born to Run had only eight songs and few listeners found that incomplete.)":

1. "Lonesome Day" 4:08
2. "Into the Fire" 5:04
3. "Nothing Man" 4:23
4. "Empty Sky" 3:34
5. "You're Missing" 5:10
6. "The Rising" 4:50
7. "Paradise" 5:39
8. "My City of Ruins" 5:00

I think it's a great edit and is indeed much quieter, more coherent and a top-to-bottom sturdy set of songs, but I can't imagine Springsteen entertaining the idea after hearing the original 15-track album - he clearly wanted to make a big, all-encompassing statement. Guterman cut some rousing material that was arguably too calculated and the humor that some criticize for being corny and out-of-place, but I can see where Springsteen's coming from - like Greil Marcus said in his original capsule review, it can feel "less like any sort of pop music album than a speech."

RS weighs in (I didn't read it as I don't subscribe).

https://www.rollingstone.com/music/music-features/bruce-springsteen-ticket-controversy-1391011/

FWIW, Yahoo News usually ends up picking up their articles in their entirety. There may be a lag, but wait at least a few days, it'll pop up. I don't know how that business model works - maybe Yahoo pays something to RS for every hit? - but it's a legitimate way of reading their articles without subscribing.

The RS piece is pretty pointless, tbh.

Still a lot of sad, angry fans, and having had some time to process, it's not getting any better. Thought this was a good essay:

sooner or later, it all comes down to money: https://t.co/bgZ2PpOuHB

— Caryn Rose (@carynrose) August 2, 2022

Concerts used to be church. They were the closest thing I had to understanding a communal experience with people I don’t know engaging in some kind of magic. I told friends that it felt like someone had died, because we had no warning that this was coming, and our understanding of the unspoken relationship was literally overturned in a second.

I mean, that sounds a tad overheated, but I get it.

yeah i def feel that sentiment for sure

Relevant talk in that piece about how hard it used to be finding out about shows and getting tickets.

Looking back at archived video blocks, that was an interesting facet of early MTV news: announcing tour itineraries and sale dates and even featuring commercials for tours.

As always using Tulsa as a frame of reference (because so goes Tulsa, so goes the world, right?) and there are literally hundreds and hundreds of seats to be had for as cheap as $60 (pre-fees), with the most expensive (in the pit) going for about $500. Even cheaper on Seat Geek (the one broker I just checked out). Prices scale up when I look at Milwaukee, and I assume may stay that way until closer to the show. Dynamic pricing more than anything else mostly seems to have fucked up the, well, dynamics of the ticket sale.

Man, I wanted to go to Tulsa just to see the Dylan and Guthrie museums. Adding Springsteen would be a nice bonus.

I came across a "new" copy of "Live in New York City" on DVD for $2. (Plastic wrap's gone but it's still sealed by the sticker on top.) I think this usually went for $20 back in the day? It's a nice consolation if I miss out on the current tour, but it also brought to mind the economics that may have inflated concert prices these days. DVD market's a bust, albums don't sell much, streaming is just peanuts - it was nicer when the revenue was all spread out a bit.

For sure, he should divvy up that half a billion dollars he got paid for his catalog, just a couple years after making $113 million on Broadway.

For real, though, I think you bring up a legitimate issue, but one probably more of concern to newer artists than to legacy acts.

Hah! True.

One thing I have to ask - big legacy acts essentially become corporations, where a lot of people are now depending on them for income. It's probably beyond my familiarity with how their operations are run, but I was thinking, with more people depending on the act's tour than other sources of revenue, wouldn't that influence concert prices as well (like if promoters or management had to propose the terms, etc.)? Especially when, say, a publishing sale doesn't to bank them a payday the way it did for Springsteen himself.

(To be clear, I'm not arguing for prices to stay up, not at all.)

Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack

they can't afford to see me without a Ticketmaster hack.

Resale there going for $450 to $2,050

they don't think that's nifty

Relevant talk in that piece about how hard it used to be finding out about shows and getting tickets.

Looking back at archived video blocks, that was an interesting facet of early MTV news: announcing tour itineraries and sale dates and even featuring commercials for tours.

― an icon of a worried-looking, long-haired, bespectacled man (C. Grisso/McCain), Tuesday, August 2, 2022 11:02 PM (one week ago)

As mentioned in the essay, even once you knew about a show happening you had to figure when & where the tickets were going on sale, which for bigger shows could be a whole deal. Ticketmaster tickets used to go on sale through a department store in Mpls so I would be standing in home goods or the clothing return section of Dayton's at 9 AM on a Saturday morning waiting for whatever tickets to go on sale and even that would be a tricky thing, I remember waiting hours one time for some show and finding out once the line started moving that the sale date got delayed.

But also I am still friends with people who I only know because I met them standing in a ticket line. I talked to one of them the other day.

My brother was just relating a story about running through a department store to get to where the ticket booth was, and the store later complaining about people knocking over clothes and such to get to that location in the store

even once you knew about a show happening you had to figure when & where the tickets were going on sale, which for bigger shows could be a whole deal.

Definitely. Ticketron used to be the big ticket dealer in the Chicago area until around the early '90s or so, and they sold tickets through Sears, for some reason (and finding out which Sears was a job -- not all of them had Ticketron outlets). I slept overnight in a Sears parking lot for Who tickets in 1989 and was 20th in line out of several hundred, confident that I'd at least get pavilion seats (the only area shows were at an awful shed in Wisconsin). Only the first person in line got pavilion seats, and I was one of the last people in line to get any tickets at all (lawn, unfortunately). It came out later that Ticketron was insanely and brazenly corrupt, holding tickets back, giving them away to the well-connected, and shows being "sold out" before tickets even went on sale. Ticketron was so awful that when Ticketmaster finally took over in Chicago, it was a relief (though, to be fair, Ticketmaster wasn't yet doing the insane service-charges thing).

i know this is dumb, but that's my speciality -- i really wish a prominent pop star would decide that they had enough money, and to only do shows in small venues. like, 500 or less. 1000 or less. whatever. just not big horrible places. with zero middlemen taking a cut at every possible intervention point during the way. just small shows, at clubs with good sound, where you can actually see them play and you can see what they're doing on stage. it would mean fewer of the star's billions of fans getting to see them (at some really shitty outdoor arena, with a ticket that seemed like a good idea but was only available because it's directly behind a gigantic column full of lights, speakers, and the sound guy). and it would mean less money for the artist, as well as for the thousands of people they surround themselves with who also make money off of them in some way.

every once in a while it happens, like the rolling stones / cockroaches show at el mocambo. so, i know it' s possible. but i would like to see someone PERMANENTLY do that. no more big shows. only small shows. i hereby challenge a wealthy global pop star to do it

i can see why a band like U2 wouldn't do it. they need that big audience energy. they need to see thousands of fans doing the "U2 clap", which is when everyone has their arms straight up over their heads, with the hands clapping way up there. if bono doesn't see the masses doing the U2 clap, he gets very angry. so they get a pass.

if bono doesn't see the masses doing the U2 clap, he gets very angry.

― Bruce Stingbean (Karl Malone), Tuesday, August 9, 2022 9:46 AM

probably words that have also come out of bono's mouth, verbatim.

Honestly, the closest might have been Springsteen on Broadway.

don't make him angry!! just clap!!

and larry mullen, you do the U2 beat right now, or bono is going to fucking lose his shit. you know the one -- driving 16th notes on the hi-hat...hell yeah

I do know that (for example) Madonna and Janet Jackson (relatively) recently did theatre tours. And Olivia Rodrigo played a place a lot smaller than she could fill. Lil Nas X is doing the same thing on his upcoming tour. But in these two cases they're likely trial runs for the Enormodome. I suspect the problem (as such) is that superstars would no longer able to reach their fans in large enough numbers and thus risk alienating/angering them, not least because the ticket prices would go up even higher than they are already. Any pop star is already a limited commodity compared to demand; there's only one of them that can only play one place at a time. Constrict that accessibility further without lessening demand and you've got a recipe for disaster.

see, i call that "always leave them wanting more", haha

Depending on the hugeness of the star and the smallness of the venue, a huge star at a small venue could be a crowd management nightmare. I mean, ffs, when the Grateful Dead were doing multiple dates at Giants Stadium in the '90s there were still 20,000-30,000 ticketless fans outside trying to get in.

Yeah but where are the deadheads going to go, they have nowhere else to stay

Josh OTM. Ppl would be frustrated/pissed; tickets would be resold for thousands of dollars, etc. It would end up having more of an "elitist" vibe (unless I guess they played 130 club shows in a row or something).

(at the same city/venue)
(and limit of one (1) show per customer - as if that could be enforced)