What a resurrection really feels like

I’m listening to The Hold Steady a lot these days. I know I’m kinda late on the bandwagon. I was scared off by all those people saying “Ah, they’re just Springsteen wannabes”. I mean, I checked ‘em out first, of course; unfortunately the track I heard was “Stuck Between Stations”, which is the most Bruce-alicious song on the new(ish) album. So, I passed.

I don’t recall now what it was that made me go back and give ‘em another shot, but I’m glad I did. Yeah, there’s a bit of a Bruce thing going on, but it’s not nearly as pronounced as I was first led to believe. It’s really down to two things: the verbose nature of Craig Finn’s lyrics, and the piano/organ stylings of mustachioed keyboard dude Franz Nicolay, and the anthemic nature of most of their music. OK, that’s three things. Really, though, the Bruce comparisons aren’t really all that accurate. And The Replacements thing… both bands have/had members from Minneapolis, both bands write/wrote about getting loaded. That’s about it. Science Girl says she hears The Jam in there. Me, I just hear a really good rock & roll band.

So anyway, I really dig ‘em. Snagged both Boys and Girls in America and Separation Sunday from eMusic, and both rock like all get out.

I was poking around the band’s website the other day, and saw that they were gonna be playing here in town, at the HUB ballroom on the UW campus, this weekend. Huzzah! Usually when I find a band I really like, it turns out that they’ve already played Seattle two months previously. Whoops, wait a minute – tickets available through TicketBastard. Uh-oh. Being the lazy little shit that I am, I hopped on the TicketBastard to see if I could get tix without being flayed alive. Turns out that I couldn’t.

Tickets are $22 each, face value. Mathematics tells us that two tickets would therefore cost $44, plus tax and whatever “service charges” TB decides to add. They chose to add $11 per ticket. So those two tickets end up costing $66 – the face value of three tickets.

This did not sit well with me.

After a short tirade at the uncaring computer screen, I logged out and started a search for the HUB box office. One trip to campus later, I found out that the box office will only sell to students, faculty and/or staff. I am none of those.

Grrrr…

OK, what if I go to a TicketBastard dealer myself – maybe then I’d get a bit of a break on the price. And that’s exactly what I did today. Upshot of the whole fiasco: I finally do have tickets for the show, and the “convenience charge” was “only” $7.41 per ticket. Well, fuck it. We’re going, and that’s what counts. It just irks the holy living shit out of me to be shaken down like that. It’s a shame that Pearl Jam’s attempt to bring TicketBastard down didn’t work.

Perhaps it is time for the concert-going public (that’s you and me, bub) to rise up and declare a holy jihad on such blatantly inflated ticket pricing. $22 to see three bands is a great deal, and I’m happy to pay them for the privilege of seeing them at work. What am I paying the scam artists at TicketBastard for? I understand that they are entitled to a certain fee for selling the tickets, I really do, but in what alternate universe is 50% of face value an equitable fee? Why are they charging more to sell the tickets online? I'd think that would use up even fewer of their resources, yet they even wanted to tack on another fee if I chose to print out the tix myself. WTF?

If any of that money were going to the people involved in putting on the show - bands, house staff, etc, - I wouldn't think twice about paying $66 for the two of us. But I fail to see how TicketBastard is adding any value to the experience at all.