Ticketmaster and Live Nation may soon be joining forces to create a single ticket brokering conglomerate which will undoubtedly be bent on world domination.
While maybe the future isn’t that bleak, this really is something that should concern fans of live music. Ticket prices are going to rise, and you can bet that the best tickets - the tickets that these companies claim they sell to fans - won’t be found the day of sale. They’ll instead be found in the secondary ticket market (mainly TicketsNow, which Ticketmaster owns) marked up at a huge premium.
Though, given the myriad of problems during the Phish onsale last week, this could be somehow for the better. At least with Ticketmaster running the show I know that I’m out of luck in the first 5 minutes.
Somehow over the last 2 years or so I’d forgotten how good Dave Matthews Band is live- stale setlists and weak performances tend to do that. However, apparently all you have to do is just add in a little Tim Reynolds to any Dave Matthews recipe in order for it to be a success. We had a great time last weekend and we wish we were hitting up a few more shows, but such is life. Here’s #40 - the first time played full band in over a decade - from Saturday night’s show:
Carm got me one of the new iPod Classics for my birthday, and I don’t even know how I went so long without a personal music player. My old iPod more or less kicked the bucket last year (I can play music, but can’t load any new stuff) so I’ve been getting by with Sirius Radio in my car and at work. It’s amazing how many leaps and bounds these new iPods are over their predecessors. 80 GB for $250, playing music, TV shows and movies (my DVD collection is getting dusted off for conversions), games, and displaying photos. The only thing it doesn’t do is make my morning coffee. It’s also a great time-waster at work (The Office is somehow much funnier when you’re actually watching it IN the office).
Man, if I had only invested a couple of hundred bucks in this company back in high school…
Carm got me one of the 