Pearl Jam Was Right!

I'm not even taking part in these on-sales but I'm still feeling the tension and exasperation that I've come to associate with any on-sale. Log in at 9:55 for a 10am on-sale, refresh, refresh, refresh, the page finally loads, scan for tickets, nothing available, search again, nothing available, something pops up, take it, whatever it is, the tickets disappear out of the cart, start over, credit card not accepted, password not accepted, event sold out. The clock reads 10:05.

It's starting to feel like those were the good-old days. New aggravations have been added in to make the experience even more terrible. Are you verified? Will the website accept your verified code? Will any tickets show up? Will you be immediately redirected to resale tickets marked 10 times or more above face value? And don't forget the fees.

How I dearly wish Pearl Jam had succeeded in its attempted takedown of Ticketmaster more than 20 years ago. If more bands had joined in, maybe things would be different today, but TM prevailed, grew and grew and grew, merged with an organization that operates venues and sells tickets and sells merchandise, and entered the resale market. It's their world and concertgoers are just living in it.

This isn't news to anyone who's ever bought a ticket. Even when we were waking up before dawn to line up for ticket sales, there were flaws in the system. More than 20 people in line? Time to pull out the random wristbands. Oh, and there's a wristband fee! If the store didn't open precisely at 10, computers logged into the TM system, no one at your location would get a single ticket.

Now we're fighting it out from our desks and phones. We have multiple devices and screens open, friends on standby, fingers crossed that we'll be one of the lucky ones to make it from event page to ticket request to payment page to confirmation. We also have the TM-supported resale tickets to contend with.

I'm 100-percent in favor of fans who can't use their tickets being able to sell their tickets to other fans at face value. I've been on both sides of this transaction — happy to attend an event thanks to access to a spare ticket and happy to pass my ticket along to someone else when I couldn't use it. I'm not in favor of scalpers taking advantage of fan club, radio station, credit card and other presales to scoop up tickets that they immediately release back into the TM system at huge markups. TM charges fees on both the original sale and resale, so of course doesn't care that fans are being shut out or taken advantage of. Artists get their cut, too.

This is all business, I realize it. TM's main concern is its bottom line, and customers and all other concerns rank much, much lower. Over my three decades of concert-going, though, I have contributed to that bottom line. I know if I step back, if I refuse to go to big shows, if I don't join the fan club, if I won't jump through the hoops to get "verified," if I promise to never buy an overly inflated resale ticket, that there are thousands of others ready to fill the tiny void I leave behind.

Maybe this is what Pearl Jam faced back in the '90s, five guys yelling themselves hoarse as everyone around them shrugged their shoulders because dealing with these frustrations is just the cost of being a touring artist, the cost of being a fan. It shouldn't be, though, I shouldn't have to go broke and go gray just because I want to attend a concert. I shouldn't feel like this whole thing is a giant rip off. It is, though. So, what can be done about it?

How Can You Say …

Four years ago, I wrote about a resolution I’d set to see Morrissey in concert. Illness, poor timing and all other manner of roadblocks prevented me from achieving this goal. As of this past Friday night, I can at last say that I’ve seen Morrissey live.

He was incredible.

The crowd was not.

I’ve tread this ground before. Four years ago, my fellow concertgoers drove me to write a simple plea in this blog —Shut Up!

In the few years since, it’s gotten so much worse. I lament this change for many reasons. The most personal is, as a fiercely proud Southern Californian, I take offense to our reputation for being terrible audiences. We always arrive late and leave early. We talk through shows. We have mild, underwhelmed reactions to even the most outlandish spectacles.

For years, I refused to believe it. That wasn’t me, that wasn’t my friends. I’d been in packed, ecstatic, sweltering rooms where music unified, electrified and uplifted. I’d looked up enraptured to the star-strewn heavens as thousands of voices reacted in a joyful call and response. I’d been in balconies that shifted and swayed under the weight of dancing, bounding bodies.

But I’d also been in rooms with crashing beer bottles, blinding cell phone screens and incessant conversations. I’d been in rooms with people who, for the life of me, I couldn’t fathom how or why they were there. I’d longed to tell them how much cheaper it is to go to a bar, a restaurant, or even stay home to drink themselves belligerent, to carry on deep conversations, to go on Facebook. I guess they figure they paid good money for these seats, so they can do whatever the hell they want in them.

I know I feel that way. I think my purchase of that ticket, and the space that accompanies it, entitles me to stand all night (even if the people behind me choose to sit), to dance all night (even if I bump into the people around me), sing all night (even if the people around me would rather I didn’t), scream all night (even if the people around me would rather I didn’t). I also think my ticket entitles me to a night to remember, a night reconnecting with friends and family and heroes and myself, a night to breathe life into old songs, a night to fall in love with new songs, a night to reinforce all the good in my life and banish all the bad.

So maybe we’re all selfish jerks. So maybe going to a concert is as much about celebrating the artist and their music as it is about finding a way to tolerate your fellow fan. So maybe it’s about learning how to compartmentalize, figuring out how to focus on the show and ignore the turmoil right beside you. So maybe it’s about weighing out what matters more, being at the show or being in an ideal environment.

I haven’t reached that level of Zen yet. I can’t not be bothered by the heavy clouds of smoke radiating all around me, the groups pressing their way across the aisles three songs into the main set because they had no idea there’d be traffic, the overflowing cups of beer sloshed over my shoes and everything else, the patrons spending the entire night on their phones, the friends who haven’t seen each other in 20 years having to catch one another up on every single moment that’s passed as the band plays on, the blowhards who have to let everyone know how displeased they are with the set list, the people who need to rush out 45 minutes early because they didn’t realize shows last until at least 11.

At Morrissey on Friday night, I had all of that in my small section of the Hollywood Bowl. I wanted a magic wand that would banish all the loud mouths and trouble makers, and pull me closer to the stage (and add my favorite song to the set list). But I also had Morrissey, his humor, his style, his passion, his language and, greatest of all, his voice, his gorgeous, resonant, radiant voice warming all of us on that autumn night. Bless him for it.