Friday, December 18, 2015

I'm not crying. YOU'RE crying!

Yesterday at 9:55 a.m. I settled in with my coffee, pulled up Ticketmaster and the Wells Fargo website and got ready. Was I going to see Adele in Philly? Was I going to see my first concert at Madison Square Garden? Maybe I'd visit DC again. As I logged on, I was immediately placed into a Virtual Waiting Room. I mean, just when you think there isn't anything worse than an actual waiting room...they came up with this nonsense. Okay, this is not the first time I've tried to get popular concert tickets. Fifteen minutes passes, thirty minutes, forty-five minutes...what the fresh hell....Ticketmaster says my wait is over 45 minutes long! No wait...23 minutes...Whew!....GAH!....back to 45 minutes...down to 16 minutes...my emotions cannot handle this stress. I am already a delicately balanced plate of disaster. Ticketmaster's wait time fluctuations are really messing with me and Wells Fargo? Well, they haven't let me out of Dante's virtual First Circle of Hell (It's Limbo, in case you never read it.)

Look, I don't go to concerts much. There's a lot of...well, there's people there. And generally speaking I don't really like people. As a society we've gotten rude and selfish. No one says please and thank you anymore. People shove onto elevators as soon as the doors open without a thought to whether people are getting off of the elevator first. No one says excuse me. I could go on and on. But the selfish part is what really got my goat yesterday and after I stopped crying
 
I actually had to step away from desk.
 
 I got angry.....
 
Seriously, eff off scalpers
 
 
See, see, what had happened was...scalpers...I'm sorry, I mean brokers...swooped in and bought up all the tickets. Well, not ALL of the tickets, because I know some people, like actual people, got tickets. But, these brokers, bought a shitload of tickets, and then turned around and posted them on a sites like stubhub and ticketsnow for astronomical prices. How much you say? Well, a front row ticket with fees on Ticketmaster was around $170. Now you can see Adele for the low, low price of $6,890!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
 
 
 
Almost SEVEN GRAND per ticket. So I say to you "ticket brokers"...FUCK YOU. You know why? I bet you're not even a fan. You probably couldn't care less about Adele and whether or not you or anyone you know even goes to the show. How do you sleep at night? I know, I know...it's a free market, land of the free and home of the brave and all that jazz. But you know what....take many seats with all of that bullshit. Music fans should be able to listen to music. THEY are the ones that set the ticket prices. Not Ticketmaster, not Live Nation. The artist. And some artists have been fighting back. Ed Sheeran does it for the live shows. And he has stopped charging for VIP packages and the ever present "meet and greet". He said  “I didn’t want people to pay $170 and get front row tickets and a meet and greet. I hate that shit. The moment you allow a kid with a rich father to have more things than a kid with a poor father, I think that’s shit.” And Kid Rock...yes that Kid Rock...lowered all ticket prices to $20 and even worked to lower parking, beer, and merch fees. This is what people do that want their fans to see their shows. Adele even worked in the UK and here with a website called Songkick to reduce the occurrence of resellers. Well, guess what...it didn't work. I've already heard that it's just tough and you don't get to see every concert. But this isn't every concert. This is Adele...and now only someone with a trust fund can go see her. When I saved the $170 for ONE TICKET so I could see one of my vocal idols on stage. So no, I won't look for a ticket on stubhub or any of those other places. Because then I'm just as bad as everyone else.
 
So what do I urge you to do? Call your legislators. Vote with your wallet. Supply and demand are a very powerful thing in this Capitalist society. If you don't know who your legislator is...
 
 
Call! Complain! Speak up! Don't sit in the corner listening to sad songs and hoping someone else will change things. YOU can change things. Do greedy, selfish people make you angry? Then DO something about it!!!!!
 
In the meantime, I'll be standing on the other side...saying Hello?