Do any of you remember the days when going to a concert was affordable, even cheap? You could go into a shop and pay six or eight quid to go see a band you liked. Some bigger bands, playing bigger venues, would ask for twenty, maybe thirty quid.
(For the real crusties out there, I'm sure you could get a ticket for ha' penny and a bacon sandwich in your day; it all ties in with what I'm saying, really.)
Today, in my meanderings through my usual internet haunts I came across the news that Motörhead are touring and will be hitting the O2 Academy in Glasgow later this year. Having seen something of a trend in recent years, I decided, perhaps counter to my heart health to take wee look at the prices for the gig. Now, the O2 Academy is a middle-sized venue, which for better or worse will always inform my view of the ticket prices. Once I'd followed the links from the official site and got nowhere, I found somewhere that gave them. When these tickets go on sale in the next couple of days they'll be looking for a whopping thirty-one quid. Twenty-seven pounds plus a four quid booking fee, the rise of booking fees has been a point of contention for me for a long time too.
What the cunting fuck?
That's a disgusting price for a gig in a medium-sized venue. And, as I feared it tied in with other gig pricings. Chris Cornell playing the same venue are a staggering forty-odd quid! What's he going to do? Paint the stage in twenty-four carat gold and sit in a paddling pool of caviare? If I paid that I'd expect at least to have a butler waiting on me all night.
I won't even go into the price tag Iron Maiden tickets had, it just makes me angry, after Bruce Dickinson's protestations that the band just want people to have an affordable good time. A bit difficult when fans are being charged fifty quid a ticket in this economic climate (yes, I said it, I'm adult, no need to be embarrassed).
The thing is, I'm not sure who to blame for the price-setting. How much control do the bands have? How much is driven by the venues themselves? There's no question that anyone who can ask for that kind of money with a straight face is a cunt. It's just too murky to point the finger at any one entity (I did it with the Iron Maiden thing, out of anger and frustration). I know that everyone's been hit by the economic downturn, but if you're that desperate to tour you might consider being a bit more conservative with your pricing.
One thing we should be doing is maybe telling them to fuck off. That's right, a wholesome boycott. Don't go to gigs by big bands and back it up with an email or (gasp!) snail-mail campaign. They'll get the message and you'll see the prices drop.
But then that hits the wall when you come to fans. Fans of things are great, the more fans of something there are, the longer it (whatever you want to replace 'it' with) hangs around (or it might end up horrible, depending on what the 'it' is). The downside is that fans are often uncritical of those things that they like, so you end up in a situation where a band charges fifty or sixty quid and the tickets vanish like vapour in a few minutes. And then these same fans will smugly say when you offer your legitimate concerns over pricing, "You're not a real fan, are you?"
To which I have to answer 'no'. I've discovered that I'm not a real fan of anything. I can't deal with things uncritically any more. From comics, to books, to music, to films. I look at things and weigh them up. Of course I want to enjoy things, but I'm not going to ignore dreadful things or things just not to my taste. I love the writing of Alan Moore, but I'm just not interested in 'Promethea' and found 'America's Best Comics' patchy. I think Iron Maiden are a fantastic band, but I still can't listen to most of 'Piece of Mind'. So any attempt to gouge money is going to be met with a very stern expression.
There's my little call for activism, I'll be over here, trying to be invisible.
Will
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