hwllo

actually, for all those NYC shows the bands get paid...i saw Sonic Youth for free last year in Brooklyn, and they didn't do it out of their own good will. same goes w/ the free shows @ Summerstage and the Brooklyn pool shows.

 

 

but hey, if you wanna take the 'win,' feel free to stock on those internet points. sounds like you need them.

"stock those internet points"? what does that even mean? We're talking about doing free shows from a fans perspective and nothing more. I didn't realize you were going to get all technical about what is considered free. If I go into a venue without paying and hear a band, I consider it free, i'm sorry if i over-simplified that concept.

well, nobody would.

 

yeah, definitely an April 1st thing, but the kernels of truth are in there. at least from my perspective.

The argument is over chief, doesn't matter if it was 8 years ago or 20 years ago, point is, it does happen where big bands do free shows, so you're wrong, some people would!

the bands get paid, the city or state just picks up the tab.

 

DMB=living hell.

 

 

no way i'd ever willingly subject myself to stand within earshot of them. you couldn't pay me.

 

 

well, maybe i'd take a trade for a NY ticket.

so you're discrediting my point based on whether or not a band meets your approval? You kinda come across as a music snob.

You can't deny that DMB is one of the biggest touring bands in the country over the last decade and that a free concert at central park was pretty cool for the fans.

How is this a free show?

Well let's seeI've seen Wilco, Andrew Bird, Buddy Guy, Jack Johnson, Ben Harper

One night I saw

Andrew Bird

Wilco

one night I saw Buddy Guy

One night I saw

Jack Johnson

Ben Harper

So I saw 5 quality bands (give or take jack johnson) for $30 when Wilco alone charges over $50 these days.

Sure, it isn't free, but relatively speaking, it's cheap as hell

having to listen to DMB isn't something I would consider free of any sort of burden, financial or otherwise.

How so?

well, nobody would.

 

yeah, definitely an April 1st thing, but the kernels of truth are in there. at least from my perspective.

people do free shows sometimes. There's Summerfest in Milwaukee where you pay like $10 to get in and then can go stage to stage listening to music all day.

Also, just one example, Dave Matthews Band played a free show at Central Park in 2003

i'm sure that the April 1st date has a strong correlation to this, but it's almost plausible.

 

i will say that the audiences in 07 and 09 were much better behaved than the '02 shows i saw.

 

 

http://neilyoungnews.thrasherswheat.org/2011/04/free-neil-young-warmup-concerts.html

gotta be a joke, Neil wouldn't do free shows, obviously

For the Californians.

hate to beat a dead horse, but check out the show at the Wiltern, cheapest seat in the house $106.00 most expensive $276.

lots of fancy suits in that building i'd imagine, come show night

what's a good seat to an NFL game cost?

$125-$140 for bears games last year

I don't hear either of those two songs in this one at all.

really? i'm speaking strictly musically, the rhythm guitar since that's all we have, to me at least sounds similar to this

kinda reminds me of something in the same vain as impossible germany and one wing

not sure where you are, but i just checked the two Boston dates and the best single ticket I could find was 30 rows from the stage.

 

not sure of your definition, but amazing wouldn't be my first adjective used.

i was just looking at the chicago shows

For what it's worth, and i know the concert is still over a month out, but there are STILL 3rd row seats up on ticketmaster.

The shows will not sell out unless a third party is brought in to buy the tickets and scalp them for under face.

You gotta figure anyone die-hard enough to spend $275 on a ticket would have been all over it the day they went on sale. Now it's 3 days later and there are amazing seats left

Wasn't that for the Near North Montessori benefit? Benefits are always more expensive because they are trying to raise money for something.

 

LouieB

I don't know, it's in april I think. I thought it sold out but I was on the vic website and there are tickets. maybe they put more up?

Yes and Yes. I am sitting in an office today listening to the "lite" rock station (it is piped in, not because I want to....!!!) The mechanical residuals most artist make from radio, muzak, film, etc, are more than enough to keep anyone one of us happy for a lifetime. But unlike Randy Meisner, Neil has put out album after album, reissued old albums, put out movies, concerts, all that stuff people yearn for and he is right up there with the best of them (Dylan, Bowie, Jagger, etc.)

 

Despite Neil's hippie cred he is a total capitalist at this point. Every time he drops an album, good or bad, he makes plenty. And actually Heart of Gold....1972....that is 40 years of royalties he has gotten. I was a mere college student when that came out and I am close (though not close enough since I didn't write any hit songs) to retirement.

 

LouieB

For what it's worth, and this won't be popular here, I know, but I also just saw tickets to see Jeff Tweedy at the vic were $61 and I think that's a bit high too.

Didn't mean he's strapped for cash. Just that the appeal of going on the road likely isn't what it used to be, but certain dollar amounts are real hard to turn down.

 

I'd probably be more bitter about this if I wasn't seeing him at one of these shows for a very reasonable $57. It's a balcony seat, bought at the box office to avoid Ticketmaster, but still. That theater's small, and I know it'll be worth it. This entire thing gets blown out of proportion by people only looking at the higher end tickets. I know some theaters are still pricey for "bad" seats, but not all of them. Any decent theater will be set up so that there's no bad seat in the house.

It is a beautiful theatre and there isn't a bad seat in the house. And I am looking at the higher end tickets because I think there were very very limited amounts of the cheap ones. From looking at a seating chart it looks like the majority of tickets are around $200 or higher. I'd love to see a seating breakdown on the number of seats. I really wouldn't be surprised if in the 3,600 seat venue only a few hundred seats were under $100

But music is a business, whether tickets are $50 or $150. That's not a new thing whatsoever. Neil Young, at this age, probably wouldn't hit the road if he wasn't making "enough" money doing it. You can call it greed, and I can't really argue that it isn't, but I also think it's something he's earned with a lengthy career. The money NY would make selling $20-$50 seats might not be enough to entice him into a tour at his age.

 

This kinda entirely contradicts my "it's not Neil's fault directly" point, but still.

i mean, i know it's a business, but as a fan, you try not to think about that. it's like sports, you don't want to be sitting in a baseball stadium, thinking of how much money the players on the owners are making off you, you go to escape your every day life so to speak.

And Neil Young probably has so much money from touring, records, the archives, all that, I can't see him strapped for cash. And if it takes a huge pay day to get him back on the road, then I don't want to see him anyways because he's doing it for the wrong reasons.

I've got no problem paying to see concerts, I've seen bands like CSNY, Neil Young, Tom Petty, Wilco, My Morning Jacket, Built to Spill, Spoon, Buddy Guy, and never seen tickets as high as $275. I guess I didn't want to lump Neil Young in with the Eagles, Rolling Stones and U2, but I guess you have to these days

While Neil is "not exactly in his prime," he's pretty damn close when it comes to putting on a live performance. I've seen him right around 20 times and he has never disappointed. The ticket prices don't sit well with me, but it would sit much worse with me if I passed and he never came by again. I can't say the same thing about Randy Newman, Willie Nelson, Paul Simon, or any other artist for that matter. Neil and his people know there are at least 5,000 people like me in every location he books a show. He charges those tickets to ward off scalpers, to keep the performances as intimate as possible, to limit it to hardcore lunatics, and because he can.

 

 

 

i'm with you on all of this. i'd say neil is a legend, but unlike seeing dylan, just to see the guy play like crap, when you see neil, you see neil just emit his neil youngness. the scalper issue is good point i hadn't thought about.

Neil Young definitely still has "it" when he plays!

And I get wanting to stop scalpers, but at what cost? Me and my friends are all huge neil young fans. but we are teachers and waitresses and farmers and spending over $100 to see a concert is out of our price range, let alone $200 or $300. Does this mean we aren't as big of fans as people who will be sitting front row? No, it just means that we don't have the excess income some people have. It is supposed to be about the music and I feel like with prices that high it comes across as much more of a business and money-making venture for neil. Upper-class entertainment for the upper-class i guess. I just feel like he is alienating his fan base, not that he cares, but as a fan, i do.

If Neil played small/midsized theaters with $50 max tickets, scalpers would totally buy up as many seats as possible, and fans would still have to pay the higher prices, but they'd be paying it to the scalping folks. It's a sad reality, but I'd be shocked if it didn't play a role in setting prices.

i think for the tom waits tour he did a few years back he made every ticket will call ONLY, which greatly affected the amount of scalping. There's ways to try and stop scalping, and i guess doing something like blowing up the prices of your shows is one way, but it's also a way to lose fans, not that he cares

according to my Googles, Peoria Civic Center has a 12,000 seat capacity.

aah, thought it was smaller. but what difference does it make really? I saw Wilco at the Pabst theatre and had 5th row tickets that were like $50. I know wilco isn't neil young, but you can't tell me Neil Young is worth 4 or 5 times more than Wilco.

did Tom Petty play in a theater? and was the price for Petty's 'good' seats last year for the outdoor sheds he played? $150.

 

and i wouldn't pay $10 to see Paul Simon.

 

 

but that's just me.

ok, well elton john is playing at a small venue in illinois and the most expensive tickets are $150. he's probably more popular than neil young, though i don't like that much, the fact remains, that he is a "legendary" type performer, who is playing by himself and charging $125 less for good seats.

I have stood up for neil before and am a huge fan, but there's no way i can justify what he's doing now, no matter how hard i try

why even compare Randy Newman or Willie Nelson to Neil Young? It's ludicrous.

ok, well paul simon at the same venue is topped out at like $120 and i've seen Tom Petty for around $55. is that more comparable?

He charges that because he can... And I guarantee every show will be a packed house...

Well after a full days of being on sale I can still get two tickets for the first night in the 4th row, and for the second night in the 3rd row.

It'll be a packed house i'm sure, but they aren't selling every ticket at face, because there aren't that many people willing to shell out almost $300 to see Neil young

I'd love to see a Congressional Inquiry into 1. ticket prices and 2. how so many end-up with ticket resellers immediately. Tickets touts now have websites called Stubhub and the like. Just an awful, awful fucking rip-off.

 

That said I did pay about $80 to see Neil for the second-time about three years ago. Absolutely amazing and maybe more so because he played with an intensity and passion that would have put people a third-of-his-age to shame.

 

I decided to incorporate Coachella into vacation time this year based on the fact that at $100 a day it's still great value over what individual tickets cost. Guaranteed warmth and sunshine In April coming from Seattle add tremendous value to the equation too. Bit luke-warm on the headliners apart from Arcade Fire. Whom despite their wanna-be street-cred still cost me $70 (including fees) last year. Other than that I am only doing club shows.

 

The bummer is that a number of our friends aren't coming because tickets sold out within 6 days. That didn't happen because Led Zeppelin had reunited to play or David Bowie was doing his first live show in a decade. Rather an enormous amount immediately ended up with re-sellers. My guess is that Ticketmaster have increased sales to resellers and are taking kick-backs to compensate for the lower revenues they are experiencing overall because of the recessions. MOTHERFUCKERS! It makes me mad that we the consumer have no recourse. Imagine if the same thing happened with plane-tickets? It would be banned.

Yeah scalpers are messing it all up and it does seem like ticketmaster gives tickets to them before anyone else. Look how ticketmaster refers you to a scalping site is tickets are sold out, it's pathetic.

And the ticketmaster charges are getting out of hand as well. They are close to $20 for some shows and probably average about $15 for a show, it's horrible. That combined with already high prices makes it unaffordable. And the thing with Neil Young that gets me is that the tickets are extremely expensive and it ONLY him, it's not like it's u2 where the whole band gets paid, it's just him.

I would love to know what his paycheck is per show he plays.

Not that I don't agree that the prices are high, but I have a hard time believing Neil himself is personally setting all these ticket prices. Especially on these recent tours, with the theaters he's playing. Those places just aren't cheap to book, so the tickets, naturally, won't be cheap to buy.

 

The $60 I paid for a balcony seat to see him in April is definitely towards the higher end of concert tickets I've bought, but it was still in a reasonable range for me. If it was out of my range, I skip it and use the money to see whatever smaller shows are around me. No big deal.

For someone that's notorious for doing things his own way, I have a harder time believing he doesn't have a say when it comes to prices.

As I said, I'm going to the Auditorium Theatre to see My Morning Jacket and the most expensive Tickets for that were like $55. I can't see the price difference between booking those two places to be that high.

And looking at other bands playing there like Jethro Tull and Paul Simon, the most expensive tickets for those shows are like $120 which is less than half what Neil is charging.

And i'm not so much disappointed in not being able to go as I am that he is charging that much. I never took him for the greedy musician type, but i guess i was wrong

support your local shithole...most tickets are under $20 for >1000 ppl clubs...

Yeah, for sure! I think last year I saw Blitzen Trapper, Built to Spill and the Sadies and for all three I paid like a combined $50! Much easier to justify than $80 or more for a single show