jff

On one hand, if WIlco has anything to do with that, it's shitty. In theory, anyway. On the other hand, the second the bots get those tickets, that's how much they cost. So I'd rather Wilco get the money than anyone else. But it sounds like (according to remphish) the venue pockets that money...and that's what makes this fishy. Where are the artists who are willing to speak out about this? I wouldn't want to see Wilco surrounded by people who paid $500+ to get in, so if that's the norm now, I have no interest in being up front even if someone gave me a ticket for free. Did Wilco or

What is the platinum price on the other dates?

I don't doubt your experience or mean to suggest you're wrong. But everything is negotiable in business and artists do have the power to buck industry standards. How many times has Wilco demonstrated that? I suspect in this case, it's a Radio City thing, and not something we'll see at a theater in Arkansas, or something.

I find it impossible to believe that artists don't have the right to add clauses to contracts that say "no ticket can be sold above the price of $___." If venues had the freedom to charge whatever they wanted, $750 tickets would be far more common and there would be artists speaking out against it. Something about this doesn't smell right.

They might be pricing most people out. But they'll have no trouble finding the 200 people (or whatever the number is) who would buy those seats in NYC. There's no shortage of businesses that want to give a nice pair of tickets out to clients as as "gifts," or rich assholes who don't care about the band but want to show off for their dates. I've snuck up to the front few rows at Wilco shows. It's not exactly their fan club sitting in those seats a lot of the time. I don't like it any more than you do.

Damn, Saturday: Julian Lage Trio, Ohmme, Cate Le Bon, Feelies, WIlco. That's a ridiculous day of music.

Maybe they figure those seats are going to sell for that much regardless, and accepting that reality, why should a re-seller on Stubhub be the one to make the money and not the band? Many other ticketing options have been tried to avert this kind of thing, but none of them have caught on.

Schmilco basically sounds like (and probably is) Jeff's solo recordings that he handed to the guys and said "finish this." If that's the method they've used to record new material, a new record could come at any time and virtually no full-group time in the studio would have been necessary.

I have no idea what the Batman symbolism means. I hope the new album has nothing to do with Batman. But if I was the drummer in a major band that was doing its first tour in two years, I wouldn't use the same drumhead I was using to tour for an old album.

Was this just the presale? I have found that it's often easier to get good seats in the general onsale than the presale, I think this is because roughly the same number of people (and bots) are looking for seats during a presale as the regular sale, but they limit the number of available seats during a presale. Presales aren't the secret exclusive fan club event they once were (or pretended to be).

Does NFL even exist in Nashville? The prices are probably more due to Nashville becoming the bachelor/ette party capital of the world in recent years.

It's different because Ticketmaster online purchase has always been "these are your seats, you have X minutes to complete your purchase or the seats will be released for sale." I've never heard of an online sale in which tickets can be snatched out of your hands at any time, which is the way I'm interpreting these posts. Now, if the people complaining thought they had an unlimited amount of time to complete their purchase (which I find hard to believe), the fault is on them.

I don't have any insight into this specific situation, but it's probably a combination of venue availability in NO and surrounding cities. There may be plenty of available venues in NO on the date they'd be there, but that could throw off their ability to book venues in nearby cities on the dates they need. Tour booking is fraught with compromises, juggling, and domino effects. I'm sure Wilco is not intentionally giving NO the shaft.

Ugh, Chastain Atlanta. Worst venue in the country.

I think Julian is great. I saw his trio last year in Atlanta and they were incredible. The only recordings I know are Arclight and Modern Lore, and I heard Love Hurts for the first time a couple days ago....actually, I need to finish listening to it, so I just put it on where I left off. All of those, particularly the first two, seem fairly representative of what he was doing live as of last year, although the trio he played with was not the same as the group on the recordings.

I wouldn't be overly concerned about the water. Without tourism from the US, Europe, etc this part of Mexico would have gone bust long ago. They can't afford for people to be getting sick. Tourist oriented businesses will offer bottled or filtered water and ice made from filtered water. Don't drink from water fountains on the street, and if you go somewhere that looks a little rough (which are often the best places to go) order a drink that comes in a bottle or can.

I hadn't considered it from that angle, but that is a good point and a worthwhile use of the all you can drink policy.

True, this won't attract spring breaker 20 somethings. It will attract former spring breaker now 40 somethings who decide to reunite with their large network of high school and college friends they never see anymore down in Mexico where they will spend the whole concert "catching up" making it impossible for people to hear the music. Sort of like every Wilco show I've been to*, but way worse. *Except for the show I saw in Knoxville. That was a good audience.

That was a big part of my decision. I'm wary of the all-you-can-gringo-clusive types of vacations. I don't mean to be negative. I love Mexico, and I hope this is a huge success. But I think traveling around to see regular shows sounds like much more fun.

That is valid. If it were NIckelback, or someone, doing exactly the same thing, we'd be criticizing them harshly. I hope Wilco is working on some ideas that would make it possible for the people who actually live there to see them perform. Having been to Mexico many times, I'd certainly rather see Wilco (or just about any band) with a few thousand Mexicans than with the standard Wilco audience. Present company excluded, of course.

The idea of "selling out" is a ridiculous and meaningless notion in the music business of the present day. I see this more as a "buying in" of the new model of the concert business. We're at a point where festivals, rather than individual concerts, are how a large percentage of people experience live music. Rather than Wilco getting booked onto someone else's festival, they are taking control and putting on their own festivals that they can run however they like. In no possible sense could that ever be considered a sellout, and is actually the exact opposite of selling out. My wife an

I'm sure everyone here knew you didn't mean it in a bad way.

Damn, food poisoning is no joke. Any of the times I've had it, there's no way I could have performed music or even left the house, so huge props to Jeff for giving what he could.

I saw Nels last night with Gerald Cleaver (drums) and Larry Ochs (Saxophones). I had a perfect view of Nels and his pedal setup. I was super tired from three nights in a row of live music, and had just come from my dad's birthday dinner (which was a sensory overload for a number of reasons), so I wasn't really in the right headspace for this show, but it was pretty incredible to see Nels put all his devices to work. Nels really is THE master of that stuff. It's mind-bending how he can keep all that stuff straight while maintaining a solid connection with the other musicians on stage.

I'm curious about this. I was down the street in Avondale at a record store show. I wanted to go to this, but I was scared off because I didn't really want to stand behind the gold circle picnic area closest to the stage. Hopefully there'll be a Tweedy or Wilco show at a regular venue before long. I guess I'm not a fan of what Decatur has become.