Live Nation now sells snake oil.

The Problem

I was interested in getting tickets to a show at the Orpheum Theater (WFNX Miracle on Tremont St featuring Spoon, Phoenix, and Passion Pit), so I tried to purchase them via Live Nation and I got a really nasty surprise when I saw what the tickets were going to cost. Live Nation wanted to charge me a $12 “Ticket fee” per ticket, so I did not purchase any.

The blue arrows indicate this monstrosity of an additional charge. The tickets actually cost $27 each for Level 2 pricing ($30 Level 1 tickets were “unavailable”), so this $12 Ticket Fee is 44.44% of the price of the ticket itself. Is there any other business in which a commission of nearly 50% is acceptable? The venue fee of $2.00 looks rather diminutive next to the ticket fee, not to mention the incredibly measly 50¢ that goes to “charity”.

So let me get this straight: the cost of printing a ticket is 600% more expensive than the cost of hiring ushers, concessions staff, security, and a clean-up crew; electricity for the event; and paying the venue’s rent? Those tickets must be printed on the Shroud of Turin in the blood of the Loch Ness monster.

In actuality, most people probably print their tickets themselves at home. In those cases, I am even more baffled by the ticket fee. Are we paying for the privilege of buying something via a website? I assumed the whole point of online purchasing was convenience (for consumers: no need to trek to a real-world box office) and lower costs (for ticket agencies: no need to staff a real-world box office).

I go see a fair number of live events each year between musical performances, theater, and the occasional sporting event and I have never encountered a fee this exorbitant. I wondered why anyone would willingly pay this fee, but that question was already answered for me as 2 hours after the tickets went on sale the lower section was already sold out. Therein lies the problem: ticketing agencies will not change their policies if consumers continue to use their services regardless of their unethical business practices.

In case you aren’t frightened enough by Live Nation already, you should know that there is a merger planned between them and Ticketmaster, if they can get through the anti-trust laws first. This graphic from this article sums up how many middle-men will be between you and your favorite artists:

Before I go further, I want to give the accused an opportunity to tell their side of the story, so: Live Nation, Ticketmaster, and any other ticketing agencies that create unfair and exorbitant additional charges, I challenge you to answer the following questions which are not part of your online FAQ pages:

1. What are consumers paying for when they pay these additional fees?
2. Why are the fees not explained on your website?
3. Why do you get 28.91% of the total price of the ticket when arguably, you are providing the smallest and most unskilled part of the entire operation (which in my mind consists of ticket sales, venue prep and operation, and finally the performance itself)?
4. Would you consider your business practices to be fair and ethical?
5. What are your policies concerning charitable donations?

Please feel free to respond in the comments section. I would be happy to discuss my thoughts with you.

The Solution

The only way to bring about a change in ticketing agency practices is to stop giving your money to the offending agencies.

But my favorite band only plays at Live Nation venues! YOU are the only one who can make this change, so YOU must write to your favorite performers and your local venues and tell them to discontinue their affiliations with Ticketmaster and Live Nation. This will not be an easy thing to do as evidenced by Pearl Jam’s failed battle with Ticketmaster, but taking their money away really is the only way to stop them.

Are there any ticketing agencies out there who are fair? Brown Paper Tickets are proof that it is possible to run a fairly priced and highly functional ticketing agency. I have used their service both as a producer and a customer and I think they are fantastic in every aspect of their business. Not only is their customer service top-notch and their service fees fair and affordable, but they also donate at least 5% of their profits back to the community. Brown Paper Tickets should be the industry leader as far as ethical business practices, but as it is they are just a small (albeit quickly growing) business out of Seattle, Washington. From their website’s FAQ:

2. How can your service fees be so low?
A good question, but a better question is, why are the other companies’ service fees so high? To answer your question, we’re not greedy. The reality is you don’t have to charge much to deliver an excellent service.

Oh, well they must treat their employees terribly! Not at all:

All of our full time employees receive health care, a window, and even a free bus pass each month…

Is what you are proposing actually possible? Of course it is. This may be a naive or simplistic way of looking at the situation, but it would be more naive to assume that you as a consumer have no power.

When I was younger…

…I seemed to have this recurring problem of mishearing things whenever people were talking about someone’s death. For instance, when I was 6 or 7, I overheard my mom talking on the telephone saying, “Oh no….oh, my goodness…that’s awful,” as if she was hearing the story of an unexpected death. I thought she was talking to her sister, so for some reason I immediately assumed my uncle had died.

After formulating this terrible news in my head and convincing myself of its veracity, I wondered why my mom wasn’t more upset or consoling. This would have been the first family death I had experienced, so I wasn’t sure how to react.  I kept thinking about what it would be like to never see my uncle again and decided to pay my respects.

I went and got the gigantic orange plastic horn that my dad had bought at a University of Miami Hurricanes’ baseball game (I never could make the big elephant trunk sound you were supposed to get out of it, probably due to having little kid lungs) and marched up and down in the hallway with it doing the best rendition of “Taps” I could muster. My mom paid absolutely zero attention to me during my public display of mourning, so I played “Taps” a few more times and eventually went to my room where I would have lit a candle for the dead had I been allowed to use matches (and had I owned a candle). I figured when my mom got off the phone she would sit me down and we would have a talk about death and my uncle being dead, but after she hung up she just went right back to whatever she’d been doing. I understood then that this is what it’s like when you’re grown-up and something dies; you just move on. So I promised myself I wouldn’t cry.

It wasn’t until the next time my uncle visited that I finally learned he wasn’t dead. Luckily, I wasn’t really a fan of zombie movies because otherwise his arrival would have been one of the more traumatic events of my life. As it was, I probably just hugged him extra hard when I saw him and then he probably gave me a really painful noogie and dampened my excitement at seeing him alive and well.

All these memories came flooding back last weekend when I misheard someone say that his grandfather had died. I instantly felt this pang of anxiety because I knew it would be really hard to find a suitable mourning horn.

If there is a night when you need to dance in a circle with friends who are not Wiccan.

Want to see some hippie website?

Edward Sharpe and the Magentic Zeros

Listen to them once or twice. Maybe three times. It’s catchy, semi-folky stuff with songs like “Home” sounding like something you would have heard at the Grand Ol Opry. Which I think is just fine.

Editorial Edit: Link is now fixed.

#1s: Omens of the Apocalypse

#1 thing I didn’t expect to see in Boston on October 20.

I did so you don’t have to, Vol. 1.: Jellybath

My first encounter with jellybath was on one boozy night last year at my girlfriend’s place. The circumstances under which she came into possession of the bath gel I don’t fully understand, and are still mysterious to me. Nonetheless, when asked if I wanted to soak my feet, I took the opportunity, as I don’t think I’ve ever taken time to just sit and… well, soak. When a box of the stuff was discovered whilst unpacking our new apartment, the other night, it was met with both excitement and horror. To say that jellybath is gross is like saying that licking a subway door is gross. Anyone that’s ever had a slurpee/slushy from 7-11 knows what the texture and feel of jellybath is. However, when slushee gets hot it melts and looses texture. The hard part to get your head around is that this particular slushy is 102 degrees and that you soak in it. My feet were one thing, my entire body was another.

from jellybath.com

Fill up the tub, poor in the packet, stir. Yes, stir. Like a cauldron. If you dump the contents of the packet in one spot, it will form a dense, slushy mass in the middle of the tub. So stir that shit, light a candle, put on some music, sink into your slush tub and just soak away the day’s troubles while trying not to lose your mind. Granted, the jellybath is hot as hell and is certainly a nice little treat, the same as any bath, but it is just too hard to get over the fact that you’re sitting in translucent goo. Upon standing (by the way, don’t try standing) little globules stick to you and then fall off, plopping back into the tub. Toweling off causes the goo to dry, ball up, and fall to the ground, all over your bathroom to forever gather dust, dirt and hair, and grow into sick snot I’m sure I’ll find until the day I leave my apartment.

What initially tipped me off to the fact that this luxurious product was not intended for people like myself is the lack of warnings on the box. It seems to me that the makers of jellybath didn’t really imagine it being put to use in the tub of a 30 sq. ft. bathroom in a one bedroom apartment. Filling your tub with jelly is every young soul’s dream, to be sure, but what it also sounds like is a lawsuit waiting to happen. I can imagine the sorts of complaints they get on the jellybath hotline on a daily basis, from folks who were hasty with reading the box or examining its contents. There are two packets in the box. One ominously reads “DISSOLVER PACKET” and the other “Jellybath – EXTREMELY SLIPPERY.”

Extremely slippery, indeed. A note on the slipperiness of jelly bath:

jelly bath grossness : licking subway :: jellybath slipperiness : sock feet on pledged hardwood

Now I imagine that a lot of complaints on the jellybath hotline are regarding the aforementioned “DISSOLVER PACKET”. To say that this is a key ingredient in the jellybath ritual is an understatement. Pulling the plug on a tub full of un-meltable slush has implications which go far beyond the moral issues one might have with the jellybath itself, and delves into matters of plumbing, eviction and felony vandalism. I’d be curious to see what happens when trying to drain a tub full of the stuff. Would it just back up right in your bath leaving you with a permanent jelly tub? Or would it make its way into the inner workings of your building’s plumbing causing much more damage to whatever or wherever all the water goes? I don’t know, I can only speculate on the importance of the dissolver packet, but the fact is that it turns your jelly water into regular bath water like freaking magic. No jelly trace at all.

According to the website, Jellybath stays warm 4 times longer than regular old water. Therefore, the natural sensation that occurs when the water turns cold, telling you to get out, doesn’t hit for about 4 times as long.  What’s interesting, about this, is that on the warning-scant box they do tell you to drink 8 ounces of water for every 20 minutes you’re in the bath, past the first 20 minutes. Jesus, what of dehydration in the jellybath?! Imagine becoming so weak that, no matter how hard you try, your prune-like, slippery feet and hands cannot physically grip the porcelain. The more you struggle, the weaker you become. The heat overwhelming, your mouth dry as you begin to drink the jelly water- DON’T DRINK THE JELLY WATER! But you do so, out of insanity brought on by thirst and panic. You lose consciousness, and slide under the water, into the warm slush, and you sleep peaceful sleep. Weeks go by, and the water evaporates, leaving your raisin-like corpse perfectly encapsulated in a tub of hardened jelly.

The paramedics have seen it a dozen times and aren’t phased by scooping away the now plastic-like jelly to pull you out.

Again, speculation.

Bottom line: If you’re looking for something to do in the bath that goes against the good laws of nature and physics try this:

Former Ghosts

I saw Former Ghosts last night Upstairs at The Middle East in Cambridge, MA.

Former Ghosts is a fairly new collaboration between Freddy Ruppert, Jamie Stewart, and Nika Roza. I have enjoyed Xiu Xiu for a while but wasn’t even aware that Jamie Stewart was part of a new band (full disclosure: I don’t really know anything!). I must thank my friend James for inviting my girlfriend and me. Here are my impressions of the evening in a stream-of-consciousness bulleted format:

• James is wearing his storm trooper boots. I’d be jealous of them, but they make him look like he’s either an astronaut or a real astronaut.
• Apparently I just walked by Freddy and Jamie without noticing them (Nika is not on the tour).
• The waitress forgot the milk for my girlfriend’s tea 3 times. She was still the nicest waitress I’ve ever encountered at the Middle East.
• Carrot cake and chocolate cake. I want to go to there.
• Free Rolling Rocks. Yessssss.
• I found the opening act, Born Without God, quite enjoyable even though everyone I was with frowned upon my enjoyment.
• There are 3 saxamaphones on stage. Oh, and now one of them is in my face. Somehow I can’t stop smiling though.
• I don’t like this bulleted format.
• That was me from the future interrupting me from last night’s stream-of-consciousness.
• The sound guy is always awful. Why?
• The second act is not my cup of tea, but Bat for Lashes is. Why?
• Oh, that’s why.
• Why don’t the bands sound check before the show? This kind of unprofessionalism towards showmanship is not tolerated in any other art form. Theaters don’t invite you to tech, artists don’t invite you to installation, and strippers don’t invite you to the lube & lotion show.
• Let the haunting begin.
• Freddy shakes his hand incredibly fast and he sounds very much like Jamie when he sings.
• The simple addition of some live drums (including Xiu Xiu’s awesome cymbal stand thing) and keyboards and Jamie’s distorted microphone makes all the difference when you are watching a band that is performing to mostly pre-programmed music.
• And man can Freddy dance!
• Jamie seems way more subdued onstage when he is not the frontman. Now he’s dancing a little. This is fun.
• I wish Freddy would use his earthquake hand to karate chop the assholes in front of me.
• Get mad at those cymbals!
• Even though the opening acts sounded very unbalanced, Former Ghosts sound really good because they took the time to step off stage and listen to themselves during sound check. Unbelievably loud though.
• Freddy sounds great.
• Favorite moment: Jamie and Freddy sing together and it sounds like it’s one voice and it’s incredibly beautiful.
• I really enjoyed Former Ghosts. They have a very consistent sound that is similar to Xiu Xiu’s more accessible music. They are not obnoxious or pandering at all on stage, which I appreciate. Freddy’s pony step is my favorite new dance.
• Only now do I realize I should have taken a photo.

Former Ghosts’ album Fleurs will be released on October 20, 2009.

[Update: Jamie Stewart is writing a wonderfully humorous and candid diary of the tour here: http://entertainment.nerve.com/2009/10/20/tour-diaries-former-ghosts/. Can’t wait till he writes about the Boston show! Freddy Ruppert smears his heart here: http://freddyruppert.blogspot.com/. Also, after listening to Fleurs a few times I think it’s a real shame that Nika couldn’t come on the tour. She has an amazing voice. Still, I highly recommend seeing Former Ghosts if you get the chance before their tour is over.]

You are #1.

#1 Google image result for “Plaid Forever” not related to the musical “Forever Plaid.”

via LuAnn Branham