I had a dream the other night that tickets for an upcoming Duran Duran concert were $8 million. I woke thinking that if someone could afford that much for a concert ticket, they could just buy the band for a few years.
This dream was prompted by a couple of recent concert-related pieces of news. One was Duran Duran announcing their upcoming North American tour. The first date on the tour is in Minnesota at Treasure Island Casino. A site with ticket prices prior to them going on sale showed that tickets front-and-center next to the stage were priced at over $1,500, with general admission tickets far, far away from the stage, off in the hinterlands somewhere, at $68 without taxes and fees. Upon looking at ticket prices just now through Ticketmaster, none of the seats near the stage are available and the rest of the tickets range between $68 and $159.
With those $1,500 tickets, they may as well be $8 million for how few average folks could afford them. The fact that all of them are now unavailable speaks to what happens to so many concert tickets as explained by John Oliver on an episode of Last Week Tonight. Most of them are snapped up for promotions or resale and never really available for regular fans.
The other bit of concert news we received this week, mere hours before the event, was the postponement of Gary Numan’s concert at First Avenue in Minneapolis. The concert had been postponed last October due to the COVID pandemic and was rescheduled for March 23. I was getting the ticket app ready on my phone before we were due to leave. As I was finishing up, a message from the app appeared saying the concert was postponed. I couldn’t believe it at first because it was so close to the concert. We checked and double-checked the First Avenue website and it, too, said the concert was postponed. I contacted First Ave to be sure and got the same message. Sheesh! It’s a good thing we hadn’t headed out the door for the long drive to the concert.
Hubby later learned the concert was postponed because Gary had COVID. Y’all, this pandemic isn’t done with us yet. We hope Gary gets better soon and doesn’t have any medium- or long-term COVID symptoms. (Hubby had a very mild case due to the fact that he was vaccinated and he is still dealing with occasional bouts of sudden fatigue.)
While working through the disappointment of the postponement, Hubby and I talked about how the concert experience isn’t as fun for us as it once was. I have to wear earplugs at concerts to avoid having ringing in my ears for days after.
At First Avenue, most people have to stand for the entire concert. My body is not fond of standing for that long in one spot. If you move in that venue, you lose your spot.
Even if there are seats at a venue, almost everyone stands, which means if you want to see anything, you have to stand, too. For a short person like me, it’s still hard to get a glimpse of the performers and I end up staring at the giant screens rather than the stage.
Then there’s all the finding parking and dealing with crowds or rude people, like the girl two seats behind us at a Dave Matthews Band concert who screamed through Every. Damn. Song. causing the family behind us to leave and the rest of us to be hella-annoyed. She only stopped when she lost her voice.
Hubby and I have determined that it’s easier and much more enjoyable to watch a recorded concert in the comfort of our living room than to deal with all this hassle in order to go deaf and sort of see a band live.
We have officially become too old for large concerts.**
Considering that Gary Numan and the members of Duran Duran are older than we are, it’s a wonder they continue to perform. Of course, they have the best spot in the house and don’t have to find parking or shell out $8 million for ticket. 😉
**We’re not too old for concerts at smaller venues, however.
Your post brought back lots of memories of going to concerts: getting ready to go with carefully chosen casual clothes and listening to the band’s album at the same time, buying a concert t-shirt to wear to work the next day (big concerts were always on a weeknight in our city – Melbourne and Sydney got the Fri and Sat nights), waving lit cigarette lighters during the power ballads, saving up to buy a ticket although I never queued up overnight to buy one, asking Mum to drop us off then taking a shuttle bus then taxi home, standing up/dancing (wasn’t a problem back then), hoping the band would be as great in real life as their music videos…..
I think big concerts are a thing of the past for me too but they sure were a lot of fun.
Those are great memories, Liz! I never attended concerts in high school and rarely did during college. I was broke and had no way to get to concerts in high school, too busy during college, and had my first kiddo straight out of college, so I don’t remember much in the way of social anticipation, except for wondering if the band would be as good live as on a recording. We had an opportunity to see Nine Inch Nails at the Xcel Energy Center and Gary Numan at First Avenue several years ago (pre-pandemic) and both were absolutely phenomenal. I saw Duran Duran at First Avenue many, many years ago. (Other than a lack of seating, I love the not-too-big size of First Avenue.) This was during a less popular phase in their career and I think they were okay but not too memorable at that point. (Feels like blasphemy to say that!) Just before the pandemic, Hubby and I had an opportunity to see jazz musician Ellis Marsalis at Snug Harbor in New Orleans. Ellis was the father of the famous Marsalis brothers who are jazz musicians. Snug Harbor was as snug as its name suggests, a perfect little venue. That was a marvelous concert! We were so fortunate to get to see him because he died of COVID very early in the pandemic. His death was the first one that made me understand the gravity of the pandemic because we had seen him less than a year prior. — Thank you for sharing all the fun aspects of attending large concerts. Those who are able to attend need to enjoy them while they can!