Right. So Nine Inch Nails went on sale this morning for the Hollywood Bowl on October first. And now you all know where I’m going to be that evening.
I just spent about 30 minutes agonizing painfully over whether or not I should actually buy a seat for the show, and that goes to show you how serious the dilemma was, because it’s been a long time since they’ve toured; With Teeth, the new record, comes six years after their last, The Fragile, and that one took five years to record. I saw the Fragile show, too, just after I came to California. It was fucking cheaper then; I bought the tickets at the stadium box office. Unfortunately, today is Sunday and the box office for the Bowl is closed. If I waited until tomorrow, all the seats would be gone already…except maybe for extreme nosebleeds. Not that the Bowl really has nosebleeds; it’s a nice venue.
The reason for the agony was simply because of the cockery of Darth Ticketmaster. I mean what the fuck is wrong with these guys? I think I go into this rant every time I am forced to deal with them. The service charges they rob from you are nothing short of fucking outrageous. Ticket prices at the Bowl are already high enough without “teh Ticketmastarrr” coming in and ass fucking you with their goddamned fees.
Now, the Hollywood Bowl is an historic arena. It’s a beautiful place, too, the graceful white shell set against the hills as it is. Here is a picture of what my view will be from the seat I purchased today:
M1, Row 11, Seat…1! Yes! Aisle seat, baby! I am wise in the ways of manipulating the online ticketing system so that I may obtain the seats I desire! Muahahah! And all this for a mere $49.50. Which is crazy loony psycho expensive if you consider that when I started going to see concerts way back when there were so many good shows coming around that every weekend was a dizzying array of road trips and altered consciousness fueled by a madness for live music, the tickets were nine fucking dollars. The ticket prices for this show…the actual seats…were $35 to $95. I got midrange seating and a midrange cost. In this venue, that’s a pretty good deal. It’s a really nice place to go to hear some good music. Who cares if the benches are wooden? They’ve got a back to them. That’s class, man. Fifty bucks to see NIN…a great live band…outside, in LA, at the Hollywood Bowl, in the fall? No fucking problemo.
Except then I got fucked for no less than $16.00 in various Ticketmaster fees. Yeah.
First there was the seat price: 49.50
Then, a “convenience fee:” 9.90
Then, a “user fee:” 3.60
Then, a ticket fee: 2.50
Total: 65.50
Total Ticketmaster: Sixteen fucking dollars
Okay, first of all: what the fuck is a convenience fee? Are you telling me that it would cost me $10 to go to the Hollywood Bowl box office and get these tickets myself? Because it wouldn’t. First of all, it’s leisure time. I dont believe in that “time is money” bullshit. That only accounts for when you can’t bill out your job any other way. Otherwise, fuck God Money. So yeah, it’s costing me nowhere near $10 to go get the tickets at the box office. It is not a convenience, however, to be charged $9.90 for no fucking reason. Perhaps it would more accurately be described as an “annoying highway robbery because we can fee.” Unless, of course, by “convenience” they mean “we’ll just go ahead and charge you $9.90 for no reason except our own convenience fee.” Then it makes perfect sense, especially in today’s corporate environment.
Number two: User fee. For what? What am I using? The internets? I already pay $60 a fucking month for my broadband. For Ticketmaster’s bandwidth? Use the goddamn convenience fee to pay the millionth of a penny that it costs you when I visit your site, you fuckers! Three sixty? What the fuck?
Thirdish: This is perhaps the most insulting cut of all. This $2.50 fee is simply what they charge you for emailing you your tickets. Yes. I think this is perhaps the very first time I’ve ever paid someone to email me. And I have to even print out my own tickets. So it not only cost me $2.50 to cajole them into sending me an email that I’ve already paid a criminal $13.50 in fees to receive, but then I had to pay for the costs of the ink and the paper to actually print the fucking thing out. And it’s fucking ugly.
So I’m a little cranky about this. I had to sit here and weigh whether or not going to the show was actually worth $65. This is someone who has had a regular account with not one, but two ticket scalpers in the past. First name basis, “we’ll hold this specific seat for you whenever (insert band name here)’s show rolls into town” sort of regular account. A veteran of the road wars. All the folks down front knew each other. I know that because I was one of them, right up until I moved out of New York. I had a regular scalper in Minnesota, too, and would go see a lot of shows there as well. I’d go to more shows here in California if I didnt have a fucking horrible car.
I can take a shuttle to the Bowl, and even if I had the car of my wildest dreams I wouldn’t take it to the Bowl, anyway; they charge thirty bucks for parking there. It’s a nature area and there’s hiking trails and shit; I always forget if it’s actually a state park or not, but the big observatory is up at the top of the hill. It really is a beautiful area, and parking is hugely limited. Anyone who would drive around that area on the night of a big show is insane; I got stuck in that traffic one time and I thought I would die there.
So yeah, I’ve done more than my share of concert going, and I’ve paid high prices before. I tend to prefer to procure my tickets at the box office, because back in the day there was a good chance they’d be specially printed tickets instead of the generic slices you receive today; KISS had a habit of making their logo on their box office tickets sparkle with glitter. They even did that for a few of their conventions. Only the box office had those specially printed tickets. Plus, there’s just something about going to the box office to get your passes into the promised land that I always found to be a magical kind of thing. Rock and roll is an important part of my life, and it’s a personal thing. I love the theatrics and the otherworldliness of it. Just like I hate finding out how magic tricks are done. Some things are just better left unknown.
Ticketmaster charging $16.00 in fees for this single ticket transaction is like some kind of horrific violation of magic that to me. As I sat there, fuming, staring at the screen and literally hearing the tick, tick, tick of the tickets slowly and inexorably being sold out at this smallish venue, I knew that if I didnt go ahead and buy them then I’d wind up having to scalp tickets, and since $65 for a single seat is already a big expense to swallow on top of the laptop I just bought, a scalped seat would be well over $100 and would be much harder for me to procure. So I gritted my teeth and did it, and if I had Mr Ticketmaster standing within 10 feet of me when that charge went through I would have caved in his skull with a tire iron.
But I did it, and now I have a seat for the NIN show, and my hatred of Ticketmaster is at its highest peak ever. I’m going to send an email to the Hollywood Bowl folks to bitch about the fact that tickets went on sale Sunday so there was no choice of getting to the box office before they sold out, thereby forcing people to be subjected to the astronomical fees over there at Ticketmaster. It won’t do any good, but at least they’ll get some feedback on how horrible it is.
At least I know the show will be good. I wish that the artists that sell seats through Ticketmaster would put up a unified front against them and demand that they lower their fees. It’s so easy to sell things online; all these guys have to do is find another way to do business. It wouldnt be hard and it wouldn’t take long. Venues could also get with it and put their box offices online, too.
Hell, if I had a choice between paying $16 in Ticketmaster fees and maybe $5.00 in fees for the ability to order tickets online direct from the box office, I’d go for the box office every damn time. Five bucks a ticket is a decent “convenience” fee and I’m sure the venues could use the money.
Ticketmaster gets away with this shit because nobody stops them. Pearl Jam tried, and they got slapped down, but they made their point. However, that was one band, one time. Shame on everyone else for doing nothing about this, and a pox upon people like the recently pathetic John Lydon, who actually defends Ticketmaster’s practices.
Ticketmaster is a vile monopoly, and they have always perfectly illustrated the exact reasons why we decided to make monopolies illegal here in this country: when you only have one way to obtain a service, that service provider will almost always become abusive and hostile toward their customers. Artists need to come together and do something to stop this shit…because they’re the only ones who can. I find it frankly disgusting that hardly any artist bats an eye over it.
Yeah, that means you, too, Trent.
Man. 
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Line-dry cloths instead of using a drying machine
