For Your Listening Pleasure
The Mothers of Invention – Freak Out!
Ya know, one day I have to really build up my Zappa collection…
News to You
I like that this part of my columns has evolved into a little “news bits” section, and there’s always so much going on in the world of music that I’ll try to focus on things not covered everywhere else on moodspins or 411mania.com…
— Second street, around the corner from CBGB’s in Manhattan is finally being renamed Joey Ramone Place for the punk pioneer, who used to live in a loft on that block. Despite the new, slick looking NYU dorms, Joey’s Place still looks a lot like it did back during the last real NYC rock explosion…
— The guy seems too wishy-washy for me to vote for, but I’ll give General Wesley Clark a few comedy points for this news bit alone. If you haven’t seen this by now, Hillary’s puppet is showing that he’s “down” by making commercials talking about the “issues” the kids can relate to: whether OutKast has either broken up, or just decided to do put out two solo albums packaged together for ghits and siggles. I think the answer to that is fairly obvious…
— Okay, maybe this isn’t “music” news, but it’s on MTV.com, so I’m allowed, right? And come ON, the 80s may really be stroking back, with the ultimate sequal: GROONIES!
Sold Out!
Let me know if this has happened to you before:
You get to work in the morning, and check your email, only to see something with the subject line like this:
“DON’T MISS SIMON AND GARFUNKEL AT CONTINENTAL AIRLINES ARENA!”
You think to yourself, this is great! For once, you’re happy that you signed up to receive “updates and other news” from Ticketmaster.com, so that you could hear about upcoming events in advance of ticket sales!
So you click over and try to buy tickets… ‘Cause this is a once in a lifetime opportunity!
Number of tickets: 2
Price: Any price
Section: Best available
Please enter the word as it appears in the box below: “cocktease”…
And get that ol’ familiar message:
“There were no tickets available that matched your request
There are several things you can try:
– Change the quantity of tickets you are requesting.
– If you selected a specific seat section, switch to “Best Available”.
If you are unable to find tickets, be sure to check back often. As the date of the event nears, many times a limited number of tickets may be released.”
SHENANIGANS!
What the heck’s the story here? Ticketmaster.com JUST sent me an email saying NOT TO MISS this concert! But they KNEW it would already be sold out. I KNOW they did. And the story’s the same for any “big name” on the concert circuit: Dave Matthews, Radiohead, Phish, and so on. Maybe you’ll have more luck calling Ticketmaster? Not a chance. Unless you want to see some band no one’s ever heard of (well, except for you and your cool friends, of course), you better get through by 9:05 AM, because between fan-club members that get first dibs, folks with special “codes” for advance sales, and the most proficient speed-dialers, tickets that go on sale at 9 will be all but gone by then. It’s at the point where there’s probably a better chance to win tickets on the radio than purchase them the day they go on sale.
Trust me on this – I wanted to see Pearl Jam so badly, I paid $10 to join the band’s fan club with the hope I’d be able to pre-order tickets, and it actually worked. In fact the MSG show I attended had about seven or eight thousand folks there JUST from the fan club, and while it made for an awesome show (let’s face it, when a band feels loved, they usually react well to it), I couldn’t help but feel a little bad for the thousands of fans that were likely given the cold shoulder by Ticketmaster operators…
So what’s the solution? I’ll be the first to admit that there isn’t a cut-and-dry answer to this one. But here are a handful of ideas:
(1) Free concerts? If a show sells out, and the venue is available, oftentimes an act will add a second (or third, or forth, or… you get the picture) show to satiate ticket demand. But for venues like Madison Square Garden that are often shared with basketball, hockey, boxing, wrestling, monster truck shows, etc., that’s not always possible. Now bear with me for a second. I’m pretty sure the National Football League has a little-known rule on the books that if a game doesn’t sell out, it will be blacked out in its local markets. That is: if 60,000 or so fans don’t go see the game live, the rest of you can’t see it on the tube. So how about flipping the script a little on that idea, using the basic premise? In order to REWARD fans for making a concert a sell-out, these major acts should open their sound-checks to the public, letting anyone come in on a first-come, first-served basis. Again, this would happen only if the show is a sell-out, but it is a great act of good will, can be done on the cheap with no frills, lighting, pyro, etc., and any extra costs for security could surely be recovered by merchandise sales. Pearl Jam did a similar thing a few months ago, rewarding their Boston fans by having a set BEFORE the show started, and I think a stripped-down version of that would be a great way to help out the fans that maybe wouldn’t get to see the show proper.
(2) The nosebleeds are on us. While it’s done occasionally, there aren’t nearly enough instances where a venue holds tickets back until, say, a week or two before the actual concert, so folks have one last glimmer of hope before the show is officially declared a sell-out. I’m not talking about prime seating – I’m sure some fans would be quite happy with seats BEHIND the stage, if they get the chance to scream their heads off for one of these major acts.
(3) Rewards.com. For tours in support of a specific CD, artists should reward fans by offering them a first chance at tickets in their area by way of codes hidden on each individual CD, maybe tied to the barcode or somehow otherwise coded within the product. Slide the CD into your computer, unlock a code, go to the band’s Web site, and you’re able to get tickets before they come out, up to a certain date. Sounds too simple, but I’d give it a shot. (Plus, it’s yet another way to entice folks to buy CDs rather than burn them.)
Those are just a few ideas, but anything that can help alleviate the disappointment felt after yet another one of those Ticketmaster email teases…
Reader Feedback
I received a lot of great feedback to my last column on how hard it can be to find new music, and how pop culture in general is taking a hit-and-run philosophy rather than developing new artists/shows/etc., and I thought I’d share a couple letters with you.
mullerbl writes:
Just wanted to respond to your comment about artist progression. You’re right in saying that stuff gets pushed and then it’s gone, at least in Top 40 radio. But I’m in the mind that the reason they do it is because the majority of mainstream music sucks. 90% of it, IMHO, is pretty bad and not worth listening to. Now, I’m not a rap fan, so that takes out a genre for me. The record companies know that in order to get people to buy this garbage, they have to do a quick full-force assault. Most people aren’t going to buy garbage if they simply hear the song here and there. No, the record companies have to make sure it’s played constantly so you get the song(s) in your head and run out and buy the CD. They just have to make sure they don’t go too overboard with the first single off the CD before its out otherwise people will be driven insane and will want to kill the artist (Creed with “With Arms wide Open” comes to mind). I won’t dispute that the record industry goes for the quick sales, but when most of what you’re selling is trash, you can’t blame them for doing so.
I’ll agree, it’s hard to find new music. I’m 20 and have a hard time in finding stuff. I still listen to a lot of old stuff and have no problem in doing so, but I can understand that for the most part, people will get tired of the old stuff, regardless of how good it is, and need new music. Downloading’s definitely helped, because I know that without Napster and everything that came afterwards, I never would’ve found all the underground Metal I currently listen to, and instead would be listening to bands like Linkin Park, Limp Bizkit (Who I detest), and all these other mainstream hard rock bands that suck. I think the big problem isn’t that the majority of people aren’t willing to look for new music, but that they don’t want to. I think the average person is content to listen to stuff that someone like myself, who’s very particular about his music, would continue trash. They have no problem listening to what the radio stations feed them as long as it goes along with their tastes in some fashion. I’d be like that too if I hadn’t found stuff that blows that stuff out of the water.
So, yeah. Not sure where I’m going with this. I guess in the end, I do see record companies going for sales as quickly as possible and moving on. But, unlike with movies and TV, I think it’s more because of quality than the “Fast Lane” life style. It’s part of it, but when your product sucks, that’s basically how you have to market it.
Thanks for the note, and I see where you’re coming from, but my point was that this “fast lane” attitude that you mentioned is being used for all artists – whatever the music industry thinks will stick. Best case scenario for them has become “maybe we can make a few bucks on a hit single or two,” and if not, they move on to the next thing. What ends up sticking is the music that’s easiest on the ear, but not necessarily the best, most passionate work of art out there. I only wish the industry’s best case scenario would instead become “let’s find some really good, new, innovative, interesting musicians and find a way to help them develop.” This shift in attitude would open things up for consumers to be exposed to new things, fan bases to grow, and the industry being better off in the long run because new artists have been developed to the point where they’re a vital (I hate that word) part of the pop cultural fabric rather than a flash in the pan. It might not work for every band or singer/songwriter out there, but I don’t even think the industry is trying.
Greg Wind, as always, chimes in with some great feedback (and not just because he opens it with a compliment):
Matt, this might be your best written column yet (although I still have a tough time equating pro wrestling with more established art forms). Congrats.
I made the same discovery about the length of a year based on your age a while back and I think that might have something to do with your view on pop culture.
When you’re 16, two great albums by a band (in my day, let’s say Echo & the Bunnymen) made them a great band. When you’re twice as old, a band needs twice the output to seem just as meaningful to you (in my mind, Wilco).
Maybe the reason we gravitate towards classic music (not necessarily classical) as we get older is that the bar has been raised in this way.
That said, I think if music (or television or movies) mean anything to you, you will never be in the market for the new Clay Aiken. If music gives you meaning, you will never go for meaningless music. You may appreciate music that had no meaning for you earlier, but you will continue to find meaning where it exists.
Because there are enough people who are looking for meaning from music, there will always be meaningful music to be discovered, whether it’s sonically interesting (the new Outkast, which I agree is a great listen) or emotionally powerful (our departed Elliott Smith).
The heroes and heroines are still there and I’m not sure they’re any harder to find than they ever were. CMJ and allmusic.com (highly recommended) now serve the role that college radio and your friend used to, and they’re far more educated about what’s out there. I wouldn’t have found Jim O’Rourke, Neutral Milk Hotel or Spoon without them. I wouldn’t have rediscovered Pavement and fallen for them infinitely harder the second time around.
So give the kids their Death Cab For Cutie. Rediscover Bowie. Find Mississippi John Hurt. And let the people who care more about listenability than the deeper currents buy the new Jack Johnson. Let them follow the hype cycle. The music you need to inspire and move you is still being made. Always will be.
Greg, I hope so. And I definitely hope to always be one of the folks you talk about, always looking for meaningful music. But there’s a lot of music already out there, and as my free time decreases and technology starts to pass me by, it’s very easy to put less effort into finding the “new and meaningful” stuff, and just go back to the oldies but goodies. Scroll back up to my comment about Zappa at the beginning of this column. If I don’t know about the All Music Guide or haven’t fully grasped the latest and greatest P2P service and software, I’m going to be more likely to explore all of that old Zappa that I wasn’t around for first time around. It’s a lot easier for me to spend my money on Let It Be… Naked instead of whoever’s on the cover of CMJ, and to go to a Pearl Jam concert (if I can get tickets) rather than a Tuesday night indie showcase at an obscure former NYC ballroom.
I guess the point is twofold: the best art and entertainment out there isn’t necessarily the easiest to access; I just wish the Powers That Be would help more. In the meantime, I’m here to help as best I can, so let me know your thoughts on anything you’ve read here.
Until next time…
peace. love. moe.
– Matt
Till My Head Falls Off can be found weekly on 411 Music (old columns are archived in the pull-down menu below). Already hit everything on 411? You can find more from Matthew Michaels at moodspins and 1-42.
