Skip to main content ↑ ↓
Recent Posts
3
The Daily Cut and Thrust / Re: What's pleasing me today
Last post by Russ -
I don't think you can moan about bland mega acts when a few posts back you were boasting that you went to see U2. Even in their pomp they were pretty bland, and I say that as someone who has been along for the ride since The Joshua Tree.
4
The Daily Cut and Thrust / Re: What's pleasing me today
Last post by tricky -
I have absolutely no idea why a kid would want to go and see a mega-knob at a global super stadium. They would have more fun making out behind the bike sheds. 

The events (stadium gigs) are primarily to chisel cash out of the maximum number of people. I'm not indifferent to good work, although my legendary cynicism leads me to believe he may just be annoyed someone else is making a wedge (and shouldn't you be supporting market and entrepreneurial forces?).

I like the idea that bland mega acts price themselves out of the youth market. If they won't then you can rely on a ticketing organisation to have terrible taste in music and step in to do the good work. The kids might learn to listen with their ears rather than follow with their sheep feet.

...and....Ed Sheeran. The idol of cloth eared footballers. Who gives a f*ck?

It's a market. There are market forces. If the kids can't afford to go to see ed Sheeran they'll have to do something else. Like listen to some f*cking music. I had to save up for three f*cking months to buy The wall. I'm not going to lose sleep that Rupert can't afford to do whatever he wants in his teens.
6
The Daily Cut and Thrust / Re: What's pleasing me today
Last post by Russ -
Quote from: tricky on
Don't get me wrong. It's great to watch a fresh young band cutting their early teeth on new material in front of an audience in a pub or small music venue. Price of entry: buy a pint.

I have no f*cks to give about how hard it is to get tickets to see the ginger magician at the O2.

Fair enough, but the principle is then perhaps even more important - back when you or I were broke students we could go and see the biggest bands in the world by dedicating our excess of time to securing a ticket. Now, the market is still catering to us by preferring to give us the ability to simply outpay today's broke students, and that's not good for the industry. You or I might reasonably take the position that we'd probably close the windows if Sheeran was playing in our back garden, but the kids that want to see him don't have the option of camping out overnight and instead are being pushed out of any chance of getting the tickets by automated systems designed to alleviate the more monied fans - usually the older ones - of greater amounts of cash. Even when it's not touts and bots, it's people like you and me who are able to take advantage of things like AmEx presales; every which way the young music fan is getting pushed out, and that's not healthy for the long term success of an artist.

I think it's outstanding for someone like Sheeran to use his power over the promotion of his gigs to emasculate the corporate touts, and give his younger audience a legitimate chance of securing tickets. I wish more would do similar.
9
The Daily Cut and Thrust / Re: What's pleasing me today
Last post by tricky -
Don't get me wrong. It's great to watch a fresh young band cutting their early teeth on new material in front of an audience in a pub or small music venue. Price of entry: buy a pint.

I have no f*cks to give about how hard it is to get tickets to see the ginger magician at the O2.
10
The Daily Cut and Thrust / Re: What's pleasing me today
Last post by Russ -
Quote from: tricky on
This reminds me that the best gig I ever saw was the Q tips (Paul Young, before famous) in 1981 supporting squeeze on the tour for my favourite album of all time. I don't care how much tickets are, or who gets them. I don't need to go to another gig ever again thanks. I've seen the MC5, Springsteen, The Stones, U2 - some of them even at their best. I doubt that I need to spend eighty quid on a geriatric Madonna gig, tits out or not, to improve on what I've already seen.

Gigs, like football, are well overpriced and overrated these days. Mainly by event consumers who have no real interest in what they are watching, but are mainly box ticking. There is little more amusing then the self righteous bleating of the consumer who thinks they have some sort of right of access to what they want. Pop has, literally in this case, eaten itself.

I'd say that this is a wildly incorrect statement. Maybe for someone whose interest in new music stopped somewhere around 1987 I can see that going to watch the mouldering corpses of their former heroes might be an exercise in diminishing returns, but for those of us who actually pay attention to new music there's still a thriving gig scene out there.