Posts Tagged “Concerts”
it's the economy?
The New York Post is reporting that while tickets for Madonna's upcoming shows at New York's Madison Square Garden and one show at the just-across-the-Hudson Izod Center have sold out, ticket sales at other venues in the States have been soft. The Post's Brian Garrity pays particular attention to Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, which holds 43,000 people but has only sold 27,000 tickets to her November date there so far. (Spot checks of Ticketmaster pages for shows in Boston and Houston also showed that tickets were still available in those markets as well.) Sure, one could cite this as more evidence that the lousy economy is resulting in even those artists who can charge $575 for a VIP package not being as able to make the "earn your money on the road" strategy work as well as it has in the past. So with sales of her final Warner album, Hard Candy, stalling in the mid-500k range and ticket sales to her road spectacles faltering in the U.S., what does this mean for Live Nation, which shelled out $120 million to have Madonna in its back pocket a few months back?
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canaries in the coalmine
The San Diego Reader reports the probably not too surprising news that concert sales in the area have been soft, with George Michael's upcoming concert in particular being something of a bust—the show, which takes place at the Sports Arena on June 17, has reportedly only sold 4,000 tickets out of a possible 15,000. Tickets to upcoming shows by Sheryl Crow and Stone Temple Pilots are selling sluggishly as well. San Diego has been hit particularly hard by the housing bust, and the idea that people are cutting out ever-spiraling ticket prices from their budget isn't all that far-fetched. But don't think that a weak market will result in ticket prices—or the surcharges that mark up those prices by as much as 50%—coming down anytime soon!
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San Diego Ticket Sales Sagging: A Sign Of Things To Come?
The San Diego Reader reports the probably not too surprising news that concert sales in the area have been soft, with George Michael's upcoming concert in particular being something of a bust—the show, which takes place at the Sports Arena on June 17, has reportedly only sold 4,000 tickets out of a possible 15,000. Tickets to upcoming shows by Sheryl Crow and Stone Temple Pilots are selling sluggishly as well. San Diego has been hit particularly hard by the housing bust, and the idea that people are cutting out ever-spiraling ticket prices from their budget isn't all that far-fetched. But don't think that a weak market will result in ticket prices—or the surcharges that mark up those prices by as much as 50%—coming down anytime soon!
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year-end analysis
Pollstar's list of the top 20 concert tours of 2007 had good news for Sting and bad news for pretty much anyone else trying to figure out if the road life would help make up the money lost by nosediving album sales. The 20 top-grossing tours—which were led by the Police's reunion jaunt, which grossed $131.9 million—made a total of $996 million, a number that's down 15% from last year's top 20 total.
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So Much For The Concert Business Saving The Music Industry's Behind
Pollstar's list of the top 20 concert tours of 2007 had good news for Sting and bad news for pretty much anyone else trying to figure out if the road life would help make up the money lost by nosediving album sales. The 20 top-grossing tours—which were led by the Police's reunion jaunt, which grossed $131.9 million—made a total of $996 million, a number that's down 15% from last year's top 20 total.
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dept. of unintentional ironies
One would think that, what with this being the era of the ever-hoisted cameraphone, musicians and their "people" would encourage professional photographers to spend as much time angling for the perfect—or, at the very least, not pixelated!—shot as they possibly could. But one would be wrong; for example, photogs working Saturday night's Stevie Wonder show at Madison Square Garden were apparently only allowed to shoot the first five to 10 seconds of Stevie's entrance and the first 60 seconds of his first song before they had to get up and out. And photographers at other shows have noticed that the time they're given to shoot shows has gone down, even as restrictions on the masses bringing in their own cameras have been loosened:
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Artists To Photographers: "Move Out Of The Way, You're Blocking The Cameraphones"
One would think that, what with this being the era of the ever-hoisted cameraphone, musicians and their "people" would encourage professional photographers to spend as much time angling for the perfect—or, at the very least, not pixelated!—shot as they possibly could. But one would be wrong; for example, photogs working Saturday night's Stevie Wonder show at Madison Square Garden were apparently only allowed to shoot the first five to 10 seconds of Stevie's entrance and the first 60 seconds of his first song before they had to get up and out. And photographers at other shows have noticed that the time they're given to shoot shows has gone down, even as restrictions on the masses bringing in their own cameras have been loosened:
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concerts
Megadeth Concerts Not As Deth-Filled As Classical Shows
From a pre-Lollapalooza article in the Chicago Tribune on the first-aid staffs at concerts: "Dr. Jeff Grange, professor of emergency medicine at Loma Linda University in Southern California, said most of the medical situations seen at an Ozzfest concert in mid-July were related to violent dancing. 'We saw a lot of trauma, two people with stab wounds, numerous people with dislocated shoulders, facial trauma, sutured up a lot of faces, that kind of stuff, especially from mosh pits,' he said." But despite the stab-wound possibility, the deadliest shows, according to Grange, are actually—wait for it—classical concerts. Sure, it's because of the higher median age of attendees, but we're sure that kids across the Chicagoland area are, right now, getting ready to smugly show this article to their parents in a last-ditch effort to be allowed to attend Ozzfest next week.
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concerts
The Great Summer-Festival Showdown: It Begins Today
This weekend, two huge summer festivals—Lollapalooza, at Chicago's Grant Park, and the Virgin Festival, at Baltimore's Pimlico Race Course—are taking place, a curious quirk of scheduling that has resulted in the nation's outdoor-loving music fans to make Big Decisions. While fans of Interpol, Amy Winehouse, Modest Mouse, and TV On The Radio could go to either festival (if Richard Branson was smart, he'd set up a Virgin America-branded shuttle for bands playing both shows), those hoping to hear other artists weren't so lucky. If you're still on the fence about where your travel budget for the summer should go, we pit the festivals against each other, head-to-head style, after the jump:
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shockers
Hey, remember Social@Ross, the $15,000-a-ticket concert series that allowed Hamptons types to sit on ottomans and suck down top-shelf cocktails while they listened to live shows by Prince, James Taylor, Tom Petty, Dave Matthews, and Billy Joel? You may be surprised to hear it, but tickets aren't selling very well—even though only 1,000 were going to be made available! At least that's what we're guessing from this e-mail that went out to the Dave Matthews Band's fan club and made its way to Bob Lefsetz's inbox. It's hawking tickets to this Saturday night's show for the Crazy-Eddie-low price of $250 a pop. (For those of you who don't feel like doing the math, that's a 92% discount—and you still get free parking!)
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Tickets To Overpriced Concert Series Not Exactly Flying Off Shelves
concerts
Opening last night's Poison show (fun, pyro-filled, CC apparently fluish) was the Swedish heavy-metal outfit Vains of Jenna: Think Buckcherry only with everyone dressing ca. the Sunset Strip in 1989, led by a singer who seemed to have learned his stage patter from the Hives' Howlin' Pelle Almqvist. At one point, the frontman—named Lizzy DeVine—pleaded with the crowd to buy some merch because the band was, and I quote, "fucking broke," and since their set was quite enjoyable, I figured I'd help them out. But the only items available were T-shirts and keychains, and there wasn't a CD (or even a CD single) to be found among them. What? More »
CDs Conspicuously Absent From Merch Booths At Sheds
Opening last night's Poison show (fun, pyro-filled, CC apparently fluish) was the Swedish heavy-metal outfit Vains of Jenna: Think Buckcherry only with everyone dressing ca. the Sunset Strip in 1989, led by a singer who seemed to have learned his stage patter from the Hives' Howlin' Pelle Almqvist. At one point, the frontman—named Lizzy DeVine—pleaded with the crowd to buy some merch because the band was, and I quote, "fucking broke," and since their set was quite enjoyable, I figured I'd help them out. But the only items available were T-shirts and keychains, and there wasn't a CD (or even a CD single) to be found among them. What? More »
concerts
Over the weekend, the Los Angeles Times reviewed the first night of Prince's stint at Hollywood's Roosevelt Hotel; in addition to performing two full sets and hugging Penelope Cruz, Prince managed to drive away some of hip-hop's biggest names:
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Prince Proves That Even Thugs Have Pride
Over the weekend, the Los Angeles Times reviewed the first night of Prince's stint at Hollywood's Roosevelt Hotel; in addition to performing two full sets and hugging Penelope Cruz, Prince managed to drive away some of hip-hop's biggest names:
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festivals
If you've ever gone to a huge outdoor festival, only to be surrounded by chattering idiots who are angling for blogarazzi shots of the VIP tent's dwellers while complaining loudly about the weather, then you probably won't be surprised by the new survey revealing that the percentage of people who are there for the "scene," and not the music, is pretty high:
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Festivals Turning Into Dirtier, Muddier Fashion Shows
If you've ever gone to a huge outdoor festival, only to be surrounded by chattering idiots who are angling for blogarazzi shots of the VIP tent's dwellers while complaining loudly about the weather, then you probably won't be surprised by the new survey revealing that the percentage of people who are there for the "scene," and not the music, is pretty high:
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concerts
Al Gore wants next month's Live Earth concerts to take place around the word, but he's had some trouble getting bands to play in Antarctica: Not only will the shows occur in the middle of winter, but Emperor Penguins make for really ill-tempered groupies. Luckily, the British Antarctic Survey had a solution:
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Al Gore Discovers New Strand Of Chill-Out Music
Al Gore wants next month's Live Earth concerts to take place around the word, but he's had some trouble getting bands to play in Antarctica: Not only will the shows occur in the middle of winter, but Emperor Penguins make for really ill-tempered groupies. Luckily, the British Antarctic Survey had a solution:
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concerts
The L.A. Times' Buzz Blog is reporting that Prince will play a seven-weekend residency at Los Angeles' Roosevelt Hotel, beginning some time next month. And if you were expecting Prince to casually plug his glyph-shaped guitar into a socket just fiddle around for a bit, well, you'd be wrong:
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Prince Finally Gives Us Incentive To Move To L.A.
A Triumvirate Of Terror
concerts
Today's Wall Street Journal has an item on Social, a five-concert series taking place in the Hamptons this summer. Those who are interested in seeing Prince, Billy Joel, Dave Matthews, Tom Petty or James Taylor may want to drop by the series, although they'd better be fast, have a fair amount of equity, and be willing to get their snob on, as tickets to the series are limited to a run of 1,000, and will cost each attendee a cool $15,000;
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The $15,000 Concert Series Will Let You See Prince For A Steep, Steep Price
Today's Wall Street Journal has an item on Social, a five-concert series taking place in the Hamptons this summer. Those who are interested in seeing Prince, Billy Joel, Dave Matthews, Tom Petty or James Taylor may want to drop by the series, although they'd better be fast, have a fair amount of equity, and be willing to get their snob on, as tickets to the series are limited to a run of 1,000, and will cost each attendee a cool $15,000;
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concerts
Saying "Never Again" To The Compulsory Encore
In the Guardian blog today, Dave Simpson has an argument against the ritual of the encore, from the waiting around in the dark for five minutes while musicians freshen their beers to the perfunctory nature of song choices during the after-set portion of the show:
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