Why I Never Go to Concerts
God damn it. Roger Waters is coming to Madison Square Garden, will play Dark Side of the Moon, I actually noticed far enough in advance to get tickets, and I’m going to be out of town at SD Best Practices those two nights. :-(
Usually I don’t even notice a band I’d like to see is touring until they’ve come and gone, or at least until tickets are sold out. I think the last rock concert I saw was X in San Jose in 2001. Before that maybe Joan Jett at Central Park Summer Stage or Meatloaf at Radio City Music Hall a few years earlier. That concert was weird: a lot of thirty and forty-somethings with their preteens in tow. One of the backup singers was Meatloaf’s ~20 year old daughter. Could it really be 40 years ago that Roger Daltrey first sang “I hope I die before I get old”? Even 90’s icon Liz Phair is now singing about dating men too young to know who she is.
Surely somewhere there’s a service that will let me enter a list of my favorite bands and e-mail me when tickets are about to go on sale? Ideally one that doesn’t spam me with a lot of needless HTML e-mail, advertising, and other junk. Any suggestions?
July 12th, 2006 at 9:36 AM
I use the pollstar (http://www.pollstar.com) website to sign up for tour schedules. I think there’s a 4 or 5 artist limit for free, but more if you subscribe. I get an email only when any of my artists add or changes tour dates. It’s no help with ticket info, though.
July 19th, 2006 at 9:05 AM
I almost hate to admit it, but Ticketmaster actually does a good job of this. I bought Lewis Black tickets through them a couple of years ago. Now, whenever Lewis Black returns to my area, I get an email from Ticketmaster letting me know. Remarkably, though, they NEVER send me email I haven’t specifically requested.
Obviously this is only useful for venues covered by Ticketmaster’s sales.
July 20th, 2006 at 12:39 AM
Rusty,
Volband is right… Pollstar is the real deal…. and about Mr. Waters, I have tickets for Shoreline in Mountain View. I’m a software engineering consultant and I say F*&# SD and go to the concert. The SW industry is so F*&#ed up why miss out? Unless your’re going to save the world with AJAX or SOA or some other SOS BS… LIVE!!!
You have great books and a great site… now make great decisions.
Greg Garcia