cabledude27

Sorry for the length up front.

Thought I'd share a little rant with you all here about my trials and tribulations at attempting to get tickets for the Tower show in PA on 5/17 only to find the rat bastard ticket "brokers" have apparently snatched them all up.

Understand I am not mad at the band, but certainly pissed at the people who take advantage of true fans as well as the idiots that pay that kind of money to these people in which they feel they can justify charging the prices they charge.

I'd be interested to hear your thoughts, am I being a whiny bitch or do you agree $998 for a fucking $66 ticket is a bit much. How do you think the band would feel about this? Please share and go easy on the flames, I am relatively new to the boards.

This is a copy of my myspace blog posted today, I have Adam in my friends list and the references to him are a little wishful thinking on my part, I highly doubt he has the time to read myspace blogs:

"Saturday morning my girlfriend, Lucy, tried to get Tool tickets when they come to the Tower in Philly in May, via www.ticketmaster.com and suffice to say not getting them made us kind of pissed.

She dutifully got up at 9am to get ready and have time to get them, I rolled groggily out of bed around 930am (come on I work nights, I didnt get to bed til 430am). At 958am she was logged in sitting on the TOOL order page refreshing at 959am it said "Find Tickets" so off she went and voila after a few seconds, yes SECONDS we got the sorry cant complete your request. WTF!!! So we tried until 1030am and nada. I tried calling the venue and got lost in automated voice mail hell. Tried calling Ticketmaster in PA, and got "This number is temporarily unavailable".

Hmm could it also be the thousands of pissed off TOOL fans that didnt get tickets as well?

Fast forward to today, I am dutifully ordering the new Tool, 10,000 Days Album from www.amazon.com. And I have to digress here and fill out some background. I friggin love TOOL. They are, to me, the absolutely best rock band around, they are why you should support artists and pay them back for the heart and soul they put into their music. Frankly they are the only band worthy of buying any album from in this day and age of cranked out American Idolized pop and gansta crap rap. Literally they are all that I listen to.

I'll admit I downloaded the new album from the net and voraciously listened to every track about 50 or so times already. Frankly, it satisfied my new Tool stuff needs, hell it was 5 long years man!

But back to amazon.com, I ordered not 1, not 2 but 3 goddamn Tool albums. One for me, 1 for Lucy bear, and one for my brother Mike as thanks for getting me hooked on Tool so long ago. Then I see it.....

A hyperlink to "Find TOOL tickets" (W T M F!?!?!) I thought they sold out, after all ticketmaster is giving me the "DENIED" message still. So I surf on over to TheSeats.com. And find not only is there TOOL tickets but there is a shite load of them! But here's the real kicker:

Tower ticket for Tool anywhere inside the building per ticketmaster.com> $66
Starting price on theseats.com for tickets>209.00
Highest price on theseats.com for a center pit ticket>$998
Being pissed off that the ticket brokers bought up all the tickets>priceless

That's right Philly Tool fans if we want a shot to see them this time, bend over, pucker up and hope it doesnt hurt too long. This is friggin ridiculous!!! I got to imagine the guys in the band would be pissed due to the nature of their art and lyrics. It's a travesty to the working person who wants to see their favorite bands, but yet the RIAA goes after the guy/gal who downloads one Eminem song, but "legalized" ticket sharks are left alone? Where's the starving artist bitching about lost revenue with that? Does the band get any of the 1000% profit these guys make? And the bad part is some a-hole is going to buy the tickets and that's how the justify charging it.

Sad, sad state of affairs, so Adam if you do get a chance to real my little ole rant, maybe you and the guys can do something about it. I mean "Hootie and the Blowfish" did something about it (http://www.gothamgazette.com/article//20010611/200/165 ) and frankly I'd like not to think what Hootie can do for me but what Tool can do for it's fans!"

dracomordag

thats sad that Tool is all you listen to

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cabledude27

I take back my rude post, I am touchy right now.

Dolophane

Highest price for the show in Chicago on Stubhub was something like $1700.

I hope to God no one actually bought it...

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Tooltb420

I support your rant. Tool is the greatest.

sleepInsom

Even though I got crappy 'limited view seats' at that venue, I'm kinda happy I only payed $66 per ticket.

tony.stacks

Sorry to say it guy but thems the breaks. For every Tool fan that got tickets to this mini-tour, there were thousands that got screwed over such as yourself. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get tickets through ticketmaster either and had to go through a broker, for which I was summarily ass raped to the tune of $520 for a center orchestra 5th row seat.

Elementz

Dude, I hear ya but do you think I liked dropping $500 on my 2 tickets? Hell, no! I don't even have it to spend. My wife is pissed off and not talking to me. But this is TOOL right? Sometimes its all about sacrifice. Seeing TOOL live is worth my time in the doghouse. Personally, I think shes just mad because I am not taking her.....Guess what? She'll get over it....

Sell something.....sacrifice. Or lie, cheat and steal...

Dolophane

Aye, be damned happy. Where exactly are those seats? The gallery or something? I've got a good chunk of change from Ebay sales a few days ago and I may end up paying those scumbag ticket brokers for a pair for me and my ladyfriend.

But I do plan on, once I get the tickets, checking the return address on the envelope and sending a large bomb to them. Karmic retribution through means of high-powered explosives, ya know?

__________________
"You see, for me [art]'s not one of life's ornaments, rococo relaxation to be greeted affably after a day of hard work; I'm inverted on this : for me it's my very breath, the one thing necessary, and all else is excretion and a latrine."

~Arno Schmidt

sleepInsom

They're in the back of balcony 1, behind a support post.

dwohlfahrt

cabledude, i couldn't possibly agree with you any more. ticket brokers are the absulute scum of the earth. i subscibe to no religion, but i've foced myself to believe in hell for the simple fact that it helps me sleep at night knowing that these people will be burning there for all eternity.

torrent

I support this rant. I may have pony up to the brokers as the date approaches for the show(s) in NY.

My question is: How do the ticket brokers do it? Without fail they always have the best seats for the biggest shows? Are they mafia status and have connections on inside?!

eulogys

I don't support this rant, but I understand it. Most of the 'good' tickets the brokers have are from the promoters. They are the ones who put a hold on the tickets. These tickets were not even up for sale to the general public to begin with. I just went to theshow.com and counted 222 tickets on there for the PA show. That's almost 6.5% of the Towers 3500 seats. And don't try to tell me "that's only 1 broker. there's many more out there". Theshow.com and other 'brokers' pool their tickets together just so they don't get stuck with them and have a better chance of selling their tickets without having to stand outside the venue and 'scalp' the tickets the night of the show.

Out of the 3500 seats for the Tower show, I would GUESS the promoter held maybe 10% of the tickets to do with as he see's fit(radio stations, brokers, friends, etc...). I would estimate that, at most, 150 of those 350 tickets went to the 'brokers'. After subtracting the promoters tickets from the venue capacity, you would only have 3150 tickets for sale through TM. The rest of the tickets the brokers got were obtained the same way as those that got tickets for face value, through TM when they went onsale. I'm not sure on the ticket limits per order, I would assume 2(same as up here for the boston show), but that would mean only 1575 orders were recorded. Now ask yourself how many people were trying to be 1 of those 1575 that got LUCKY enough to get tickets. I'm gonna guess again that there was at least 50000 orders placed for those tickets, leaving only 3 - 4% of those searching for tickets actually got them. What makes you think that if you weren't lucky enough to be in that 3-4% group, you would've been lucky enough to get any of those tickets had the promoter not given those 75 pairs(at most) to the brokers. If you did get tickets, look at it as if you won the lottery, because thats what you basically did.

As far as the markup on the tickets goes, the only reason for the 500-1000% markup comes down to something called DEMAND. Tool is playing a very short small theater tour. I would estimate that there are maybe 40-45000 seats available between all these shows. No where near enough seats to satisfy the hundreds of thousands of people from across the country (and Canada) who would want to attend these shows. Let us not forget the amount of people willing to travel all across the country to see one of these shows (I saw a post in a thread from someone in Texas that got tickets to the Boston show). This isn't some 40 - 50 city arena tour that would enable hundreds of thousands of fans to see the show. That alone is cause for the high markup.

And as far as those that are paying the huge mark-up for their tickets, don't blame them for having the disposable income (at least I hope its disposable income) to attend the show. Just because they have the money to spend doesn't make them any less a fan than you and I might be. They just have the extra money to afford the value of the tickets. I don't think anyone other then a Tool fan would be paying $300+ for a ticket.

If you didn't get tickets when they went onsale, you have a couple of options:
1.) Suck it up and pay the brokers what they want and thank them for having tickets you most likely weren't going to get anyways.
2.) Try like hell to win them on your favorate local radio station.
3.) Wait for them to come back from overseas and see them on their arena tour. Much better chance of seeing them, espcially up here in the northeast.

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valhalla

We all knew these tix were going to sell out in seconds, including the band. Why should they care who gets what. Most of you went against their wishes and stole "10,000 Days" before it was released.

I don't think the band has a whole lot of sympathy for you at this point. Besides, sit back and wait for the official tour in the fall. Tickets for shows in arenas will be easier to buy.