Growing up, I would always get excited around March when the newspaper came out with its special section that announced which bands would be coming to Red Rocks that summer. My siblings and I would look over the list and find the ones that we were most interested in going to, when tickets would be sold, and how much they would cost. We could only afford to go to two or three per summer, so we had to be choosy about which ones were the most important to us. It was a part of our summers and I was lucky enough to see some amazing shows during those summers.
Of course, the concert scene was a little different back then. We still had to go through Ticket Master, but this was long before you had to set up your computer and hope that you would get a ticker on-line before the scalpers snatched up all of the good seats. Instead, we had to set our alarms to get up early, run to one of the many Ticket Master locations, and stand in line with other eager concert goers with just the right amount of money in our pockets so when they opened the doors to the location we could get the best ticket available. It was almost as fun as going to the concert itself. We would talk with the other people in the line, ask how long they had been there, get excited about which songs the band would play, and ask if they knew anything about the opening act. It would be a couple of months before the concert even happened, and we would already getting pumped up for the event.
It became a right of passage. We would go home with our printed out ticket, and put it in a safe place until the day of the concert. My was always next to the collection of past concerts that I had gone to that I kept tied tight with a rubber band in my sock drawer. That collection was more valuable to me than any collection of football or baseball cards. Each ticket told a story about an amazing event and would bring back to that moment from a previous summer, and the shows that I had watched, what friends came with to that show, and what songs connected with me the most. The concert scene was not only fun, but it was also a culture that I bought into and is part of the reason for my love of music that I have to this day.
The concert scene has changed quite a bit back from those summer days of my youth. I do not know if it has much to do with the way that tickets are sold today, and what happens when going to a concert, or if it is more about me not having the same energy I used to have for these shows, but I do not look forward in anticipation for these shows that I used to. Yes, I still look for what shows will be happening over the summer at my favorite venues, mainly Red Rocks Amphitheater in Colorado, and Hayden Homes Amphitheater in Bend, Oregon. These are also the two locations that I will be at during the summer, so that limits my options as well. I also have only a couple weeks at both locations, so I really have to hope that the bands that will be playing at those times are somebody that I really want to see. In the past, I would go to almost anybody I had a passing interest in, but that was a lot due to the cost of concerts back then. In the eighties and nineties, I could see a good band with an up-and-coming opener for somewhere between twenty to thirty dollars. That is including the fees that Ticket Master tagged on to the ticket prices. Now, those tickets have jumped up to almost one-hundred dollars, and those are for the second tier bands. When you start to look at the top tier acts, the price gets out of control. I wonder how people afford to go and see acts like Taylor Swift or Oasis because the ticket prices for acts like this have gotten completely out of control.
The ticket prices are only affordable if you jump on-line during the first few moments that those tickets go on sale as well. Where in the past, Ticket Master worked on making a system that limited what a scalper could do, it almost seems to welcome them with open arms today. Computers allow the scalpers to set up mills where they can snatch up the premium tickets as soon as they go on sale, making it really difficult for the true fans to get any tickets, even if they are able to be there when the tickets go on sale. I know systems have been set up to allow those fans to get the tickets that they want, but they are not usually through Ticket Master. This means that if a person wants to get a ticket to go see one of their favorite shows, the price for them is increased by scalpers who are now acting as a middle man and making money on a show that they do not care anything about. To add insult to this injustice, people are not even given a physical copy of the ticket, so they can have that little memento of the show that they watched. It is digital copy that will disappear off of their phone the day after the show, leaving no real record that the band wander through the town in the first place.
Even when I get to the show, the plundering of my wallet does not stop. Prices of concessions at shows has always been high, but it has reached a new level in the United States today that force people to really consider how much money they are spending at one of these shows. I went to a show just a week ago, and a beer was $15, and a single taco was $7. I have also been seeing shows in Peru, and the prices there for concessions are much more reasonable, and I was able to afford to enjoy myself more at these events. And it is not just concerts where this is happening. Movies and sporting events have also hiked their prices up, making it almost impossible for any below a certain tax bracket to go to these events. It makes it even worse if it is a whole family that is going to the event. If it can happen for certain families, it will only happen once a year if they are lucky.
For the most part, the concert scene has changed a lot over the years, and it does not look like things are going back to the way that they were any time soon. But adjustments will have to be made soon in the entertainment industry if they wish to survive in this changing economy. Movie theaters are the first to experience these growing pains. Theaters are no longer packed, not even during the summer blockbuster months. Streaming has a lot to do with that, but I also believe that the price of movies and concessions also keep a lot of people away. I would be curious to see what would happen if theaters lowered their prices, and how packed they would be if they did that.
The movie theaters are not the only places that will feel the repercussions of these prices. Eventually other forms of entertainment are going to price themselves out of the common man, and there won’t be enough wealthy people around to support musicians and athletes. It just makes me wonder when that break will happen because I cannot figure out how they have been able to sustain such high prices for so long. Until then, I will go to the shows when I can, and for those shows that I have been priced out of, I just hope some day the price will drop so I can see my favorite bands.
John Collings 