As I've mentioned in other entries, Duran Duran has a new album out featuring the original five members. I've never seen them together...I missed out on the Seven and the Ragged Tiger tour in '84.
Last year's show in Cleveland doesn't count. I couldn't see them from the shitty place where I was standing.
So the official fan site has pre-sale tickets. Presumably this is why I pay $35 a year: so that I can get the best seats in the house. Imagine my surprise when I discovered today that the only seats available for sale are the ones in the $70-95 range.
Unless I want to spend $300 for "VIP" tickets which will get me champagne, free shit I was planning on buying anyway, and "maybe" a chance to meet the band.
On the boards, those of us who are a little put off by the cost of the tickets are being shouted down by those who would gladly give an arm and a leg and a first-born son with cries of, "You obviously don't love Duran Duran enough!!" I'm sure that my extensive vinyl collection and that huge box of BOP Magazine articles I've been hauling around with me my whole life would beg to differ. As I emailed a friend, it's just that I love eating and new brakes for my car more.
And I know they need the money to come from somewhere, because I doubt their album is flying off the shelves.
But seriously, this is just one of myriad crazy money-grubbing schemes perpetrated by musicians. I'll tell you something: I never go to shows. Never. Once in a blue moon someone will tour who I absolutely have to see, but it really has to be someone special. I just can't afford to shell out the kind of money bands are asking for these days. I'll admit, their record labels are probably to blame for some of it. But look, you spend $70 a ticket, $10 for parking, drinks are $5 a piece for soda, shirts are $40...you have to take out a loan. And I know, some of those charges are the fault of the venue. But I'm trying to make a point here.
The point is that I've waited twenty years for this. I've bought all the records, often more than once. I have the posters and the remixes and the puffy stickers. Last year The Husband and I spent over a hundred on just the tickets to see Duran Duran at a tiny, shitty podunk crap venue and we couldn't even see them, AND we had to drive two and a half hours away to do it. I single-handedly probably financed their 80s drug habits because of the money I spent on Duran Duran shit that's currently clogging up my basement. And the appreciation I get is the opportunity to pay $35 a year for the privilege of buying tickets that cost so much before everybody else, all I can think is, "That money could have gone to buy a dishwasher that doesn't smell like a rotting corpse."
But then I think, "If I wait I'll be all the way in the back."
And then I get sick to my stomach.
Idolization is a shitty thing.
I am Duran Duran's bitch.
Hey, Simon, I'm bending over and I've got the lube. Oh, and The Husband's letting me use the emergency credit card for tickets. Just so you know who to thank when you're buying another pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses or whatever it is rich people throw away their money on.