Bacharach in my town this fall

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jimac51

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For any East Coast forum members: Burt Bacharach comes to Allentown Synphony Hall, Sun.,Oct. 20. The hall seats 1248 and tickets are $39 & $55. I friend of mine is sometimes involved in selecting the local musicians for shows like these and I'll keep you posted if this shapes up as an interesting date. Mac
 
No such luck for Detroit. Thanks to nearly invisible promotion, I didn't find out about a Bacharach/Warwick concert only a couple of days before it happened, and this was just a few weeks ago. Ticket prices were outrageous (hundreds of dollars), although I still could have purchased a very bad balcony seat (way in back, high enough where you can't see much of anything except bald spots and hair spray...and sound is terrible) for $45.

I'm still trying to figure out why the ticket prices for Detroit events are so much higher than for other cities around us...a lot more. (And this isn't for isolated concerts, either--I've checked many neighborning cities and their prices are usually substantially lower--Cleveland, Columbus, Chicago, even Indianapolis.) It could be our promoters are much more greedy, or maybe artists ask for a lot extra just to pay for security. I had to laugh when Mendes announced a concert in Detroit with Gato Barbieri--$400??? I don't think so! Not even bands like the Rolling Stones commanded that kind of price the last time they were in town. Sergio ended up cancelling, too. Probably from lack of ticket sales.

On the other hand, Toto is in town next Monday. (Again, promotion was so poor that radio just started advertising it yesterday...five days before the show.) And their ticket prices are very reasonable. $17.50 to $23.50. This I can live with. However, I would only buy these directly at the box office...Ticketmaster has become WAY too expensive. Their convenience charge for these tickets is $7.90...EACH!! Plus, they add a parking fee onto each ticket you buy ($3/ticket), so by the time you add up the charges, two inexpensive tickets ends up costing in the neighborhood of $70.

Ticketmaster is outliving its usefulness, IMHO. My last ticket purchase a few months ago was too much of a sticker shock, just due to all the piddlin' fees Ticketmaster adds on. Bought two $35 tickets, which cost me $45 each. Something is wrong here. It would have cost me $3 in gas to go pick them up myself. For printing out a piece of cardboard and sticking it in the mail, Ticketmaster certainly isn't doing ME a service worth $10/ticket!!

Detroit is NOT a town where people are rolling in money (more like rolling in poverty and unemployment); how the promotors or the artists' management think they can get away with high prices is beyond my comprehension. The majority of these concerts are not sellouts by any means! (And with all this extra money they're gouging concertgoers, why is there almost NO promotion?)

FWIW, a lot of people blew their money on Red Wings tickets and paraphenalia... :wink: It'll take until the beginning of the 2002/2003 hockey season before anyone has enough disposable income to leave the house!

-= N =-
 
noted-its a pity that some ticket agents\ promoters etc rip off the fans.However remember caveat emptor-if a enough fans vote with their feet and walk away from the ticket booths the message may be received!


jc
 
Neil-Who controls the venues in Detroit? This sounds like the scummy work of Clear Channel,who are doing to the concert business what they do to radio-ruining it for everyone but themselves. Your question has real merit-yours is a MAJOR city and a good entertainment reporter/investigator could really do justice with the subject. Our little paper did a series of stories a few years ago why Allentown got iced out of the concert business. Factors included no new hockey rink-type of building to attract medium-size acts,and sharper,more aggressive towns nearby like Hershey,Reading and Scranton that put the bid in early and had successful track records as a result of previous events. Success breeds success in the concert business. We used to be able to attract Metallica and Def Leppard due to their manager owing favors to a local producer but after that promoter served a prison term for taxes(a cash business is a tempting place)no more. Mac
 
I'm not sure who controls the venues--I believe the biggest arenas and our Fox Theater are overseen by Palace Entertainment (?), the company who runs the stadiums (Tigers and Lions stadiums, Joe Louis Arena, and outdoor concert venue Pine Knob), and is owned by the Ilitch family (who founded and owns Little Caesars, owns the Red Wings, etc.). I know a promoter named Brass Ring Productions used to handle a lot of the other venues in the area. It seems the prices are getting a lot higher at the smaller venues, while acts out at Pine Knob are either very affordable or up in the stratosphere.

Last November, Jean-Luc Ponty played at Music Hall...tickets were $45 each. A couple nights before that, he was at the House Of Blues in Chicago, for $21/ticket. IIRC, other concerts he played on that tour were in the $20's and $30's. In contrast, I'm going to see him again, but on a triple-bill with Rippingtons and David Benoit, for $35/ticket. Music Hall was also where Bacharach was well into the three-digit range ($300 or $400 for the best seats, $45 for terrible seats), and the aborted Sergio Mendes concert at another venue was about the same. As much as I like Sergio, that price is way out of line.

-= N =-
 
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