I'd punch the fucker if I could. The buck stops with him. He chose the most cynical way to do it. Spending the majority of the early part of the tour on the East Coast, letting millions of us on the west coast high and dry. NYC, Philly, hell...Long Island...anything he can fly a copter to. Fuck off. I am tired of supporting this crap.
That sound you hear is the end of the greatest band I ever saw or heard. Giving in to the industry and ripping people off. FUCK YOU BRUCE. Jon is just a yes man now.
You all know how much I love them, and consequently, I am more let down by this than anything he has ever done. You can add up all the missteps going back to the poorly recorded shows in 2014. Then add no west coast dates then. 2016 was a waste of time in comparison, then the best shows were in the late summer and if you wanted to go, you needed to fly to Jersey or Philly. We on the west coast got fucked over. Then add the narcissistic self-serving mythology bullshit of Broadway. yes, I said it. Fuck you, Bruce Springsteen.
My expensive tickets for Munich came today.
What in the past was an occasion for exitement and celebration now leaves me curiously untouched. It may be I'm getting too old to be a real fan, or the disappointment about the ticket anger is getting to me...
I hope I can rustle up some enthusiasm when the date arrives.
UK petition started, please sign and share.
https://chng.it/TRcrNV95JJ
https://chng.it/sSJVT9TP9g
A Stateside petition against dynamic pricing.
I'm going to see if there's a UK one or start one.
Please sign and share, maybe on the old place if anyone still does post?
Late to the discussion. I did find it distasteful that I got an email to buy merch at essentially the same time as the tickets were being offered up. It’s quite a money machine, that organization.
Tour merch unveiled:
Please don't give your tickets away Louisa, or sell them. I think you should go, you could feel so much differently come show time, too hard to predict how you'll feel right now. Hell I'm in for whatever my pocket book will open for, if it does, and I'm gonna enjoy the hell outta it despite this huge circus show.
I've been in a relationship with Bruce since I was 15. I felt he was authentic. I could listen to Joad downloads and was moved to tears. The humanity in his lyrics and the collective identity he managed to bring to life at his shows were substantial elements of my devotion. And that's gone now. I'm not sure if it's completely gone, but I can't trust his words at the moment. It's the first time I am not excited to have the tickets. First time thinking about maybe giving them away for free to fans who couldn't afford to buy them.
Those song introductions on stage, the ones where Bruce talks about Elvis, how he wanted to be like Elvis, but realized he didn't want that anymore - that's how I feel about Springsteen now. I want to write a sequel to Mansion On The Hill, in which the kid who stared up at that house from the fields and the road is now the old man behind the windows of the mansion.
I'm just feeling really flat over this.
I haven't formulated my feelings into anything cogent yet.
I don't fully understand how the U.S. side of things work with the "verified fan" stuff.
The lack of dates in Cali, once again, don't know the details but it seems a bit suss.
But, both sides of the Atlantic, I hate that Bruce, and any artist whose art speaks to any sort of integrity, gets in bed with Ticketbastard.
Having said that, I understand that Bruce inc. do not have the infrastructure to handle distribution in-house.
Equally I understand that the Live Nation/Ticketbastard devil's duo have cornered the market as a "one stop shop" in putting on tours of this scale.
I get that concert tickets are expensive and I acknowledge that these tickets are, at worst, on a par price-wise with what other artists of a similar profile are charging, in terms of initial face value.
The thing I totally do not get is the dynamic pricing model.
Firstly, I cannot understand why this is legal.
It is abhorrent, it is unfair and it is morally bereft.
Secondly, I cannot believe that Ticketbastard could legally insist that the "dynamic" element of this was a deal breaker in terms of taking Bruce's business. In short, Bruce inc. could have put the kibosh on dynamic pricing. I refuse to believe otherwise.
Thirdly, the concept of Landau, nominally or actually speaking for Bruce personally, defending this practice, completely blows my mind.
I simply cannot get my head round the tone-deaf nature of the response.
Bruce inc. must have some sort of in-house PR/marketing department.
They've failed here.
Historically, the period after buying tickets for a Bruce show I'm on a child-like high.
Making plans, travel and social, debating (even this far in advance) the set list and generally behaving giddy.
Now, I just feel flat and let down
I daresay this might change in the run up to the shows, for now, the world seems somehow darker.
Jumping in late on this…but the ticket situation is disgusting. I really don’t know what to think. I just checked for single tix at USB Arena….over $400 before fees etc for a behind the stage top section seat…$4,000+ for a floor single. Bruce….what have you done?
I hate how much I love the music and have been so let down by the man himself. I can't begin to understand what his life may be like. I can't imagine what getting $500 million for your life's work can do to you mentally. Sadly, for the masses, they don't have access to a therapist 3 times a week for $800 and hour. Also, they can't get up each morning and decide what to do with their own time. We get up at sunrise, work a job to enrich someone, then we go home to extract some joy from what remains....
He decided at age ten to be a musician, and he was able to surrender everything to it to this day. He acted out of a responsibility to his fans, gave up millions to do so. I don't need to tell the whole story, we have been force fed the mythology since I read Dave Marsh's books. This obsession with selling us his mythology in addition to the music itself was a great decision as it made us feel we know him and can relate to the struggle....It made him really relatable and he took care of me as a fan since the first time I set eyes upon him. I had played Born to Run, Darkness, and The River, but when he arrived on stage, it split me open. I am an addict. I need what he does for me, or what he did once...but now we have stories of dinners with former presidents and movie stars..we see him on the beach with other famous people, Entry into that world must have been expensive...and to make a joke out of it by calling it a trick is so damn frustrating for me...
But now, I call bullshit. Him coming up with the concept of the magic trick really has soured me. I hope I am back someday, but bullshit is bullshit.
As I think I may have written on here, I've been wondering how much of it's directly attributable to this very possibly being Jon's last big payday. Bruce has almost always been Jon's only client, and there are good things and bad things about that. And other than maybe McCartney or U2, Springsteen is the best possible client a one-client manager could have. But still and all, if the train's coming to the end of the track, it would not be unreasonable to want as much padding as legally and ethically possible. And, well, these prices seem to be legal, at least...