Outrageous ticket touts

 

 

When I was young and thought that music would change the world I went to as many gigs as I could afford. This was in the very early 1970s. At that time there were opportunities to feel part of a movement that sought to make the world a better place. Bands with astonishing technical ability sang songs about the Vietnam War and other appalling events. Neil Young sang about the National Guard killing students at Ohio State University, Bob Dylan was still relevant to how many people felt and behaved. Free festivals existed and less free ones were not then prohibitively expensive. People laugh at hippies now and with some justification and many of the ideas about concepts like ‘free love’ are now exposed as more examples of male domination and female acceptance of situations that rarely if ever freed and empowered the women involved. At 16 I was still at home with my parents and these ideas were mostly just ideas, but I could be part of the whole movement by listening to music, talking about music and reading about music and the ‘underground’ subculture in International Times and similar publications.

At this time I was in a state of some excitement because Robert Fripp, the leader of my favourite band, King Crimson was working hard to get a new band out on the road. Ther were many bands that I could and had seen who were excellent – Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Family, Soft Machine, Curved Air, Grateful Dead, Captain Beefheart to name a reasonably representative selection of the bands I liked. What happened was that the management companies of some of these bands (maybe it was the bands themselves, I can’t remember) decided that they would work to control the price of tickets. This was a marvellous idea for me as I existed solely on pocket money of £1 per week. Generally this was enough for me and my girlfriend (Jacqueline) to get out once a week to somewhere where we could share a drink in a corner of a pub (the Red Lion in Warrington) where from time to time there was a local band on. Cheap tickets for concerts would open up new opportunities to see my favourite bands.

King Crimson managed to return to the road with Robert Fripp (guitar and mellotron), Peter Sinfield (words, illuminations and devices), Mel Collins (saxophones, mellotron and flute, Boz Burrell (bass guitar and vocals) and Ian Wallace (drums). Tickets were limited to 60 pence at venues in Manchester and Liverpool and at that price Jacqueline and I were able to afford to go with a little forward planning and saving of small amounts of money.

I cannot say that Jacq enjoyed the band as much as I did, indeed I am sure she didn’t. Her tastes were far more poppy,. But we were able to see a selection of some of the finest rock musicians ever to come out of the UK for 60 pence. The most memorable gig has to be Soft Machine at Manchester Free Trade Hall in about 1972. I may tell that story one day.

Which brings me now to the point of this blog. I recently purchased some tickets from an agency called Viagogo. I was charged over 2 times the face value of the tickets I bought not including an astronomic ‘booking fee’. Total price for 2 £55 tickets was £279. I shall not buy tickets from any of these agencies again. I do not recall at any point being given the face value price of the tickets else I should have refused to buy. I thought I was getting the seats at the face value (around £100 was just acceptable to my mind) plus this strange thing called a booking fee. A booking fee is just a way of cranking up the price. I am sure that agencies like Viagogo are simply automated systems in the main with absolutely no real person actually doing the booking. They already have the tickets purchased perhaps directly from the venue en bloc and so the agency then has a monopoly and fixes a price since face value seats are unavailable. Capitalism at work, wisely exploiting supply and demand. It was a different attitude in the early 1970s. Edgar Broughton ( a fine rocker and socialist) would refund money if the band had met what it needed to make a living at any particular gig, and the band often played for free .

I know that the world is different, I know that the flower power philosophy was doomed before it began, but it was a time of hope and excitement, part of a great change in the way the world worked.

I wonder what Mr Fripp who has fought the unscrupulous business practices in the music industry for about 4 decades thinks about this hike in prices from the face value – especially after being a leading band in the 60 pence tickets when £1 and £2 tickets were becoming the norm.