We Used to Take Care of Our Own

May 15, 2005, a nice spring Sunday afternoon. I was helping to lead my son's Cub Scout troop on a hike on a local trail network. My cell phone buzzed. "Matt, this is Bobby, I have front row on my screen. Do you want them?" YES!!! 5 hours later we were at Wolstein Center in Cleveland, in the front row, for Springsteen's performance there that night.

I've never met Bobby in person. He lives a couple thousand miles away. But he was part of my community. He also had my Ticketmaster account, and when that ticket was spotted, he was me and I was on my way. After the hike was over, anyway. Other times, I bought prime tickets for friends to use, to shows I wasn't going to myself.

Bruce Springsteen has never had a formal fan club or ticketing service. No Grateful Dead Ticket Service, no Ten Club, nothing like that. So, various circles of fans grouped amongst themselves. This extended from sharing "backdoor" phone numbers before internet sales became the thing, to shared online accounts, and beyond. In these circles, those who wanted could -- with some effort and/or help -- get a General Admission ticket, and within a few limits, many or even most of the folks who got General Admission tickets could gain admission to the pit, the prized area closest to the stage. Oh, there were basic rules of conduct; for example, the folks gaining pit access should generally hang back to the rear of the pit and occupy space that would otherwise go empty. Things like that. Or, if Bruce came around to crowd surf during "Hungry Heart," help carry him and for the love of everything holy don't try take a selfie of it. 

But where there was advantage to be gained, ("advantage" being a somewhat interesting description in situations where we were spending many hundreds of dollars at a time), in substantial measure we took it.

From the time when the expansion of the internet first made online fan communities viable in the 1990's, through the end of Springsteen's last tour 5 years ago, this was, to many of us, "how things worked." For sure, a distinct sense of entitlement, that the hours and immense expenses we'd incurred along the way somehow justified where we ended up in the arenas and stadiums. Many of us even allowed ourselves the conceit that Springsteen and his management team wanted this as well, to have a reliable base who would support the enterprise from Philadelphia to Fargo and beyond.

Part of the revelation of this past week of dynamically priced Springsteen ticket sales is the realization that, in the words of a Backstreets.com editiorial, "maybe the magic really is just tricks." Springsteen's manager Jon Landau finally broke the official silence in a statement quoted in The New York Times: 

In Detroit, a modest number of tickets are listed modestly above $1,000 each.

“In pricing tickets for this tour, we looked carefully at what our peers have been doing. We chose prices that are lower than some and on par with others.

"Regardless of the commentary about a modest number of tickets costing $1,000 or more, our true average ticket price has been in the mid-$200 range. I believe that in today’s environment, that is a fair price to see someone universally regarded as among the very greatest artists of his generation.”

In short, whatever conceits we so-called hard core fans might have had, we were wrong. For sure we are still welcome to attend: at the same (much higher) price and (lower) access level as anyone else. And, to be fair, in the absence of a fan club or ticket service, that's probably how it should be. After 100 shows, I'm not about to complain, either. The Boss, after all, calls the shots. 

Nor can I really argue with Landau's basic claim with respect to a "fair price." No matter that I can scrroll a good long while in that listed from Detroit before landing on something "in the mid-$200 range." No matter that Landau's "average" no doubt didn't include the Ticketmaster fees, the prices for re-sale tickets, nor the tickets that haven't yet sold at all. And no matter how much I sympathize with fans who are genuinely offended by the entire approach and who regard his mostly analytical statement as little more than a giant F-U to the fan communities.

Then again, Jon Landau doesn't have to buy his own tickets.

Today was the sale day for my home show in Detroit. Despite having multiple browser windows open -- one for each of us -- we didn't come close to sniffing a General Admission ticket. I pulled up lower bowl seats marked as $299.50 only to watch them disappear as I clicked on them, or have Ticketmaster tell me another fan had beaten me to them, or have Ticketmaster not allow me to buy them if they left a single seat unpurchased. Or I'd click on a pair and have it show up re-marked at $850. I finally found a pair on the side that stayed at $299.50 -- they even went down to $264.50 when it hit my cart -- and sighed that at least I'd be in the building. Then I realized the wheel chair seats were one row further back and bought one more at $285.40 after fees; my mother-in-law will be 90 by show time. Never too late to start.

Elsewhere among friends, I saw vestiges. People helping out where they could, where the "verified fan" process didn't get in the way.

Now that the sale is over, it occurs to me that between my wife's account and my account, we could have purchased 8 tickets rather than our final tally of 3. That wheel-chair seat that I bought for my mother-in-law? I could have purchased the whole row. Whoever bought the rest of them wasted little time: They are now "verified resale" tickets listed at nearly $600 per ticket. 

Last night, Bruce made a surprise appearance with Bleachers at a show in New York City. Some of the online reaction was venomous: "How much were those tickets?" "How much was he paid?" But videos from inside the hall tell a somewhat different story. Hopefully that will be the story next year as well.