I bagged an attempt to buy Hartford tickets today. Too pricey. Will check for willing resale sellers later on near the date or go to venue on the day.
Agreed. I'd like to see D&C employ ticket prices closer to what Phish is doing (i.e. around $75 instead of $150 for the good ones), which is particularly helpful when hitting multiple shows. But I believe they are an outlier; D&C's prices seem pretty inline with many of the bigger touring acts today. I suppose the higher prices these days are related to declining revenue from music sales too, as concerts are now the main money maker for many artists.
I bit the bullet for Detroit. Was high but it will be a one and done tour for me and who knows how many chances I will have left.
Ahhhh...........funny memory of Summer Tour 90 when 7/8/90 Pittsburgh was a then unheard of $27.50 per ticket (the most expensive of the tour)...............and some friends refused to go saying "Screw it! I'm not paying that! What a ripoff!" (I still went) Not it's $150 without Jerry.
Hoping to pick up some last-minute cheapies for the Detroit show. I'm thinking a 20,000-capacity arena on Thanksgiving weekend is a little ambitious for the Detroit market, but we shall see.
That's what I was thinking too. I hope it's not regrettable. The last time I saw Dead and Co lawn seats were 60 bucks - far less than half the price!
A Dead & Co. show, to me, is not worth $150. I went to the last Hollywood Bowl show and I think our seats were $125 a piece, but my brother treated w/o asking me before he bought the tickets. I think Mayer is good. I don't leave D&C shows thinking "I wish Jerry was still here" (and that's been my reaction to every other fill-in guitarist outside of Trey, Warren and Kadlicek). I think I'll be Lawn Boy for any future shows unless someone else is paying.
I believe this is the first time they've headed south to Texas AND I've read various accounts that the slooooooow pace of most tracks isn't such an issue when one is present, so I've got me a presale $99 ticket 'just this once' for Austin. They'd better step up - Dec 2nd is my zillionth birthday-eve.
Uh oh, is Bobby's slowitis infecting the group? This was a problem at the end of Furthur. It wasn't a problem last June though.
This will be my 5th D&C show (I caught one on the Fall '15 tour, one in Summer '16 and two in Summer '17) and I do agree that's it's not worth $150. But I'm going again anyway, what can I say. I don't listen to the music much (usually just clips during a tour) as I prefer to devote that time to GoGD, but I enjoy the live experience and being a part of some small semblance of the scene. Prior to FTW I hadn't gone to any post-Dead shows since the late 90s, so it's still kind of fresh and fun for me. So at least for now I'll probably keep going; we'll see what happens if they keep touring for a while.
I'll qualify my answer. I might pay $350 for two tickets at a very small venue with a "meet & greet" thrown in. But to go see a show in a 20,000 seat arena? Nope. I wouldn't pay that much to see anyone in that kind of venue.
I've been to a ton of post-Jerry shows because there's still nothing like the scene they generate, or can generate. The 'heads make these shows what they are as much as the band. But the band and promoters are potentially messing things up with ridiculous ticket prices. Changing the subject a bit, right now I'm miffed at Kreutzman for knocking John K. in his book (and that criticism aside, Billy's book is the only tedious and boring GD tome I've read. Even Steve Parish's book schools him hard, and he had no Benji Eisen in tow.) I went to Sound Summit last weekend and it was great to see Phil and Bob together, but the guitarist, Ross James, I can't say I'm a fan. He's way to direct for this music. A good guitarist, but he sounds like a generic session player. I was missing someone who knows how to play this music, and John K. is one of those guys. One of my friends has a theory that at least part of the reason John K. is not in the fold much these days is because Billy dissed him so hard--called him a Jerry imitator and said what John K. does is disrespectful. What a load of crap. I've always appreciated DSO, and the first three Futhur shows at the Fox Theatre in Oakland was easily the best post-Garcia GD music I've heard to date, although the Other Ones with Hornsby in '98 is a close second. So, what's my point? I think Billy is disrespecting the fans with these ticket prices, along with Bob and Mr. Hart.
You're probably right. Judging by attendance numbers i've seen, these shows don't seem to be hard sellouts.
Didn't Bill also diss Bob Weir's songs pretty hard? I seem to remember Bill & Mickey being pretty pissed that Bob & Phil had teamed up with Joe Russo and Jay Lane and John K back in 2009 after doing the tour with Warren.
Well, if that was Billy's real gripe, he should have been honest about it rather than expressing himself in a way that damaged the reputation of a player that loves this music. With Jerry's death, like it or not, we've been in tribute band/cover band mode ever since, and to my mind a lot of the point of a live band playing this music is to sound a good deal like the GD did. And this is predominantly what has happened--when you go to Phil's club, for the most part you get guitarists that emulate Jerry's style, or even Weir's style. I happened to be there the first night that Mayer played at Phil's, and on stage that night was a "Jerry" and a "Phil." Mayer was the best musician on the stage other than Phil, but it wan't Mayer making the proceedings sound like GD music that night, it was the other two guys. So I don't see the point of dumping on John K. for being a Jerry emulator. They all do it. And when the guitarist doesn't do it at all, it doesn't work for me. Mayer totally emulates Jerry, but he's a talented guy who was established on his own long before he played GD music, so he retains a significant amount of himself in his playing. And I think I'm kind to say that, because I probably wouldn't recognize Mayer's playing in a blind test. He always sounded like a SRV impression to me when he when into "rock" mode. John K. came straight out of DSO, so all he'd ever done publicly is play like Jerry. I don't fault him for it. Phil and Jerry and Donna were all guesting with DSO before the guys hired John for Furthur. So they were certainly digging what was going on with DSO. Overall, I probably like Mayer's playing more than John K.'s with this music, but as long as Phil is going to be playing out with people of a Ross James quality, I'm going to be like, "Where's Kadlecik?"
Guess Dead & Co. have no interest whatsoever in a Canadian show.....they must think that 99% of the audience would be held up at the border!