The Rolling Stones, high ticket prices and the perils of limited touring.

Here's August Brown of THE LOS ANGELES TIMES mentioning a block of $85.00 tickets being released in time for tonight's Staples Center show.
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/posts/la-et-ms-rolling-stones-85-dollar-tickets-staples-20130503,0,5693752.story

And here's a link to the Bob Lefsetz blog entry Brown references:
http://lefsetz.com/wordpress/index.php/archives/2013/05/01/stones-tickets/

Clearly, the Stones thought a limited-date tour warranted prices as high as $600 for tickets (as much a reason as the "beat the scalpers" thesis of Lefsetz).

And many fans (some of them probably angered by the band ignoring key U.S. markets outside of the East and West Coasts--except Chicago) are pushing back and staying home.

Curious if Led Zeppelin (allegedly Robert Plant's interested in another reunion; guessing it's keyed to the upcoming reissue-with-bonus-tracks of the band's recorded catalogue) will learn something from the Stones' victory-lap stumble.

New poem HERDING OCCUPY L.A. OUT OF SIGHT OUT OF MIND BLUES

(for poet Scott Wannberg and his Canine of Truth Sparky)




get along little protesters



get out of the street



get onto the sidewalk



fold your banners



and pack up your tents



because you're making



THE LOS ANGELES TIMES



and television journalists mad as Heck



now the hounds are baying for Charlie Beck



to tear off his peaceful-interaction



make-them-disappear-by-attrition mask



and emerge as the Incredible Two-Headed Hybrid



of Darryl Gates and Ed Davis



crying havoc



and unleashing the tasers and batons



get along little protesters



business must do whatever it wants



we're not going to listen to you Occupy people



since our city is not a city of "the people"



but a city of, by and for



the Very Important People



of AEG



WE NEED A NEW FOOTBALL STADIUM!



get along little protesters



go play with the other weird fuzzy-haired,



fuzzy-brained hippie kids



in Occupy Orange County



or Occupy Long Beach



or wherever you can be more easily ignored



by the state, nation and world



go away little protesters



go home and eat low-fat granola



drink your soy lattes



watch your Noam Chomsky videos



and let us govern,



while the silent majority occupies sidewalks



outside theaters and big-box stores



we love the silent majority



they know to SHUT UP AND CONSUME



and take what they're given



no matter how bad it is now



or how much worse it will be



we'll be glad when



everyone forgets all about



this trouble-stirring business-unfriendly



nonsense of Occupying public space



that we'll always find reasons



to throw you out of



once we're tired of your madness



.

Re the music industry's cruel summer of underattended and cancelled concerts.

I posted this to someone else's blog in his comments section.  Reposting it here in its entirety:
As a concertgoer, I'd say that Irving Azoff and his Ticketmaster/Live Nation empire--with little room for other promoters excepting AEG--has been a big factor in this year's touring kerfluffles.



Ticket prices [at least the before-fees face value] are going to have to shrink to a range of $25-$75 to re-interest those who have been priced out of attendance over the last decade (and, yes, it has been a decade since SFX and then Clear Channel helped ignite today's forest fire of empty seats and gig cancellations).


TicketNation (a nice soubriquet) and many A-and-B-list artists also need to join together, face reality and voluntarily take cuts on the too-huge artist advances which have been paid in recent years.


Having written the above, the cynic in me believes that if the latest leg of the U2 360 tour had gone on as scheduled this summer, the number of articles in the US/European media about poor sales wouldn't have attracted as much attention.

So, if ticket prices do come down, we have Bono (and his untimely back injury) to thank.