I’ve been waiting since last year for Leonard Cohen to announce dates for his U.S. tour, checking his site periodically. As will sometimes happen, I got very busy and missed the fan presale. It was actually quite frustrating because I initially found misleading information and thought I HADN’T missed it, but I’ll spare you that rant. Chew on this: as of Friday February 27, there were no less than six presales for this show listed on Ticketmaster. In addition to the fan sale, there were two separate presales for American Express cardholders, one of which was for premium seating. There was also a venue presale, the need for which escapes me. I had the passwords for the fan and venue presales, but since both of them had apparently ended, there were no tickets to be had for yours truly.
Just out of curiosity, I then checked the online brokers. Lots of tickets there, going for hundreds and even thousands of dollars. Check. Tickets had not yet gone on sale to the public, but the brokers were already cashing in. Mind you, at that time TicketsNow were not selling tickets for this show. Tickets Now is a subsidiary of Ticketmaster that sells seats at inflated prices (in other words an online broker), and they had already been called out for that sort of thing earlier this year. At this point I was skeptical as to what would be left for the public and disgusted with the whole moneygrubbing process, but I had some hopes left for today.
Turns out my skepticism was justified, as there was not a single ticket to be had when I checked at 10:05 this morning. Not only that, but TicketsNow (i.e. Ticketmaster) was now selling scads of them. Not for one moment do I blame this on LC, who was robbed. If anything, I felt it was an honor to contribute what I could to help him restabilize his finances, what with all he has given me. I am pointing fingers here at Ticketmaster, American Express, and the Chicago Theatre, all of whom appear to be implicit in a scam to rip off fans and make as much money as they can possibly stuff into their pockets.
Just to be clear, I think fan presales are a wonderful thing. It’s the other fifty bazillion presales I object to, rightfully so.
And just in case you are wondering, TicketsNow currently has 259 tickets available, ranging from $140 to $1177.
There have been vague rumors of a second show, but at this point I am so disgusted with the whole mess that I no longer seem to care. This whole enterprise has been so crass that I am tempted to just hang on to my precious memory of the 1992 show at the Park West, but I might change my mind. All I know is that I waited, I looked forward, I searched, and I’m now empty-handed. Here I sit, broken-hearted. You must know the rest of that rhyme, because you read it on the bathroom wall.
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Linkadelica 
Goddamn them all.
Comment by Marianne March 3, 2009 @ 4:52 am