Feb 09
AndrewBusiness, Travel concerts, Hard Rock, Las Vegas, live music
The Joint, the venue at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Las Vegas, NV will get a makeover and reopen the weekend of April 18. The venue originally opened in 1995 and boasts one of the most intimate rock venues in the city. Its maximum capacity under the old design was 2,000 people, standing room only. It also served as an after hours night club.
The remodeled version will double the capacity but maintain the intimate setting of its predecessor. The cost of the revamp is estimated at $60 million, part of a larger expansion project of the hotel-casino. A new sound system will be put in, along with almost 40 video screens, and a blogging station for press coverage. The venue will also get a upgrade in its lighting system and include WiFi access venue-wide.
Paul McCartney has been tapped to play the first concert in the new venue on April 19.
Jan 16
AndrewBusiness, Music, Travel concerts, HOB, House of Blues, venue
The House of Blues is set to open a new location in Boston’s Fenway Park area on Lansdowne St. The venue doubles as a live concert hall and restaurant. It’s original location in Harvard Square in Cambridge, MA closed down 5 years ago. The new location is substantially larger, 27,000-square-feet and replaces what used to be two clubs Avalon and Axis.
This week, the chain began a hiring process that hopes to eventually employ 200 staff in addition to the approximately 20 managers already hired for the location.
This House of Blues venue is reportedly the largest with a 2,400 capacity standing room only on three levels. Like other locations, a restaurant and VIP Lounge are being opened.
House of Blues Boston already has a number of high profile acts lined up through the end of March including Morrissey, B.B. King & Buddy Guy and a six-night stand by the Dropkick Murphys. The Gipsy Kings will open the venue on Friday, February 20. Tickets for most of the currently scheduled shows go on sale tomorrow at 10 a.m. local time.
House of Blues current line-up
February 20 Gipsy Kings
February 22 B.B.King & Buddy Guy
February 24 Thievery Corporation
February 25 George Clinton & Parliament Funkadelic
February 26 Jimmy Eat World: Clarity X 10 Tour
February 27 Jesse McCartney
February 28 The Disco Biscuits
March 6 Saints & Sinners Tour 2009 featuring Hollywood Undead, Senses Fail, Haste the Day, Brokencyde
March 7 Missy Higgins & Justin Nozuka
March 10 Flogging Molly with The Aggrolites
March 11 An Evening With George Thorogood & The Destroyers
March 12 Dropkick Murphys
March 13 Dropkick Murphys
March 14 Dropkick Murphys -- Matinee Show
March 14 Dropkick Murphys
March 15 Dropkick Murphys
March 16 Dropkick Murphys
March 17 Dropkick Murphys
March 18 Ozomatli with Chali 2NA
March 19 Bloc Party and Longwave
March 20 The Pogues
March 21 The Pogues
March 22 Cut Copy
March 26 The Oddity Faire: A Mutated Mini Fest Feat. Les Claypool, Saul Williams, Secret Chiefs and O’Death
March 27 Live
March 29 Morrissey with The Courteeners
March 30 Lady GaGa with White Tie Affair and Chester French
April 1 Katy Perry
April 2 Derek Trucks Band
April 7 Mates of State/Black Kids
April 9 Umphrey’s McGee
April 14 Black Label Society Bash featuring Black Label Society with Sevendust, Dope, and Infinite Staircase
April 25 John Brown’s Body and Soldiers of Jah Army
May 1 AP Tour 2009 featuring The Maine, 3oh!3, Family Force and Hit the Lights
Tour information is up to date at time of publication
Nov 25
AndrewHumor concerts
Last night’s show at the Paradise Rock Club brought out all sorts including a guy in a tuxedo and scary clown make-up (think Pennywise) and a gigantic girl (it really was a girl. From the back, there were questionable drag overtones). The girl found a space at the front of the stage and literally stood two heads taller than anyone else and two shoulder widths wider than anyone else. For those of us on the left, she literally blocked the entire view of the keyboard where Amanda Palmer spent most of her set.
What ensued among the rest of us standing behind the girl was a protracted discussion whether tall people should be allowed up front to the detriment of a couple dozen people behind her. Consider the circumstances. Palmer is a solo artist who plays keyboard. So she’s largely by herself on stage, sitting most of the time. It’s a pretty small vista to focus on even given in a club venue as small as the Paradise.
The poor girl was unfortunately dressed in a red polka dot dress. Apparently being gigantic wasn’t enough, she wanted to stand out for bad taste too. (Go ahead, tell me how difficult it is to dress yourself when you’re that size without looking like you’re wearing a burlap sack. I dare you to mention that difficulty of dressing yourself when you’re that large without looking like you took a fitted sheet off of your bed and wrapped it around your midsection like a sari). But I digress.
It sucks to be ten feet from the stage and be able to see absolutely nothing. Polka Dot Enormous made a good wall though she wasn’t the only tall person that managed to be in the front of the crowd. It’s silly to suggest they be banned from the front (it was suggested, though one girl somewhat kindly pointed out that the polka dot giant got there first and waited in line long to get a front spot).
This is my second show at the Paradise where my view was partially blocked by a tall person. Either I just somehow end up behind them all the time, or I’m much shorter than I realize. (Plus, the floor is actually higher towards the front of the stage, though I can’t quantify just how serious a set-back this is). It’s tempting to call out “down in front,” but the crowd shifts around enough that it’s not impossible to find a good view with a little patience.
Palmer in fact raised her keyboard stand by a foot after the first couple songs in order to give people a better view. It was a cool thing without specifically making the huge girl feel bad about being a gigantic freak.
The weird post script to all this is polka dot enormous left before the encore. She didn’t want to see it through to the end? I’ll tell you one thing, everyone standing behind her was thankful.
Dec 18
AndrewBusiness, Society and Culture, Sports concerts, scalping, tickets
A federal court in Australia ruled on Monday that eBay can broker ticket sales for concerts and other events at greater than face value. The ruling is another blow for events promoters world-wide who are crusading against ticket scalping, even as legislation and court decisions are increasingly backing off strict penalties for scalpers.
The concert promoter involved in the action, Creative Festival Entertainment, is the promoter behind Australia’s Big Day Out concert series. In an attempt to thwart scalpers, Creative marked each ticket with a cancellation policy that if the ticket was resold over face value, the ticket would not be honored at the event. In justification for the provision, Big Day Out’s producer Ken West said that brokers were reaping “large profits” at the expense of real fans.
EBay Inc. initiated a suit to block the provision from being enforced. The ruling was not so much in favor of scalping as it was forbidding Creative from arbitrarily canceling tickets, though West says it amounts to the same thing.
Scalping has always been a challenge for concert promoters and bands to get their tickets into the hands of fans at face value, and not at a scalper’s mark-up. And yet, it traditionally has been a losing battle even in the face of some creative means to thwart scalpers.
In one scenario, bands began offering presale tickets to fan club members only. But as U2 found out when they launched their Vertigo Tour, scalpers simply paid the $40 membership fee and bought the tickets anyway. The same happened for the Rolling Stones Onstage Tour, which required fan club members to pay a hefty $100 premium for tickets. Ticket brokers paid the premium and passed the cost along to buyers.
The internet has not helped matters much because it has enabled any individual to become a broker with just a click. No more standing in a queue outside Tower Records or waiting on the telephone for a Ticketmaster operator. Now not just companies, but individuals can buy tickets at face value and post them later in the day on eBay or other auction sites.
While it is easy to condemn scalpers, in United States for instance, ticket brokering is not illegal in all states. And in states where scalping is illegal including Florida, Massachusetts and Illinois, the statues are pretty slack. And even then, in the case of online resellers like eBay, those laws are only subject to enforcement if the buyer and seller reside in the same state.
Ticketmaster, one of the largest hosts for ticket sales, has made the switch to auction sales itself, which ironically has allowed Ticketmaster to operate like a scalper. Ticketmaster defends the practice in the exact same way that eBay does. Quite simply, selling tickets at auction allows the seller to get market value for the tickets. Ticketmaster is allowing demand to set the price.
In fact, the only real difference is that Ticketmaster pays an equitable portion to promoters and artists, whereas eBay and other brokers do not. But the result is that the best seats for concerts go for twenty-five percent or more above face value at auction.
As Creative Festival Entertainment found out, there is no viable solution to ticket scalping. Even companies that have existing anti-scalping policies have little recourse beyond getting a legal injunction against the broker to stop the resale of the tickets. Critics that say consumer laws don’t go far enough to discourage scalpers now have another reason to be disheartened.
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