Archive for May, 2008
The hidden truth: Buying from a tout can SAVE you money
Friday, May 30th, 2008
This poor man has been camping out all night to be first in line for a Coldplay ticket
Ticket touts are up there with traffic wardens, debt collectors and Tim Westwood as those most likely to be found on anyone’s baseball bat list. But here’s the truth that music fans need to know: buying your concert tickets from a tout is often CHEAPER than buying them from the Ticketmasters of this world.
Case 1: RADIOHEAD, Glasgow Green, June 27, 2008.
Skyscrapingly huge world-conquering supergroup, still fawned over by the critics, makers of two of the best albums in history.
December 10, 2007: The Pop Cop bought 2 tickets from Ticketmaster.co.uk – total price including booking fees and postage: £86.85
May 29, 2008: 2 tickets including postage sold by “slavetothewage” on eBay: £36
Case 2: DUFFY, ABC, Glasgow, June 2, 2008.
Soul queen, No.1 single, No.1 album, top 5 album in America, hottest new artist of the year by far. All tickets sold out within hours of going on sale.
February 13, 2008: The Pop Cop bought 2 tickets from Tickets Scotland – total price including booking fees, no postage (collected in person): £32.50
May 29, 2008: 2 tickets including postage sold by “camper1v” on eBay: £14.99
As you can see, tickets for both gigs (one of which is officially sold out) can now be readily purchased for less than half of their face value. And these aren’t freak occurences. Hundreds of tickets for RockNess and The Verve’s show at the SECC last winter, to name but two, were widely available on eBay for far less than their initial purchase price. So who is actually gaining from touting here? That’s right – you, the ordinary music fan.
But before you question the morality of buying from a tout, consider this: The independent consumer organisation Which? just published a study into the official sale of concert tickets and their conclusions were damning.
Not only are online ticket agencies guilty of deliberately hiding booking fee charges until the customer has almost finished their transaction (talk about burying bad news), but the fees themselves – often as much as a third of the cost of the actual ticket – are an unjustifiable rip-off.
If that wasn’t bad enough, the most scandalous industry practice sees ticket agencies refuse to refund the booking fees to the buyer if a gig is cancelled. With not a hint of shame, a spokesman for Seetickets.com responded: “I believe we have the right to retain that booking fee as we have done the work for which we have charged the customer.”
With that kind of attitude, it’s no wonder we decided against getting out of bed at 9.30am this morning to buy COLDPLAY tickets at £95.50 a pair for their December 5&6 gigs at Glasgow’s SECC – Chris Martin’s first visit to Scotland since sleeping on a ferry from Arran to Ardrossan last October.
We’ll be keeping our money for the touts.
4 Coldplay and Michael Stipe – In The Sun (Joseph Arthur cover)
4 Radiohead – Thinking About You
4 Duffy – Cry To Me (Solomon Burke cover)
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If you go down to the woods today…
Wednesday, May 28th, 2008
For far too long scantily clad ladies have been the domain of hip-hop and R’n'B music. Now SIGUR ROS have gone some way to redressing (or should that be undressing) the balance with an X-rated video featuring a squad of pasty-white naturists jiggling their breasts and willies around a forest. All done very tastefully, of course.
The video has been made for Gobbledigook, the opening track on the band’s forthcoming album Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust – cutely translated from Icelandic as With A Buzz In Our Ears We Play Endlessly.
As for the song itself, it’s yet another work of absolute genius with unconventional (for Sigur Ros) tribal drumming and some skewed acoustic strumming as these young wizards continue to peerlessly push the boundaries of rock music into uncharted realms of originality. Nobody makes three-minute pop quite like this lot.
4 Sigur Ros – Gobbledigook
4 Sigur Ros - Ó Fridur
b August 31, Hydro Connect, Inverary (tickets)
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Sauchie and see
Monday, May 26th, 2008
Sauchiehall Street is the best street in Glasgow, if not the planet.
At number 490 is legendary dancing den The Garage, where every student in the city has spent their nights and much of their loans not knowing when to call it a day. Stumble a few doors down to 482 and you’ll find post-club Chinese grub at The Noodle Bar and a plethora of guilty pleasures (you can’t go wrong with the Szechuan chicken). At 468 is Capitol: part bar, part gig location but, more importantly, the little-known keeper of private karaoke booths that are FREE to hire from Sundays to Thursdays.
Best of all, though, are the three host venues chosen by the organisers of THE SAUCHIEHALL CRAWL, an inaugural mini-festival on June 1 featuring a starting XI of some of the country’s hottest independent music acts.
421 Sauchiehall Street: Nice ‘n’ Sleazy. More commonly known as Sleazy’s a.k.a. The Pub. You won’t get chucked out before 3am at weekends, Kronenberg’s just £1.50 a bottle and Trail of Dead is on the jukebox. We call it our local despite being a 20-mile round trip from The Pop Cop HQ.
292-333 Sauchiehall Street: ABC. A gig/club venue for the 21st century. Spacious, plenty of raised vantage points, the biggest mirrorball in the world and its very own mini-me is downstairs, the 350-capacity ABC2.
375 Sauchiehall Street: The Beat Club. The new kid on the block is small but perfectly formed. It gets more than its fair share of quality touring bands (Vampire Weekend and MGMT have stopped off in the past year) and you can get on the guestlist just by registering on their website.
This holy trinity of indie institutions will be The Sauchiehall Crawl’s focal points on Sunday from 7pm until 11pm. You get 11 acts for your £15 ticket, although overlapping is unavoidable as the organisers are effectively running three gigs at the one time.
Tickets holders will be given a wristband and a programme of stage times when they arrive at any of the venues and can then pick and choose who they want to see from the following (we’ve given you a song from each act if you need help making your mind up):
ABC2
THE TWILIGHT SAD
4 The Twilight Sad – Three Seconds Of Dead Air
GALCHEN
4 Galchen – Instrumental 1
HOW TO SWIM
4 How To Swim – Little Orgasm Of Disappointment
Nice ‘n’ Sleazy
WE WERE PROMISED JETPACKS (acoustic set)
4 We Were Promised Jetpacks – Ships With Holes Will Sink (acoustic)
JO MANGO
4 Jo Mango – Blue Dawn Light
ROSS CLARK
4 Ross Clark – Anthems In Clams
THE PHANTOM BAND
4 The Phantom Band – The Whole On My Side
The Beat Club
MAKE MODEL
4 Make Model – Just Another Folk Song
THE ADS
4 The Ads – Auto Pilot
DE ROSA
4 De Rosa – The Sea Cup
EL PADRE
4 El Padre – Monsters In The Blue
Also included for your £15 is entry to the club night which will feature DJ sets from members of Idlewild, My Latest Novel and Errors until 3am. Tickets are available from Tickets Scotland, the ABC box office and Mono.The Pop Cop will be reporting back next week to let you know what we thought of it.
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