Waiting for Tom
He was once described as having a voice "soaked in a vat of bourbon, left hanging in the smokehouse for a few months and then taken outside and run over with a car".
And I think the critic Daniel Durchholz was trying to pay Tom Waits a compliment!
But whatever you think of him, there was no question that this weekend were going to be the hottest tickets of the summer.
Not only is it his first Edinburgh performance since 1987, but it's his only UK dates on his European tour.
Promoters decided to pre-empt eBay bidding wars with a strike of their own.
Tickets were limited to two per application and applicants had to name their guests too. Tickets were only delivered in the last week and the six thousand fans who have tickets will have to show photo ID at the Edinburgh Playhouse on Sunday and Monday to get in.
The promoters - Regular Music - say the impetus has come from Waits himself, who often agrees to auction for charity front row seats for his rare appearances (so clearly knows their value).
They say they're anxious to tackle the touts who're now regularly offering tickets at five or ten times their face value (two tickets for Neil Young's Playhouse gig in March were on offer for £500).
But do fans have anything to gain from the scheme? It's not as if it'll bring the prices down - an eyewatering £75 and £95 a pop.
And who's to say those sellers on eBay aren't just offloading their tickets because it clashes with a party/funeral/bar mitzbah? Or they've gone off Kylie since buying the tickets. Or indeed just cashing in on the popularity of their favourite act - if someone is prepared to pay several hundred pounds for a ticket, who are we to stop them?
The promoters want to make it illegal - just as it is for sporting events, but so far the government has failed to respond to their lobbying.
And meanwhile, people are already finding ways round the restrictions. A number of Irish fans offered their second tickets on eBay to the highest bidders and then simply named them as "friends" to the ticket agents.
Presumably they'll have to sit next to them at the gig anyway so perhaps they will become friends (or sit quietly seething about having subidised their neighbour's ticket for the cult of Tom Waits).
Whatever happens, it's going to be interesting, and probably a bit frustrating. Extra staff and extra entrances are promised but there are still going to be lots of passports to check (and no doubt lots of forgotten ID to verify).
And then there's the small matter of the misprinted tickets which have only one name on. According to Ticketmaster, there are only a handful - mine among them - which have to be changed at the Box Office. Hopefully I'll be in my seat before "Closing Time."
Not London’s South Bank, but the south bank of the River Clyde in Glasgow - every bit as lively in cultural terms as its namesake. I’m Pauline McLean, ³ÉÈË¿ìÊÖ Scotland’s arts correspondent, and I’ll be blogging here about arts events and issues happening across the country.
Comment number 1.
At 25th Jul 2008, lambrettaforever wrote:I can see the point of outlawing resale of tickets for certain sporting events - where crowd control of rival fans might be an issue, but in any other circumstances its a nonsense.
The only thing that riles the music industry is that someone other than them is making money from these transactions.
If Ive found myself with an in-demand item I should be able to sell it for whatever price the buyer wants to pay for it.
I doubt those in favour of such measures would be overly impressed if I demanded to buy their house at the price they originally paid for it any number of years before, or if their housebuilder was to take them to court claiming that the profit on the housesale should go to them!
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Comment number 2.
At 26th Jul 2008, Weegie Al wrote:I too am one of the lucky ones with two tickets. For someone with the fan base the size of Tom Waits playing such a small venue that anti-tout measures would have got be taken to avoid touts buying all the tickets in the first 60 seconds of the sale and then selling them back to real fans for £500-£800 pounds each. (I'm still having to take deep breaths every time I think about £95 a skull).
The real problem is with the "Strictly no refunds" policy. If you suddenly find you can't go you should have the venue buy them back at face value. All it takes is a non refundable £5 to charity to get yourself onto the waiting list for returns. This way it remains real fans, no one is profiteering and you don't end up with lots of "suits" at the gig on corporate junkets.
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Comment number 3.
At 27th Jul 2008, escocia16 wrote:As is written above me, a reason that these measures have been taken is because touts buy the tickets before we - the fans - even get a chance. Around 6 months ago i as trying to get tickets for Bruce Springsteen - for my father not me, i have taste - and ended up paying around £250 each for them, and i had tried to buy them from ticketmaster.co.uk and they were sold out in two minutes, and I would guess that most of those people were tauts, because he had a lot of gigs on that tour so 50000 people didn't need to buy tickets in the first 2 minutes.
The lack of refunds however could do with being changed, because i am sure enough people would be willing to buy at the desk and just go straight into the theatre without being allowed to go outside and tout.
And finally, anyone who has found out that they can no longer go and is called Alan Hargrave, get in touch!
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Comment number 4.
At 28th Jul 2008, Chris Q wrote:Why don't the artists simply play more nights? The acts make their real money doing sold out gigs at HUGE prices with eye-wateringly expensive gig merchandise.
If they are worried about there not being enough opportunity for "real" fans to hear them - then extend the run - oh - and also make it a bit more affordable.
Touts survive because the marketplace makes it possible to make a vast profit.
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