Bruce Springsteen Band • Page 52

tour starts tonight! band lookin goodd

 

confirmed last week that I see him on May 5th, let's gooooo

 

Setlist looks great. Really trying to keep the faith that there will be a stadium tour late summer (no Chicago or California dates, I mean cmon) as my hopes of being able to make it to anything on this leg are dwindling

 

Only 28 songs?!?!

 

Lots of Wild Innocent and only 28 songs are my only real semi-complaints, also I think the played some of the wrong Letter To You songs - the 3 old ones need to be played badly

 

But will be a great time regardless of those minor nitpicks

 

Extreme shot in the dark here but if anyone has two extra tickets they’re trying to sell to Columbus, Cleveland, Detroit or Milwaukee please keep me in consideration!

 

The longest running and largest Bruce fanzine/community has decided to shut down after 43 years. In a slight response to ticket prices and Bruce’s BS response to fan outcry last year.

Truly the end of an era.

https://backstreets.com/news.html?f...S-IKbz87Hcu7JDFkA0s2LQTlr364op5dJr4lwNFNIYgRM

 

I get the disappointment about the ticket prices, but I've read posts from older fans who act like Bruce stabbed their puppy in the heart. The fact is we're in a moment of unprecedented demand for live music, and it's both coinciding with huge price hikes on virtually everything AND coming on the heels of an impossibly hard time for artists and the industry as a whole. Bruce's response to the backlash sucked, and I think this whole thing could have been handled better, but if people thought ticket prices were going to be anywhere near what they were last time he toured, they were dreaming.

 

Yeah on one hand i think his response sucked but im also soooo tired of the “GUESS YOURE NOT A MAN OF THE WORKING CLASS ANYMORE” my brothers and sisters in christ he never WAS. hes been a multi millionaire since he was 26.

 

Sure, I get that. BUT, this is Bruce Springsteen. If anyone was going to pushback and advocate for fans (as he has for the entirety of his career), it’s him. No one expected tickets to stay $15 like they were in the 70’s and early 80’s. It was ALWAYS tough to get Bruce tickets, especially in certain markets. But now it’s tough AND it’s extraordinarily expensive.

I’ve been rail for Bruce twice (his last two US tours), I paid $120 and $210 face.

Both those tours grossed nearly half a billion dollars. And this tour will be no different, and obviously probably higher.

It’s disheartening to know that THAT still isn’t enough.

He was never a ‘man of the people’ in reality, but he was in spirit and typically in action as well. That’s clearly changed.

and it’s a bummer.

 

And I hear what you’re saying in response to the current demand and climate for live music.

But for reference, Metallica is playing MULTI-NIGHT STADIUMS this year (with a MUCH MUCH MUCH higher overhead) and I paid $360 total for both nights on the floor.

If fucking Metallica is being ~better to their fans~ than you are, you’re clearly doing something wrong.

 

Most people do not realize that concert tickets for major artists are usually priced significantly below what the market will bear. Bruce has kept his ticket prices artificially low for decades, and that has created huge opportunities for scalpers to rip off his fans. I’d rather he and his band/crew get my money than people selling on the secondary market.

Also, my ticket for this tour was $165. It’s not on the floor, which is where I’d prefer to be, but it’s a decent enough seat and I felt was a fair price for an artist I had begun to think I’d never see live again. And I wouldn’t describe it as “extraordinarily expensive.”

(I also recognize that any irritation I had at the Bruce tour was dwarfed by the Taylor Swift buying experience to such a degree that it barely even registers at this point.)

 

You’re right, he has kept them below market. But if he was just concerned with the scalpers getting that markup - he could eliminate them by just enforcing what he did on the River Tour and do ID checks on tickets, (though I think I referenced it previously and someone said they didn’t do it on their date). I couldn’t enter the building if my name didn’t match the tickets, and it was still a complete sell out.

I get it, it’s done and over with. I’m just entirely bitter that I’ve paid decent money for tickets in the past and to get that same experience it’s looking to be a fucking mortgage payment. Mindblow.

 

I also think I got over this when he did Springsteen on Broadway, an extraordinarily expensive ticket and a show that took him off the road and kept him in one geographical area for literal years. Going to that was never even an option for me to consider, because the cost of the ticket, plus the airfare, plus the hotel, etc. was just not something I could swing at that point in my life. That didn't mean I gave up on him, or resented the people who were able to go, or boycotted it when it got to Netflix. That, to me, was a way less accessible live music opportunity than anything this tour has thrown our way, and got way less blowback in the fan community.

 

I honestly just wrote that off as what a premium Broadway show costs, or there about.

It was never an option for me, so i didn’t care.

 

wow

very unTom Joad ...

 

lol

 

Still got a month and a half for him to add "Janey" and "Priest" to the setlist (and take off everything from OTSS).

 

This is exactly what I'm saying, though. He devoted more than a year to something that, by definition, locked most of his fans out of the experience. This tour, ticket prices included, is way more accessible to way more people.

 

I am a HUGE fan of his music, but we can't pretend he hasn't traded extremely heavily in the working man schtick image for decades now and that this latest move really flies in the face of all that. His reaction strikes me as extremely tone deaf and uncharacteristically out of touch, and it really just seems to me like he is too old and tired to be bothered even pretending to give a fuck about working class or poor people anymore. And that sucks.

We are all adults here, and we know he's been extravagantly wealthy for decades now. I did already know about the organic farm in Jersey tax trick à la Bon Jovi, but it never really bothered me because that's the kind of stuff all rich people do and at least he still talked the talk for the most part. Maybe the Rolling Stone reporter just caught him on a bad day.

I don't even think the initial decision on how to price tickets is necessarily that bad. He knows that some tickets to his show are gonna go for $5,000 and just decided that the money should go to him and his people instead of scalpers or other shady, only tangentially related parties. It just seems like the type of thing Bruce from a few decades ago would have actively fought against or at the very least would have vocally pushed back hard against instead of just throwing his hands up and saying 'you people are gonna pay anyway, why shouldn't my tour net $600,000,000.00 instead of $500,000,000.00??'
For most other artists at his level and their respective fans it wouldn't even be a blip on the radar, but this is Bruce Springsteen.

I don't really have a dog in this particular fight though - it doesn't matter if his tickets are $200 or $5,000, I can't afford to go see him live either way.

 

Idk, maybe it’s because I’ve really tried to stop putting artists on pedestals over the past few years, but I just find it super eyeroll-worthy that people are seemingly willing to throw away a decades-long bond they’ve had with this guy’s music because he did a thing that contrasted with the ideal they built up of him in their heads. I get being disappointed and frustrated; I even get deciding not to go to the tour. But I know a guy who has been an absolute die hard for 40 years who has said things like “I don’t know if I can ever listen to him again after this” and I think that’s an insane overreaction. He didn’t kill someone. He doesn’t have a sex abuse scandal. He didn’t use a racial slur. He asked to be paid more for his work and the work of his team. The response does not align with the action.

I also only really do shows these days on a “special occasion” basis, so maybe that’s part of my willingness to spend a little more to see Bruce.

 

I disagree! That's a financial decision that actually prioritized fans more than any potential alternative. Hypothetically he could have toured theatres doing the Broadway show, but he wouldn't have been able to do 8 shows a week and certainly wouldn't have kept it going as long as he did without easily being able to go home at night. MORE people got to experience what was by definition an exclusive opportunity, and in reality the per ticket price for Springsteen on Broadway was actually cheaper than the current arena tour (not taking into account differences in travel obviously).

Now if your argument is just that we should maximize the number of people who could see Springsteen in a given year by forcing him to do stadium shows, that's kind of a weird position. He wanted to do something artistic and optimized it for his life and fans.

 

The underlying point is that if you actually care about making your shows accessible to all, you should reserve some tickets for some fans who can't afford much and put price controls in place so that you're maintaining a consumer surplus. You should be okay leaving some money out of your pocket to do so. The "Ham for Ham" $10 Hamilton lottery was a great example of that.

It doesn't matter if you're Bruce or Taylor or Beyoncé. It comes down to whether you are following through on what you actually believe.