This is something that has bothered me for quite some time now. The Phish community has many bad apples who feel like the band owes them something. I have been a fan since the mid-90′s. No, I wasn’t there in the beginning, but that means nothing. I have only seen 9 shows, both pre- and post-hiatus. I don’t feel like the band owes me anything.
When Phish announced that the festival in Coventry was going to be their last concert ever, the reaction was odd. Those who had been around long enough understood, and accepted the demise of their longtime favorite band. Others, however, were upset, and I don’t mean saddened, though many of us were, myself included. They were pissed that this band, the one time greatest band on earth would just call it quits on them like this. How could they, after all we’ve been through together (or not been through in many of their cases)? I didn’t understand how anyone could feel that way. At the time, I was a regular on the People for a Clearer Phish (PCP) email list. The list had received many new members leading up to the 2004 Summer Tour. Many of these new members were younger. They hadn’t seen or even known of Phish before they went on hiatus in October of 2000. Regardless of what it was, those of us who were lucky, or even just old enough, to have seen them prior to the hiatus understood it was necessary. Post-hiatus Phish was a new being. Sure, they played some great shows during those couple years, but the great shows were few and far between. They came back playing a bunch of below average performances at MSG and Hampton and then a winter tour that had a few good ones, but many just average shows. The band was not the same. They were not ready to have returned. Many of us knew this. I had already purchased my tickets for the two shows at Great Woods during the 2004 Summer Tour. On the announcement that Coventry was going to be their last, I bought my ticket for that, as well. The two Great Woods shows were fun, and the second one was pretty damn good (the unfinished Antelope that opened the second set of the second of those shows was just awesome, along with the double drum solo). I made my way up to Coventry and got stuck in traffic around 1:00am on Friday morning. We barely moved all day Friday and eventually on Saturday morning, the day of the first show, Mike came on the radio and announced they were turning people away, at least those still stuck on the highway. We were all pissed. Many parked in the breakdown lanes and in the divider and hiked the 15-20 miles to the festival. Having lives we needed to get back to and being under the threat of having my car towed, we gracefully turned around and headed home after spending 2 nights on the side of I-91 (pictures of my trip can be seen here). It was a fun trip, and, in retrospect, I’m glad I didn’t get in. The shows were completely botched, the site was covered with mud, and the overall vibe was pretty poor. To top it off, I not only got a refund, but I got a consolation prize – a picture book signed by all 4 members of the band. Myself and the people around us when the announcement came on the radio were upset, but didn’t mind turning around. Those were the band’s wishes. We did as they asked.
Fast forward about 5 years and we’re at today. Phish has already played their three shows at Hampton. They have already announced a 2 leg summer tour, with the second leg starting with 4 nights at Red Rocks in Colorado. Yesterday evening, Ticketmaster had a slight screw-up. They posted 4 night packages for Red Rocks on sale. Some fans noticed and word quickly spread online that Red Rocks was already on sale. About 2,000 people bought up tickets a week before the official on sale date. Some time later, Ticketmaster noticed the glitch and shut down the sales. People began to wonder if their purchases will be honored. Unfortunately for them, but fortunately for the fairness of ticket sales and those fans who did not know about this, all those orders were cancelled the same night. This caused a huge uproar with many fans blaming the band, saying they’re just in it for the money. Many blamed Ticketmaster. Some blamed the promoter, AEG Live. The fault ultimately fell on Ticketmaster, who has a policy stating that in the event of a glitch, orders will be cancelled. The fans were livid at this point saying that it’s just a way for Ticketmaster to put tickets in the hands of scalpers instead of fans. Ticketmaster has announced that, while they cannot honor the purchases, they will give everyone who placed an order a $50 gift certificate. Many were still not happy with this, saying they’ll never get tickets.
The sense of entitlement in the Phish community is outrageous. Phish has been known to have trust fund babies as one of their groups of followers. These trust fund babies care about nothing but themselves. They’ve got their parents giving them money. They’ve got no responsibilities in life. They have no regard for other people. These are the people who go to Phish shows and don’t add to the community. These are likely the people whining about not getting the tickets. They think it’s more fair for a limited number of fans who were “in the know” to get tickets while the rest of us who didn’t happen to be online at the time get stuck fighting for less than half the tickets available on the on sale date.
The biggest reason people wanted it to be true was because they assumed the tickets wouldn’t have been scalped. Now, there was a 2 ticket limit for Red Rocks. One of the people I follow on Twitter landed 6 tickets for each show. He paid with 3 credit cards, 2 names, and 2 addresses. Talk about sleazy. He was planning on using them for ticket trades. While I admit that I requested 3 nights of Red Rocks through the Phish ticketing system and will only go to 2 shows, I plan on selling the third night for face value to someone who didn’t get it. I also only got 2 tickets for each night, the maximum allowed. It’s one thing to take advantage of a glitch. It’s another to do that and cheat the system. You know who cheats the system? Scalpers do. And a little word on scalpers. The biggest argument was that the tickets ended up in the hands of fans that would go to the show. While I loathe scalpers and think they’re scumbags, they’re not just sitting on tickets. Fans are buying those tickets. It’s called the law of supply and demand. There’s a huge demand for these shows and a small supply. Scalpers can easily get a ton of money for them, and the fans pay it. If you want to stop scalpers, don’t buy tickets from them for more than face value. It’s that simple. Eventually, they’ll give up if people did this. However, people won’t stop buying from them and they won’t stop scalping.
So to all of you who thought you hit the jackpot last night, shut the hell up and stop your whining. Ticketmaster had every right to cancel your order. You should have expected it. You have just as much a chance as everyone else to get tickets when they go on sale next week, and there is still time to submit a request through the Phish ticketing system.
From Phish.com:
“Phish takes this and all ticketing matters extremely seriously. We will seek assurances this type of error will not happen again in the future. The high demand for the tickets on Phish’s return has overwhelmed the prevailing ticketing systems and revealed their flaws. We are putting pressure on the ticketing providers to improve their systems. We are focused on the ticket broker activity in our tickets and the inability of the existing ticket systems to stop this. We are actively seeking options to limit this.”
If they really are adamant about getting tickets in the hands of fans and not scalpers, I certainly hope they are considering going back to standard mail order.
The problem is that they laid off all but a handful of people when they quit in 2004. In fact, they slowly disbanded their organization starting at the hiatus in 2000 with the outsourcing of Dry Goods and Tickets by Mail.
The other problem is that most venues and promoters have affiliation with Ticketmaster or Live Nation. Pearl Jam found this out the hard way when they boycotted TM. It actually upset some of their fans because they had to play smaller venues and fewer shows, making it much more difficult to find tickets.
Phish could go the non-transferable ticket route, requiring the purchaser to be present for entry. That would upset people trading tickets or people who have plans that change, but it would prevent scalpers from buying tickets because most of them don’t want to go.
The original PTBM system would be a step in the right direction, but it doesn’t answer the Ticketmaster/Live Nation issues.
While I was HUGE fan of PTBM (it always seemed to me the closer you lived to VT the better your chances of getting tickets as I think it was handled in a FIFO manner) Jim is still right, the amount of tix PTBM and the new Phish pre-order are probably about the same.
This tale is old as time, TM/LiveNation are really not to blame, except for the gouging of convenience and other fees. Someone still needs to explain to me how mailing me tickets is free but if I print a PDF of them it costs me an extra charge.
I love the band with all my heart and have been seeing them since ’94, but I honestly say if you want to blame anyone for how hard tickets are to get, then you have to put some on the band. I guess maybe they didn’t think they would be this big, but the only way you will get enough tickets out there is to play bigger venues. Mutli-night runs sounds great but we all know people want to go to all of them. It is not like Phantom of the Opera were a run of shows gets more fans to see the show. Would I miss the intimacy of Merriweather, Great Woods, and other venues? Of course who wouldn’t but would I prefer to get tickets for the shows I want at a reasonable price without a lot of hassle, of course.
Look I already miss seeing them like I used to (playing 3500 sized venues and not being able TO GIVE tickets away for free) and got used to bigger crowds. I think I, and the scene, could handle them going up a notch again. Just my $0.02.
I agree that the band needs to start considering playing stadiums. However, I’m not really sure the scene could handle it. Think about all the people that follow them to shows. Think about all the people that go to shows just for the scene or the drugs. Those are the people I’m worried about. I don’t want to see Phish turn into the Dead of the 90′s with gate crashing and loads of problems surrounding what used to be a peaceful and happy community.
I had hoped that Phish would reinvent themselves when they came back. It would have allowed them to take a step back after the initial shock wore off. They would have likely turned off some of the new fans who were hoping to get the Phish of 1995 or even the Phish of 2004. They could have come back with a whole bunch of new songs. They didn’t want to do that, and I respect them for that.
I never got to see them in theatres or clubs. My first show was at the Hartford Civic Center in 1997. They were already pretty big, though tickets were still easy to come by and every seat was still $25.
I do place some of the blame on the band. There are other acts that enforce the non-transferable ticket rule. It sucks, but it prevents scalping. Ticketmaster does what it can to prevent scalpers, though with their new subsidiary, Tickets Now, I’m not so sure about that. It’s also been rumored that a lot of the tickets there are from the band, splitting profits with TM.
Understanding simple economics, I realize scalping and ticket brokers will never be outlawed, even though I wouldn’t mind if it happens. The fact remains that scalpers will always exist and will always sell tickets for what the market will bear. If that means they only get $10 profit, that’s what it means. However, with the demand for these latest Phish shows, they can make $300 profit without a problem because someone is willing to pay it. Playing larger venues will increase supply, lowering the price, but I think that they could easily sell out an 80,000 seat stadium, just given the fact that they easily got 60,000 fans to go to the festivals.
While it would help with prices to play larger venues, I would rather see them require us to show the card used to purchase the tickets to get into the show.
Ticketmaster and Live Nation are another issue altogether. Their fees need to be investigated, probably by Congress. I can understand charging more of a fee for someone calling in or going to an outlet to buy tickets as it requires them to pay someone to be there. However, they don’t need as much staff for those buying tickets online. It saves them money. And what you said about printing tickets versus mailing them is simply price gouging as it costs them next to nothing for you to print them.
As for PTBM, the reason it was better was because it was stricter and required more effort to get tickets. If your request wasn’t postmarked within the proper dates, it got tossed. The online lottery is easier for anyone to get in on it. I never used PTBM, generally opting for Ticketmaster or the venue itself (to avoid convenience charges). However, I would definitely use it now if it were brought back.
I also think a band like Phish could easily bring down Ticketmaster. While the only Live Nation problems that made big time news were those of Bruce fans, Phish plays more shows and they sell out just as quickly as these other big name acts. The Phish organization should be threatening the venues and Ticketmaster unless things change.
@jim You make a few great points. I stopped going to DMB shows because the scene just melted away into a pool of drunk dudes looking to get laid and kids there jsut to get high. I don’t want to see that for Phish but I think it will be hard to stop. Hampton was special, the cost made it hard for anyone but die hard fans to be there. Summer tour will be a better view of what the scene becomes. I just hope the hassle is relatively low.
Good point on the PTBM. I forgot about how difficult it was to game from a scalper perspective. The money orders and all of that made it a pain to deal with but also part of the joy of getting those sweet tickets. I once was selling a few extras I had and a kid didn’t want to buy them. Between the look of them and that fact that I was selling July 4th tickets for face scared him. He called over a buddy to verify they were real!!! HA.
In the end I think we will all have to deal with either having them back and dealing with all the crap or going back to a phishless world. Until I see them a few times this year I will have to reserve my judgment on that one.
I love the special tickets given out in the lottery. I hope they keep that up. I once had an extra to a TMBG show in New Haven that was not sold out. I was trying to sell it to a kid in line just to get my money back. He wanted to see my ticket and my friends’ tickets to be sure I wasn’t selling him a counterfeit ticket (Toad’s Place just sold paper tickets, nothing special). He finally gave in.
I stopped seeing DMB for the same reason, though the music just stopped being worthwhile as well. I just don’t want the Phish scene to become the giant frat party with riots that the DMB scene had become.
Great post. I couldn’t agree more- with everything. The bit about the trust fund baby “phans” is particularly upsetting, because it’s more common that you would think. Anyone who’s still upset about not getting Red Rocks tickets still has a chance at http://www.phish.tv