Leave it tout...

In the absence of any live reviews ('normal' service will be resumed next week)I'm going to folow up my last Glasto ticket post with a little rant. A rantette if you will. A 'ran'...no a 'ra'...or maybe even a 'r'. Anyway...

Mr Eavis or Lord Glastonbury to his mates, has this year, for the first time ever, stamped out the evilness that is the 'ticket tout'. Now I have no real problem with the dudes who stand outside gigs screaming 'tickettttsssssbuyorsellllll' at anyone who walks within 1500m of their pitch. They are a part of the 'gig lore', like watered down Strongbow and that annoying 8ft bloke with mad hair who always seems to stand in front of you (who is that guy?). No, as I have ranted before and as I will rant again, my problem is with the 'people' who buy tickets just to sell them at a vastly inflated price to real fans who missed the boat because Mr/Mrs Hometouter purchased 50 tickets. Happily most of the bands that I go to see are new-ish and have yet to forge a massive fan base. Many, alas, will not get anywhere and will end up back at the complaints desk at B & Q or stacking butters and fats in their local Somerfield (I've been there brothers and sisters). But that's a posting for another day.

Back to the rant...recently I wanted to buy tickets for a Marc Almond gig in London. The face value of these tickets is £39. Being the dizzy young chap that I am I wasn't sitting waiting for the tickets to come on sale. I was at work. Clearly a vast number of people were not, and the tickets sold out in minutes. Fair enough, if you're a real fan and you get there before me, no problemo. However, within minutes, tickets were flooding on to ebay for £250 a pair. Considering there were only 1,000 tickets in total the number that I have now appeared on ebay must be in the region of around 20%-25% over the last few weeks. That's 1 in 4 tickets going to evil blood sucking music hating heartless pieces of crap.

The solution surely is pretty simple. Only accept credit or debit card payments (most people pay this way for everything nowadays...even chewing gum for christsake) don't give out tickets, instead swipe the card to gain entry to the gig. This should eliminate hometouters for ever whahahahahahah. I'm pretty sure that ebay wouldn't be too pleased with this though as they currently have around 15,000 ticket listings, each one earning them lots of lovely dosh. Tough tits. Home touters rip off kids who really can't afford to be ripped off, stop 'real' music fans from going to gigs and make more money for talentless jizz monkeys than some of the frickin' musicians who are actually playing the gig. Still, in this morally bankrupt world that we all inhabit where criminally inept naval personel can get captured, paraded like D list celebs and then sell their story for £250,000 it's pretty much par for the course eh?

Like I say...'normal' service will be resumed soon.

Hey! Happy Easter!