Thanks for NOTHING Eddie Vedder

On Saturday, May 1st I was on the Ticketmaster web site at 10am waiting for Concrete Blonde tickets to go on sale. My girlfriend loves Concrete Blonde. And I wanted to get these tickets as a birthday gift for her. So I put myself through the hell of an online Ticketmaster purchase for this reason. They say love makes you do foolish things, right?

I won't go into all the details of buying tickets right as they go on sale from the Ticketmaster web site. If you've done it recently you don't want to be reminded. But if you have not, suffice to say it's stressful, annoying, confusing and insulting all at the same time. By the time I was done entering captchas, checking my e mail to get my new password, filling in some sort of MasterCard verification bullshit, I wished I was deaf. That way, I'd never feel the need to buy tickets to any live music event ever again.

I am now more dedicated than ever to not giving Ticketmaster any of my money again. To buy two Concrete Blonde tickets, which are listed on the Majestic website as being $25 each, Ticketmaster charged me $65. I am not great at math. But by my calculations, this means that Ticketmaster made me pay $15 dollars in additional charges. I look at it this way: for me to buy two tickets to this show, I was forced to pay $12.50 for 1/2 an invisible person to also attend, plus $2.50 just for fun!

In addition they offered me, for a price of I believe another $2.50, the option to print my tickets myself. Using my own resources. I could also have them mailed to me. For free. This alone made me wonder if I was in backwards land. That is insane.

My point is, it is worth the extra time it might take to purchase tickets direct from venues or special designated points of sale to circumvent Ticketmaster. And by extension LiveNation. Fuck those guys.

So in case you didn't know - you CAN buy tickets for all Majestic Theatre complex shows at the Garden Bowl. Ticket sales are from 11am to 6pm 7 days a week. There is a $1 additional charge per ticket if you are paying with cash and a $2 additional charge if you are paying with credit/debit.

You can also buy tickets for all upcoming Crofoot shows while you're at the venue. Just ask the bartender. I believe there is no extra charge for cash and a $1 charge for credit/debit. But regardless it's significantly less than Rapemaster.

For shows at St. Andrews, you can buy tickets at the Fillmore box office... I don't think there is an additional charge, but don't quote me on that.

So please do this. For me. For yourself. For Detroit. For Pontiac. For America.