…and boy, am I pissed! My two favorite singers (leaving aside the dead ones and Aretha) are playing in NYC on the same night, at the exact same time: McClinton at B.B. King’s Club in Times Square, and Fogerty at the Beacon Theatre…where I saw them last time they came around, and both guys were beyond any adjectives I could devise.
I’m pretty sure profanity isn’t allowed on this blog, so just use your imagination. Two giants of American music playing in the same city on the same date at the same time?? Nobody bothered to check for direct competition, to book the dates so as not to cannibalize either gig, since these artists draw a similar audience? I seriously doubt there wasn’t another date or venue available that would fit either artist’s itinerary. And it’s not like you can Tivo either show.
Here you go, managers around the world: another multi-million-dollar idea: sell pay-per-view tickets to your artists’ shows when they’re sold out. (I’m not talking about just arena acts.) It’s like adding thousands more seats to the venue. You just can’t charge $50, that’s all.
My only consolation is that I wasn’t forced to choose between them, because I bought my ticket to see Delbert the minute they went on sale, and had no idea Fogerty was heading to NYC. (So much for the Fogerty email newsletter I signed up for last year.) All I can say is, this’d better not happen again next year!
As an old friend from St. Louis used to say, “I am outdone.”
The update:
And then I excavated a mound of old emails and found one from the Beacon Theatre saying that Fogerty also was appearing on the 18th. Funny how the email from Ticketmaster didn’t mention it. Theoretically I have a choice of a $75 ticket (make that $90, with all the surcharges) or an even more expensive one–except that the show appears to be sold out. And when you finally get to the page of the website that tells you the bad news, there’s a teaser: sometimes more tickets are released closer to the date. Thanks, now I can’t sleep until I find out whether or not I get to see John Fogerty the night after I see Delbert McClinton.
This is why I need to find a job as an usher at one of these places.
