So... concerts
- Thread starter RaikuFA
- Start date
I used to go to concerts semi-regularly as a teenager but I really didn't care too much for them to try going on my own. The best thing that can be said is, there's always the possibility that you'll meet up with a band you enjoy listening to. Aside from that yeah, concerts aren't my thing. I hate being around other people, I prefer the studio versions of songs better than their live counterparts etc...
Some gigs are reasonably cheap. If you pay £5-10 (maybe even with a drink included) you can go and see a local band play at a bar or club or a local venue (usually working mens clubs if youre a northern monkey like myself). These bands can be really good and if you go see them you can recommend them to other people
I personally wouldnt pay big money for most gigs. Id probably fork out if I got a chance to see a big rock band or an awesome DJ set (ie tiesto). Going to see some generic pop act is bound to disappoint (sorry mums and dads of teenage girls but you might have to go to this shit). Ive heard that Katy Perry and Lady GaGa are actually really good live and put on one hell of a show
I personally wouldnt pay big money for most gigs. Id probably fork out if I got a chance to see a big rock band or an awesome DJ set (ie tiesto). Going to see some generic pop act is bound to disappoint (sorry mums and dads of teenage girls but you might have to go to this shit). Ive heard that Katy Perry and Lady GaGa are actually really good live and put on one hell of a show
As other people have said, it's the experience. Last year I saw a guy in a wheelchair being crowd surfed to Municipal Waste. I've gotten to carry Neils Adams from Prostitute Disfigurement around a tiny crowded pub whilst he belts out his monstrous vocals. I've seen a group of people build a human pyramid in the middle of a mosh pit during an SSS set. I've watched the vocalist from Trash Talk get completely wasted before they even came on stage, bust out a killer set, and then fall asleep on top of one of the cabs whilst the rest of the band finished the last song.RaikuFA said:
None of these things can be replicated by sitting at home listening to CDs. If you don't get it, fair enough, maybe gigs just aren't for you, but I fucking love them.
I can't really comment on the cost of gigs though. I'm more into my underground scene, where you can get in for £5 to £10 and watch 5 or 6 bands.
I'm just gonna say this: Sunn O))) concerts hurt your bones.
I don't even have good enough sound equipment to hurt my ears.
I don't even have good enough sound equipment to hurt my ears.
Sonisphere 2010 was a fucking ace festival, Rammstein still sit at the top of my list for best stage show. EVERYTHING IS ON FIRE!El Luck said:
Um. Seriously, $500? Can I interest you in the brooklyn bridge? £50 is the most I've ever paid for a single concert and that was Metallica at Wembley Stadium, otherwise, £25 absolute tops. Furthermore, you're basically asking "why do people do things that they enjoy?" it makes you look like you're incapable of understanding other human beings.RaikuFA said:
As far as I'm conerned the "I can't possibly understand why people do things they enjoy" questsions, are not in fact questions; they're statements disguised as questions, in this case, calling people who like to go to concerts stupid.
I don't know about you, but unless it's a gift if I want to see a concert with someone they're paying their way or I'm going alone, lol. And of course it costs that much to see. Metallica, it's fucking Metallica. Most people who regularly to to concerts see smaller bands at a lower cost, or go to festivals where the price of entry includes lots of bands.RaikuFA said:
I was pretty disappointed when I saw Foo Fighters on stage. Dave Grohl just stood at the front when he first came on and held his guitar up for a solid twenty minutes while the crowd cheered. I'm all cool for that kind of stuff, but anything over a minute is pretty pretentious. I was pretty pissed when it got to the twenty minute mark and there had still been no music and the crowd seemed to not have a problem with this. And then there was the fact that he mentioned Cobain after almost every goddamn song. I was never a fan of Nirvana, so maybe that had something to do with it, but Jesus Christ, if you are going to dedicate your concert to someone, do it at the end or the beginning. Not in between every second or third song. They also didn't seem to do much on stage. The songs were pretty good, but there didn't seem to be much energy in them.
Recently, I saw Five Finger Death Punch live and was down in the pit. Holy. Shit. That was the bes two and a half hours of my entire music life experience. Those dudes were just throwing themselves around the stage, getting the crowd invoved, did a Wall of Death to 'Way of the Fist', it was great.
Recently, I saw Five Finger Death Punch live and was down in the pit. Holy. Shit. That was the bes two and a half hours of my entire music life experience. Those dudes were just throwing themselves around the stage, getting the crowd invoved, did a Wall of Death to 'Way of the Fist', it was great.
I remember seeing Linkin Park live well over ten years ago. I think they were still recording Reanimation, but when they got to what everyone thought was the end for 'One Step Closer', they carried on with the latter verse from the Reanimation version and the crowd went fuckin' mental.The87Italians said:
That is a day ticket for a festival; Heavy Montreal, it isn't just to see Metallica. This is what that ticket buys you:RaikuFA said:
http://heavymontreal.com/lineup/#!programmation=grid$
The entirety of the left hand side of that line up, 22 bands in total. Heck for some reason the weekend ticket is cheaper on that site, $180 dollars to see well over 60 bands is /really/ good value for money.
http://www.stubhub.com/metallica-tickets/
If I wanted to see them with someone, they could pay for their own damn ticket at that price. So your example price isn't $500, you've just bought more tickets than necessary. And buying the ticket to a festival. That's like me buying 2 tickets for all the movies in a movie theater, only seeing one movie then complaining that it costs £100 to see a movie.
Certain stadiums will screw you over, but my £50 ticket at wembley was only 2007, so it's not like I'm on about "ye olden days", and it is Metallica, the biggest name in metal, tickets for them are going to be on the pricier side. But most bands you can see for <£50.
Funny you should say that, as it is a festival ticket he's linkedLilani said:
The link is broken, but it's a day ticket for Heavy Montreal.Aye, they do, P!nk does too. I'm not a big fan of any of their music, (Lady GaGa is alright and P!inks earlier stuff is pretty good as pop rock goes, I at least respect them as artists), but if I had the opportunity, I may well go and see them just for the stage show.shootthebandit said:
I think I'll agree with OP on this thing. I don't really like Concerts either. Or any crowd events for that matter, like cinema, theater etc. I'd rather just experience the medium with split a of the cost and in the comfort of my home. Rather than going to a noisy, overcrowded place.
Black Sabbath, even bigger than Metallica, reunion tour had tickets of £45 and under, which is damn good and surprising, I would've been happy to pay more than that, Motorhead, again quite big, who I see with my family every year, cost £20-£30, seen Iron Maiden a couple of times, not more than £50, though can't remmeber the exact price. Judas Priest are doing a tour right now where the tickets are $70, which translates to about £40, but again they're big names and that isn't /that/ much. Pink Floyd reunion tickets were about £35 last year. Iggy Pop, under £50, my mum saw P!nk at the O2 arena a few years ago for about £35 a ticket, I even found tickets for Elton John going for under $100:RaikuFA said:
https://tickets.axs.com/eventShopperV3.html?wr=3b4738dc-cb99-487c-b5d3-316061042158&preFill=1&lang=en&locale=en_us&eventid=251206&ec=STC141004&src=AEGAXS1_WMAIN&skin=staples&fbShareURL=www.axs.com%2Fevents%2F251206%2Felton-john-tickets%3F%26ref%3Devs_fb
If you're buying from scalpers, then yeah it's gonna be expensive, so don't. But otherwise, aside from a few bands(Rolling Stones I'm looking at you, £100 a ticket! *grumble*), or certain individuals(Paul Mcartney *cough*), <£60 is about the norm for even the biggest groups, outside of pop sensations. $500 would be a luxury ticket with a meet and greet or special perks. I've /personally/ never paid more than £50 for a ticket, with the exception of festival tickets for £190, which were 3 day festivals, with camping and more bands than you could shake a stick at, with many, many big names.
Some groups or venues will charge you through the nose, I certainly had difficulty just now finding Fleetwood Mac tickets for under $100, but they were all resale with the excpetion of the tickets for the luxury boxes and whatnot. Even then it still doesn't come close to your original estimate of $500 or the $180 Festival Ticket, which was actually good value. There was a recent Hoo-hah about AC/DC charging $160 for a gig in Australia, where things are all manner of expensive, so it's certainly not the norm.
Crummy pop sensations are the ones who alway charge stupid amounts for their tickets mostly, One Direction or Justin Beiber were $120 minimum, basically because the record label needs to squeeze money out of them before they stop being popular. Or Rap artists who seriously over value themselves. I don't even like Elton John, but he's far more deserving of an expensive ticket than fucking Jay-Z.
Even stuff like Paul Mcartney or Elton John where tickets are at the higher end, can be seen on the cheap if you sit in the seats. Not like there's going to be much dancing or moshing going on if you're in the standing section anyway. In fact I'd say those are the ones you /want/ to be sitting down for.
Yeah, I'd like to see Maiden. Don't know many bands. Only rock station in our area plays nothing but indie stuff that tries to replicate Radiohead. We have another one that claims it's rock(I think I've heard SoaD once on there) but it only plays commercials except on Sundays when it plays nothing Guns and Roses.elvor0 said:
I know what you mean about not hearing shit. I remember going to an Eluveitie concert on a metal cruise and only being able to hear about half the instruments. In that case, the song was pretty much ruined for me, since they need all of their instruments to get the sound you want to hear. From these experiences, I've pretty much learned not to attend concerts if I'm not already a major fan who knows most of the songs. Live concerts can be a pretty lousy place to introduce yourself to new bands, especially in the US, where the tech staff tend to all be volunteers rather than professionals (at least according to a journalist I met on the cruise).BathorysGraveland2 said:
If you aren't offended by rowdiness, then concerts can be a good thing, due to the comradrie, but if you are, like me, it can pretty much ruin any chance you had of enjoying it. Still, there are things to appreciate. There were some songs I heard live that I liked much better. Sadly, this was often because the song sounded worse when I could hear it perfectly, rather than when I filled in the blanks with my mind.
This! I still remember seeing Mono Inc for the first time. Really small place, stage was built out of empty beer crates with wooden plates put on top of them, maybe 50 or so people in it. The singer got his mother on stage and danced with her and at some point he grabbed an acoustic guitar and started playing "the passenger" with everyone singing along. That was just awesome. Now they play bigger stages and they are still really great but it's just not the sameTheRightToArmBears said:
After the show you could grab a beer with them or just talk or get the number of their female drummer like a friend did..oh well This is simply something you won't get from a CD. Or "The hourglass". Probably their biggest concert yet (maybe 100-200 people? not really sure) with an entire auditorium screaming for an encore, their singer having tears in her eyes because they never expected to be celebrated so much. The atmosphere was just awesome.
Also my first Subway to Sally concert. Stage next to the ruins of an old castle, behind the stage yellow storm clouds (there was a storm warning for the evening) and the singer says something along the lines of "Well let's see if we get our storm when we ask god's son a few questions" and then they start to play "Falscher Heiland" (false saviour would be an adequate translation). The atmosphere there just gave me goose bumps.
Then there's the chance to get to know new bands. I just came back from a festival and through that I learned of several new bands I never heard of before. Nowadays there is stuff like youtube obviously but it's not the same as going to a stage to see a band because "the name sounds funny" and then realizing that they are fucking awesome.
All in all it's simply fun to go to a concert small band or large. Singing together with dozens or hundres of people, the music forcing you to dance (or bang your head in my case), meeting new people, being able to meet the band in person.
As for the price, well for me the most expensive concert I went to was probably Judas Priest which was I think somewhere around 60?. The show was great and everything and well worth the price, but I had just as much fun with say a Sabaton or Arkona concert (for maybe 1/4 or 1/3 of the price) as I had with Priest.
$50? Fuck, the only bands I've seen that charged that much have been Iron Maiden and Judas Priest. And you know what? I didn't regret it for a second. I can't say that about any game purchases I made at that price range.
Most of my favourite bands don't tend to charge much or play particularly large venues, though. Anathema are playing Manchester Academy 3 later in the year and, fuck, I've filled that place out!
But there's just nothing like it. Arms around perfect strangers, jumping around like a maniac, shouting along in unison with everyone else. Don't know the words? Oh well, shout along anyway!
Of course, some gigs are quieter. No screaming or shoving. I like a lot of gentle music, so I go to a lot of gigs like that. But you still don't lose that sense of community, you still get the joy of singing in unison with this crowd of like-minded people, having the music you love played before you just for you. It's a place to make new friends, it's a place to make memories and it can be a place to cut loose and act like an ass without anyone giving a fuck.
Most of my favourite bands don't tend to charge much or play particularly large venues, though. Anathema are playing Manchester Academy 3 later in the year and, fuck, I've filled that place out!
But there's just nothing like it. Arms around perfect strangers, jumping around like a maniac, shouting along in unison with everyone else. Don't know the words? Oh well, shout along anyway!
Of course, some gigs are quieter. No screaming or shoving. I like a lot of gentle music, so I go to a lot of gigs like that. But you still don't lose that sense of community, you still get the joy of singing in unison with this crowd of like-minded people, having the music you love played before you just for you. It's a place to make new friends, it's a place to make memories and it can be a place to cut loose and act like an ass without anyone giving a fuck.