It's London, Not Liverpool For Me, Mr Springsteen
I’m giving up on selfish artists and greedy ticket sales sites
Do I really want to pay £106 to see an artist perform on a distant stage in a large, soulless football stadium; 3 miles from the city centre; with watered down beer and rubbish food at a 250% premium (or more); a seat so far away I have to watch the musicians on a giant screen; the wind blows the sound out and onto the Irish Sea and then, the artist wastes my time and ticket money ranting about foreign politics?
Sorry, Bruce mate, but I didn’t vote for the charlatan you don’t like because I’m not from the USA. Not my problem, mate, it’s yours and I can’t do anything about it, so just get on with the music, will you? You charge a lot of money to see you play rock concerts and I don’t want to spend my money and time listening to you have a political rally.
Bruce has pushed my patience more than others with his recent antics — dynamic pricing, doing bugger all about ticket scalpers, selling priority tickets through corporate sponsors rather than fans and trying to flog 30-year-old reject album sets for an eye-watering £280 a pop. Now he’s spouting on about US politicians to a British audience and charging us to listen to it.
His behaviour has helped me to re-focus on a better way to enjoy live music, buy tickets and spend £106.
Yep, I put my Springsteen Liverpool concert ticket up for resale through Ticketmaster (grits teeth at having to write that name). I’m not going to experience anything I wrote about in the first paragraph. Instead, I spent my £106 I saved from reselling my Springsteen ticket on five (5!) events that were a far better experience.
A day in the sun (1)
I’m not sitting on a hard plastic seat in a damp, windy stadium in a dodgy suburb of Liverpool listening to someone on a large screen give a rally against Donald Trump. Nor am I wandering the streets at 11pm, wondering how to get back to my over-priced Airbnb 3 miles away in the city centre without getting mugged.
I’m not 220 miles from London, but in Chelmsford, an attractive city about 30 miles from my home. OK, it’s not London like I said in this article title, but not far and I’m in the queue to enter the County Ground — a cricket stadium on the edge of Chelmsford city centre, 10 minutes walk from the main station.
I’m here to watch my team, Essex, play cricket by the side of the River Chelmer in the sun. And they play for six hours, not Bruce’s three, although to be fair, the players are in their twenties, not 75. But they concentrate on what I paid to see, which is to play cricket, not rant about politics.
I love watching cricket as much as I love going to rock concerts, and I have four 440ml cans of IPA in a cool bag, beef and tomato sandwiches, chocolate and a flask of coffee in my rucksack. This is because they let you take in your own food and drink rather than ban it and charge you a fortune for cheap rubbish. And you can eat and drink at your seat while watching the game.
Now that’s what I call civilised.
I paid just £16 for the entry ticket that I bought from the Essex Cricket website, which will remain at £16 because they don’t use Ticketmaster. Since Bruce’s political rally with some rock music cost £106, I have £90 left to spend.
An evening with Eddie Elgar and Sergei
Next up is not a classic rock concert, but a classical concert in Central London. Unlike Bruce, the Liverpool Philharmonic Orchestra came to London. And the seats are not plastic but padded. And it’s inside, so there’s no wind to carry the sound away. And the orchestra are about 30ft away, not a quarter of a mile.
I’m at the Barbican Theatre in central London with my wife; it’s a ten-minute walk from Liverpool Street Station, which takes me directly home after the gig.
The orchestra played pieces from my two favourite classical composers, Edward Elgar and Sergei Rachmaninoff. The conductor explains some of the music they play, but doesn’t mention foreign politics once, even though he’s from South America and they have their fair share of charlatans too.
I guess he reasoned we’d paid to listen to music. Maybe he could have a quiet word with Bruce when he got back to Liverpool with the orchestra.
And the price to see one of the best orchestras in the country play some of my favourite music and to enjoy it with Mrs M? £27 each. I still have £63 left.
An afternoon with Pete Docherty
Two days later, and it’s nearly 4pm. I’m standing in a queue outside Rough Trade record store in East London with Mrs M. We have tickets to see Pete Doherty, one of our favourite rock artists. He’s playing a solo acoustic gig in a still slightly gritty former light industrial area, but now a trendy and bohemian district.
Rough Trade push the record shelves to one side every so often and put on an intimate gig and record signing. The place holds 300. So much nicer than a giant, sterile football stadium.
In between songs, Docherty tells us how he used to live in East London and about some of the songs he wrote there with Carl Barat, his former bandmate in the Libertines. He explains how he wrote a couple of his UK hits in his apartment in a street near to the Rough Trade store.
That had a tad more relevance to the London audience than anything Bruce had to say at his UK concerts. Pete Docherty is political too, but he chooses to convey his messages in the lyrics to his songs. Take note, Mr Springsteen.
Here’s a video from the show; it’s a song from his new album. Instead of going on about foreign politicians or any politics at all, he explained how it was a song about a friend of his who is a West Ham fan, like me. West Ham are an East London football team. We’re an East London audience. Relevance. A shared connection between the artist and the audience.
And the cost to see one of the UK’s premier rock artists play live and tell anecdotes about London rather than go on about some orange man from some place called Mar A Lago, where ever the hell that is, all from about six feet away, and to pick up a signed copy of his latest vinyl album?
£26.
Docherty’s unsigned album sells at £22, so we get to see a live rock gig for £4 each, as I’d have bought the disc anyway. We’re selling Mrs M’s album on eBay for £26, so it’s nil cost for her.
Rough Trade don’t use Ticketmaster but British ticket sellers Dice, so the price not only remained at £26 despite being sold out, but when I made a mistake with my order, I emailed Dice to change it. 30 minutes later, Dice made the change and emailed me back to check I was happy.
Oh yes, I was very happy indeed, and I still have £59 remaining.
A day in the sun (2)
That £59 is burning a hole in my pocket, but guess what? Two days after Peter Docherty played at Rough Trade, Essex are playing another game, this time against Surrey at the Oval. The Oval’s in London. Not Liverpool.
I’m now waiting for my brother-in-law, Peter, outside the Oval Cricket Ground in my sunglasses and a peaked cap with the rucksack full of…, well, you know what.
The tickets this time are £15 each as we saved the £1 online booking fee by buying at the ground. Every penny counts, even when you have £44 left from reselling the ticket to Bruce’s US political rally held in the UK.
So I blew £4 each on two chocolate-covered ice creams inside the ground after we’d drunk all the IPAs and the bottle of Pinot Noir that Peter had brought in his rucksack. I know four quid is a bit steep for an ice cream, but I was feeling flush as I still had £44.
And there’s more…
West Ham have a pre-season friendly football match against a top European team in August. It’s in Stratford, East London, not 3 miles from Liverpool city centre and 220 miles away.
My remaining £36, after splashing out on those ice creams at The Oval, will cover the entrance ticket plus a ticket for my granddaughter. The change will get us a pricey chocolate ice cream each.
I’d say this was all a far better use for my £106, wouldn’t you?
Great piece, Alex, can I cross-post?