January 2009

To the best of my knowledge Phish has never once engaged in a tiered ticketing pricing structure. For every Phish concert, the price of a ticket in the front row is the same as the price for one in the nosebleeds or lawn.

When the Dave Matthews Band plays the Superpages.com Center in Dallas, pavilion tickets will be $70 and lawn tickets $40. When The Dead cruise into the Greensboro Coliseum, tickets will be $89 and $49.50. When Metallica plays the TD Banknorth Garden, tickets will be $79.50 and $59.50.

Phish now has thirteen dates on the books, and the ticket price for all of them is $49.50. I’d love to know how this all went down. Was having a single ticket price a requirement set forth by the band before joining Red Light? (Side note: redlight.com is a porn site, redlightmanagement.com is the correct link, might as well spare you that inconvenience).

When tickets go on sale through Live Nation, Ticketmaster and Metrotix the weekend of January 30, I predict that seven out of their ten shows will sell out within the first hour. Perhaps they won’t immediately sell 80,000 tickets to their two shows at Alpine Valley. Maybe they can’t immediately sell 22,000 in Burgettstown, PA on a Thursday night. But most fans believe that Jones Beach (2 shows), Great Woods, Camden, Asheville, St. Louis and Noblesville will sell out the day tickets are available for purchase.

READ ON for more of DaveO’s editorial on Phish ticket prices…

“Happiness is nothing more than good health and a bad memory” – Albert Schweitzer This week’s mix tape features just some straight forward feel good music. This time of year

2008 has been a standout year for me catching live shows across the country. I made it to 77 concerts this year and most of them were terrific. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve gotten more selective in what I see and I can’t think of one show I saw that was terrible. Actually, Widespread Panic at Irving was a terrible experience but the music was actually awesome. So, without further ado here’s my list of the 50 best shows I saw in 2008…

10. Elvis Costello / The Police – Jones Beach – 8/5: Both acts put on their best show in years on the final date of their joint tour. The Police threw in the first cover of their reunion tour – Purple Haze – and crashed Costello’s opening set.

9. The Raconteurs – Terminal 5 – 5/31: Even though I could barely see them thanks to the lack of sightlines at Terminal 5, The Raconteurs crushed every song they played at Terminal 5 on May 31. The group played a nice mix of songs from their first and second albums with Nick Zinner of The Yeah Yeah Yeahs joining the fun for the first song of a quadruple encore.

8. The Fab Faux – Terminal 5 – 12/26: Despite my disgust for this venue I sure saw some killer shows there. A few weeks back the Fab Faux showed off just how incredible The Beatles’ Abbey Road and Let It Be sound live. Both albums were performed perfectly with a few jams thrown in for good measure. READ ON for more of Scotty’s list…

Buried deep within Bill Husted’s Thursday column in the Denver Post is word that Athens, GA’s Widespread Panic won’t be bringing their New Year’s Run back to Georgia anytime soon…

The surviving members of the Grateful Dead reunited last year to help Barack Obama get elected. Now that our new President’s ready to take office, The Dead will be there

Earlier today, MSGE announced that legendary singer/songwriter Paul Simon will open the newly renovated Beacon Theatre on February 13 and 14. Simon, who grew up in New York City, first