I wrote some time ago (not gonna look up the link) about whether my days attending live music concerts are over, or whether I will someday overcome my advancing age and the legacy of the pandemic and go see performances again.
This question got put to the test a few days ago … and sloth won.
I’ve gotten pretty deeply into Roxy Music in the past couple of years, so I was quite excited when the artsy Britishers announced their 50th anniversary tour — including a stop in Boston in September, one of just 10 concerts they’ve announced in the U.S. so far.
I signed up for Roxy email updates (God knows what that will bring me in the long term) so I could get presale info. And when the presale began at 10 a.m. a day or two ago, I clicked the link in the email, determined to brave whatever queue it dropped me into …
… and then, before I could even enter the online waiting room, I was required to either log in to an existing Ticketmaster account or create a new one …
… and at that point I said, “To hell with it.”
I should have known, and maybe did, that Ticketmaster would be involved. They run the show as far as big-name tickets are involved. But my stomach just did an unplanned loop-de-loop of revulsion upon seeing the Ticketmaster name again, and I decided then and there that Ticketmaster has joined Facebook and the NFL on my personal shit-list of enterprises that my life is better off without.
Will I give in in the long run? We’ll see. I realize that I’ll have to deal with Ticketmaster if I want to go see any event in a room seating more than 100 people.
At the same time, it just feels like life’s too short. I don’t want to go through their hoops and pay their fees. The pre-pandemic knowledge that Ticketmaster is lame and corrupt, a malignant middleman, has now mixed with an extended period of life-experience in which I didn’t have to deal with them at all. So, it’s hard to go back.
The cheap seats will be filled when Roxy plays Boston, even without me, I’m sure.
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Meanwhile, the tweet about Lou Reed and free hot dogs got another burst of activity yesterday; I assume someone hip and well-positioned retweeted it. As of now we’re up to 34,831 impressions, 123 retweets and 451 likes. Things seem to have calmed down.
I find much more interesting a subsequent tweet, based on an August 1975 story in which the Boston Phoenix corralled six local celebrities and asked them for a guided/photographed tour of their fridges and freezers. (This was the cover story to a Food/Drink special section.)
The story included coverboy Governor Michael Dukakis, singer Livingston Taylor, and novelist John Updike, as well as regional auto dealer extraordinaire Ernie Boch and two TV hostesses of the nonce.
It’s a fine line between creativity and vacuity … but I miss the cheerful anything-goes spirit that inspired alternative weeklies to tackle stories like this.
(I remember a story in the 2012 Presidential campaign about which type of cuisine each candidate preferred, and that was annoying as hell, because there was a major national political decision in the balance. But in a setting like this — where the what-do-you-eat question is not yoked to any larger characterization of personality or policy — it’s pretty entertaining.)
For what it’s worth, the flat egg-space in the door of my fridge is filled with other things.
Neck Pickup 