"Steve Miller Band Cancels All Tour Dates Due to Recent Weather Disasters"
share.google/9vtKKJ25PMt4k2J4G Well the President lies. Blatantly. And this is the lamest excuse ever for canceling a tour with poor ticket sales. I mean Steve Miller is 81 years old. Couldn't he just claim a health issue, like 77 year old Jeff Lynne?
The punters were pissed in Manchester, but everybody believes Mr. ELO had an infection. As for the Gangster of Love?
Maybe the audience has seen this show at these prices enough. Maybe Mr. Miller has gone back to the well one too many times.
And it's not like the audience doesn't know it. Scroll down on the above-linked page and click on the comments. Sure, Miller gets some support, because brain dead fans never believe their heroes can be at fault, but most are angry and know this is a cover-up, an excuse for poor ticket sales.
And this hurts everybody.
They want you to buy tickets nearly a year in advance. Not only do they have your money, you've rearranged your entire schedule around this show. Maybe you didn't buy tickets for a competing show, after all, no one has unlimited resources. And now you've found out it's history?
So the next time you go to lay out your cash far in advance...maybe you don't.
The business may have opaque ticketing practices, but it's not only the scalpers who are eating the business's lunch. The scalpers prove that too many tickets are underpriced. Sure, there's an issue with bots buying up seats, but the bottom line is tickets for so many arena and larger shows are too cheap, inviting the secondary market. There's this canard that the public is pissed about these high ticket prices... Well anybody with a rudimentary knowledge of economics knows the acts wouldn't be charging these prices if fans weren't willing to pay them.
HOWEVER, we live in an information society and not only do we have fans blowing back at Miller, we've got posters on X tracking ticket sales, showing what is not sold out, even though promoters say ticket sales are fantastic, these online oracles are telling consumers TO WAIT!
I mean at most of these big shows you're going to be sitting so far from the stage why not wait a while to see if you can get a cheaper ticket. Especially when the act is doing multiples.
Now there are acts so hot that they can sell every ticket no problem.
But there are acts that keep touring year after year, or too soon between cycles, at high prices in big places and the public is saying NO MAS!
And if these dates don't go close to clean, someone is losing plenty. Maybe the act has a touring deal, a guarantee, but sans a give-back they're going to have a hard time getting promoters to play along in the future.
Or, you could tour more cheaply. Do you really need the extravaganza, with dancers, lasers, flying cars... That stuff costs, and you know who has to pay for it? THE FANS! And sometimes they say NO!
At least with the airlines the prices are flexible, you've got a feel for what is going on, but buying a concert ticket is a bit like gambling...you may find out later you way overpaid. Or the show might even be canceled, as with Miller!
You're blaming it on the weather?
Who came up with this cockamamie idea? If this was truly a factor, Pat Green and Robert Earl Keen wouldn't be having their benefits in Texas, but they're not scared.
And a huge chunk of the population believes global warming is a hoax. So by blaming it on the weather Miller alienates these people...
I mean how much can you abuse your audience?
Give credit to the Black Keys, at least they admitted they couldn't sell the tickets and canceled their tour and went out the next time in smaller buildings. Honesty is the best policy!
But in a nation where everybody lies, the truth is fungible and when confronted with contradictory facts, people double down, no wonder Steve Miller thought he could get away with this lie.
But he doesn't know what he's selling. Music is about a feeling, authenticity, a bond with the audience, and if you break it...
Which is why traditionally those dependent on Top Forty hits were only as good as their last one. Sans a new hit, concert business was off.
Stunningly, that has changed a bit. You need fewer hits to sustain an audience, however everybody is not going to come ad infinitum at these prices, and the prices have to be high because of the costs!
As for the acts... Some truly want to play and connect with the audience. But there's not a soul alive who doesn't think Oasis got back together for the money. Money changes everything, isn't that what that old song says?
Nothing goes on forever. There's this thought that music can only burgeon, that it never goes in reverse. But this is untrue. The audience sustains this business, it's not funded by the government, and the audience can pull back on a whim, and oftentimes acts and promoters are surprised when tickets don't sell.
And now, more than ever, if tickets don't sell well at the on sale... They trickle in until the dates play. Will there be a big walk-up? Do you want to take that risk?
I'm not saying this is a Billy Squier moment, then again, when Neil Young couldn't sell tickets at the Forum, having gone back to the well too many times, he blamed it on the union, not wanting his fans to cross the picket line. Believable, if untrue.
This is the society we live in. Truth is history. Art used to be a bastion of truth. But Steve Miller is trading on songs he cut eons ago. He wants that money. Where is the truth?
Where is the truth in so many shows? They're spectacles, supposed bang for the buck, but except for the young lemmings needing to see the latest act breaking in the teenybop world, so many others are checked out.
Never have I known so few into music.
No one ever talks about that.
Yes, we were addicted to the radio in the sixties and seventies. And then there was MTV in the eighties and nineties. But now, some people have no time, never mind interest in music. They're playing video games. No one wants to say the emperor is wearing no clothes. Guys with dyed hair and plastic surgery lying about their age say it's the same as it ever was, no different from the heydays of yore, that boomers are just too old to get the new music.
Wrong.
Music is too often a sideshow made by committee that fills a need but doesn't change the culture, change one's life.
But why not lie about it?
Things are GREAT!
Except for that damn weather problem. I wonder who else will cancel because of the storms?
Yeah, right.
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