Scalped Tickets: My Introduction

Here in New York, this Saturday's Bon Jovi concert in Central Park is triggering more anxiety than the time Jon Bon Jovi chopped off part of his mane. The reason: tickets for the concert, which is technically free, are being scalped for as much as $1,500. Mathematically, that comes to about $30 just to hear Richie Sambora shout "Wan-TED!" in "Wanted Dead or Alive."

While I sympathize with those who may be forced to fork over that kind of money -- especially for Bon Jovi -- I'm also divided, since my first experience with an illicit ticket sale changed my life.

Flipping through the New York Times in the '70s, I came upon an advertisement for a Paul Simon concert at Carnegie Hall. Since the concert was close to my 13th birthday, I asked my parents if we could go to the show. My older sister had introduced me to the music of Simon & Garfunkel, and now I was equally obsessed with Simon's music. His first post-S&G album, Paul Simon, was among the first LPs in my collection.

Sure, my parents said; just let us know when it is. I cut the ad out of the paper and counted the days. On the night of the show, my parents, my mother's sister, and I piled into the family car and drove the hour and a half from Hazlet, N.J. to Manhattan.

The natty, cosmopolitan crowd mingling outside Carnegie Hall was unlike anything I'd seen before; it felt like the week's big night out for grad school intellectuals. The buzz was understandable, since the concert was part of Simon's first tour without Art Garfunkel, with whom he had split up three years before. We walked up to the box office and asked to buy four tickets, please.

The clerk shot us a puzzled look and explained to us that the show had been sold out for some time. We were such suburban rubes that it hadn't occurred to us that anyone who wants to go to a concert should buy seats in advance. Unsure of what to do, we retreated to a diner down the street from Carnegie Hall. I was disconsolate.

Then my aunt had an idea: We should march back to the box office and see if anyone who'd ordered tickets by phone hadn't bothered to pick them up. She'd heard about such things, you know. But when we arrived back at the venue, the same box-office clerk told us no -- no one had forgotten to pick up their tickets to the big Paul Simon concert.

As we stood on the sidewalk and contemplated the long drive back to Hazlet, a man in a three-piece suit approached us. Did we want tickets to the show? he asked. He said he worked for Simon's record company, had four tickets he couldn't use, and would be willing to sell us all four for $20. (As hard as it may be to imagine, concert tickets at the time were $5 a pop.) He seemed in a particular rush to ditch the seats, and for reasons even I could understand: Standing nearby was equally lavishly dressed woman, clearly his companion, who had a look on her face that essentially screamed, "Let's get out of here... now."

My father was skeptical, as he often was of salespeople, but he asked a ticket taker standing nearby if the seats were legit. When the employee nodded yes, my father slipped the mysterious man a $20 bill, and in a dizzying few moments, we were swept inside Carnegie Hall, being escorted to our seats.

I'd never been to Carnegie Hall -- I'm not sure I'd even visited New York City before, in fact -- and I was instantly in awe of my surroundings. Gazing up at the hall's towering ceiling and white walls, I felt like I had entered the hippest church on the planet.

The real stunner, though, was yet to come. We followed the usher into the hall, and then to the orchestra level. We walked. And walked. And walked. Finally we arrived at our seats -- in the center of the second row. The mystery man wasn't lying about his job at Columbia Records. Sitting next to us was Paul Simon's brother, whose face I recognized from inside Simon's then-new album, There Goes Rhymin' Simon.

The concert itself was enthralling: Simon wearing a white suit and holding a big guitar, performing songs from his own records and the Simon and Garfunkel catalogue. When he was joined by the Jessy Dixon Singers for several songs, I was essentially introduced to gospel; when the Peruvian ensemble Urubamba accompanied him on "El Condor Pasa" and other numbers, I had my first taste of world music. My father, who was already in the process of losing his hearing, talked for years about how beautiful Urubamba's South American flutes were.

In the years since, I've bought scalped tickets a few more times, like to that sold-out Pavement show in the early '90s. But none of those experiences have quite matched that long-ago evening at Carnegie Hall. The city never seemed more luminous to me than it did that night, and in some way the experience led me to enroll in New York University (after that evening, the city didn't seem so daunting) and become a music journalist.

Yes, scalping can be criminal, in more ways than one, but I have to agree with Mayor Mike Bloomberg's essentially laissez-faire attitude toward it: If the result is a magical night in Manhattan, what's wrong with a little profit sharing between non-friends?

Comments

[RobinSeattle]

If people refused to buy tickets other than at the box office or through the usual channels (Ticketmaster, et al), then scalpers wouldn't exist. And you idiots who have used scalpers or ticket resellers are responsible for the outrageous face value tariffs we see now.

And the concept of anyone paying scalper prices for a Pavement show, for crying out loud, isn't mentally fit to walk the streets by themselves.

I haven't been to a concert in over a decade after going to hundreds from the 1970's to the early 1990's because of a combination of the music industry sucking like it never has before, the pricing situation (plus what parking costs now) and Ticketmaster being a bunch of bloodsucking pirates.

I even saw Bon Jovi once when they were touring behind their first album as an opening act and the thought of paying anything to see them is laughable to me anyway.

[zippywpinhead]

sorry, but there is no justification for scalping- it is a parasitic enterprise that contributes absolutely nothing except undeserved money to the slimeballs that engage in it. Besides the scalpers, the only people who benefit are status conscious yuppies who are willing to throw money at an opportunity to impress each other with prime seats to an event. In the process the vast majority of true fans get shut out of the deal, as they never have a chance at these seats through legitimate channels- as well as the artist, who never sees a penny of these ill gotten gains. Imagine how upset people would be if a town's only grocery store made an insider deal with someone to buy up all the milk and eggs ahead of time and that person then stood outside the store selling them for 4,5 even 10 times face value to customers who never had a chance to buy them directly. People would be up in arms over this blatant unfairness, so why is it an acceptable business model in the entertainment industry?

[RedDogBear]

Pardon my cynicism but this just shows what mindless sheep many people are. You live in NY and you are so starved for entertainment you have to pay $1500 to hear... Bon Jovi?! I don't know the NY music scene that well but I used to live in Chicago and I know that on any night I could go to one of several small clubs and hear incredible blues, jazz, and rock in intimate settings where I could actually shout out requests and talk to the musicians between sets. Not to mention some of the best classical music in the world at Orchestra hall. I'm sure the same or more so is true in NY. Scalping results because people are brain washed to think that being on MTV equals great music. The scalpers are just following the grand American tradition of milking the suckers. Good for them.

[robiform]

In a perfect world, someone calling Ticketmaster an hour after tickets to say, a Bruce Springsteen concert went on sale would be able to get reasonably good seats for face value of the tickets. Unfortunately, this isn't a perfect world, and if someone is lucky enough to obtain tickets to a concert through legitimate channels, the seats are generally in the nosebleed section! So, if you want decent seats, as friends and I did for Springsteen's Born in the USA tour (yes, I know I am dating myself!), you contact scalpers and you pay outrageous prices. Sometimes it works out--to this day, I don't regret paying a couple of hundred dollars for seats fifth-row center for a show at the old Philadelphia Spectrum. Twenty-four years later, it's still the greatest concert I ever attended!

[loucasa]

Much as I am in agreement with you about how good it can be to buy tickets at the last minute, when you and your family purchased the Paul Simon tickets, it was at face value from someone who truly had intended to go but was unable (probably much to his regret). Now scalping has turned into a big business which prevents much of the general public from purchasing tickets when they go on sale--and the money that they charge goes not to the artist or the venue but to someone who has added NOTHING to the process except to get in the way of people who intend to go to the concert. There is no value added, there is no service provided, that is not already present. There is a big difference between scalping as you experienced it, and the racket it has become. The former should be allowed and honored (with sale limited to face value), the latter should be outlawed and the vultures who simply drive up ticket prices put out of business.