old school ticket-buying experiences

GreenTeaDisease

Yes youngfolk, as recently as the 1990s, dedicated rock fans would pack up their folding chairs and sleeping bags and spend the night on the sidewalk outside of Filenes. If one were lucky, this would allow the procurement of a "wrist band" so that 2 days later, he could arrive back at the same sidewalk at 5am instead of 5pm the night before, and piss off everyone who had been there since 5pm the night before as he was royally entitled to cut them in line. Then at 10 am, when the magical doors to Filenes opened, our dedicated rock fan would join the stampede to the back of the 3rd floor children's and intimate apparel department, where a tortoise-like employee would be chit-chatting with coworkers while slightly quicker tortoise-like employees in other locations were booting up the ticket machines and dedicated rock fan considered strangling tortoise-like employee.

then dedicated rock fan would walk home in snow, uphill both ways, with no shoes.

yosi1

GreenTeaDisease wrote:

Yes youngfolk, as recently as the 1990s, dedicated rock fans would pack up their folding chairs and sleeping bags and spend the night on the sidewalk outside of Filenes. If one were lucky, this would allow the procurement of a "wrist band" so that 2 days later, he could arrive back at the same sidewalk at 5am instead of 5pm the night before, and piss off everyone who had been there since 5pm the night before as he was royally entitled to cut them in line. Then at 10 am, when the magical doors to Filenes opened, our dedicated rock fan would join the stampede to the back of the 3rd floor children's and intimate apparel department, where a tortoise-like employee would be chit-chatting with coworkers while slightly quicker tortoise-like employees in other locations were booting up the ticket machines and dedicated rock fan considered strangling tortoise-like employee.

then dedicated rock fan would walk home in snow, uphill both ways, with no shoes.

Hey, I did this as recently as the early 2000's. Both for STP and Audioslave. Not waiting overnight, but certainly getting up at the crack of dawn and waiting online for hours. And not at a ticketmaster outlet, but at the venue.

norm

wristbands??? old school is lining up when there were no wristbands....survival of the fittest.....and doing it with a broken leg (joshua tree tour, '87)

GreenTeaDisease

cutback wrote:

wristbands??? old school is lining up when there were no wristbands....survival of the fittest.....and doing it with a broken leg (joshua tree tour, '87)

yeah I just wanted to make the story longer and more complicated .

definitely did it without wrist bands at times, but if you did get a wrist band, it meant sleeping out in *2* lines.

failedpersephone

cutback wrote:

wristbands??? old school is lining up when there were no wristbands....survival of the fittest.....and doing it with a broken leg (joshua tree tour, '87)

hahahahaa wristbands were also an invitation to crack the back of a younger weaker fan and snag their wristband...Orange trumps Green!!!

jamie uk

Come on, old skool was getting a bus at 6 am, six months before the concert!! To travel 50 miles, and get in a line for tickets. Where you waited 3 hours for the box office to open, 2 hours for the lady to process the tix for the 100 people in front of you, then collect £4.50 cash from each of your pals, to hand over in exchange for the most awesome, incredible piece of paper you ever held in your hands, a ticket for Iron Maiden, World Slavery Tour 1984.
A real coming of age experience, and a lot less terrifying than the next one was to be :eek:

tybird

Remember mailing in your 10 Club ticket requests back in 2003???

Spunkie

You have to see Rock N Roll High School's version of scoring Ramone tickets.
Folding lawn chair. Bottle milk delivery. And an Indian/Scalper! he he.

Stone Is God

GreenTeaDisease wrote:

Yes youngfolk, as recently as the 1990s, dedicated rock fans would pack up their folding chairs and sleeping bags and spend the night on the sidewalk outside of Filenes. If one were lucky, this would allow the procurement of a "wrist band" so that 2 days later, he could arrive back at the same sidewalk at 5am instead of 5pm the night before, and piss off everyone who had been there since 5pm the night before as he was royally entitled to cut them in line. Then at 10 am, when the magical doors to Filenes opened, our dedicated rock fan would join the stampede to the back of the 3rd floor children's and intimate apparel department, where a tortoise-like employee would be chit-chatting with coworkers while slightly quicker tortoise-like employees in other locations were booting up the ticket machines and dedicated rock fan considered strangling tortoise-like employee.

then dedicated rock fan would walk home in snow, uphill both ways, with no shoes.

Did that for PJ a couple of times along with Godsmack once with the worst hangover possible. Worth it for that show. 2nd row on the left hand side of the stage at the Tweeter.

I miss that outlet in Macy's.

GreenTeaDisease

tybird wrote:

Remember mailing in your 10 Club ticket requests back in 2003???

hahaha I was so STRESSED!!!!! you had to have separate envelopes for each show (I was going to 7), I was organizing them for 2 different fan club numbers, and you have to buy separate money orders for each one! Of course I could only do this on a saturday, so the post office was packed...it was madness!

olderman

GreenTeaDisease wrote:

hahaha I was so STRESSED!!!!! you had to have separate envelopes for each show (I was going to 7), I was organizing them for 2 different fan club numbers, and you have to buy separate money orders for each one! Of course I could only do this on a saturday, so the post office was packed...it was madness!

i remember. it seemed like a hassle and i only ordered one show. i would have screwed up something if i ordered as many as you ordered.

Allie

I never waited for a wristband, but I remember having to go to the mall to get tickets, at the little booth--it was called something else, before there was Ticketmaster? I can't remember what it was called.?
Does anybody remember that? (from NY?)

And I remember when concerts were like $20! And movies were $2.50 during the day! :eek:

I sound like the 'old folks' now.. 'back in my day....'

FinsburyParkCarrots

One day, you'll all be fighting to get into one of my gigs like that.

Brain of J.Lo

hehe, I remember back in 98 mailing off a ticket request in like April for a show that wasn't until July and then waiting waiting and waiting to find out if I got the tickets! That was my first show so I was mega-stressed about it!

shell bell

tybird wrote:

Remember mailing in your 10 Club ticket requests back in 2003???

I had to lie to get my student loan money early so I could next day mail my Missoula and MSG2 requests.Damn, those were the good old days. And for my first PJ ticket concert,I waited in line at the West Seattle Easy Street in 93.........

shell bell

oh yea,this is for those of you who went to the Key Arena show in 96.The people on the West Coast crashed the phone lines(I managed to get dressed for work,while continually hitting re-dial).I still managed to get a ticket to that show.

know1

At 16, I snuck out in the middle of the night, drove about an hour with a friend to camp out the rest of the night to get 10th row floor seats for Poison and Ratt.

They canceled the show a couple of weeks later.

rearviewmiror

I got through for the merriweather post pavilion show on the No Code tour. Then I couldnt get back into the website to claim the seats.

That whole phone thing sucked.

In 98 was in line at Ukrop's (Grocery store) to score seats for the Va Beach show. Had the back of the seated section despite being there at 12. You really needed an experienced person to get you good seats.

(Ticketron was an old ticket outlet I remember)

GreenTeaDisease

rearviewmiror wrote:

I
(Ticketron was an old ticket outlet I remember)

I think it still exists but it mostly does like theater tickets?

Jwmcc

Tickettron was gobbled up by Ticketmaster in the early 90's.
Jw

xavier mcdaniel

wow, that's old-school. i remember when they had a booth in penn station in the 1980s.

meme

Oh fine, online sales ain't that bad after all

elyse_UpHereSoHi

meme wrote:

Oh fine, online sales ain't that bad after all

I am not sure which is worse....the 5-50 minutes of heart racing, palm sweating click click click of the web sales or the long drawn out not knowing of the old school mail-in system

....the only option that doesn't suck is the one where I get a personal call from the boys saying "you are such a great fan, we are gonna hook you up with front row center tickets for life"

The Stugots

I remember when they came up with the concept of line tickets (probably late '80s early '90s). If a concert was set to go onsale on a Saturday, you show up at a participating ticket outlet sometime during that week to claim your line ticket number. Let's say 100 tickets were given out, numbered 1-100. At 945 AM they pick a random number, and that person got first crack at tickets, followed by the next number, all the way to 100, then back to 1. If #45 was picked, #44 is pretty screwed.

Jwmcc

The Stugots wrote:

I remember when they came up with the concept of line tickets (probably late '80s early '90s). If a concert was set to go onsale on a Saturday, you show up at a participating ticket outlet sometime during that week to claim your line ticket number. Let's say 100 tickets were given out, numbered 1-100. At 945 AM they pick a random number, and that person got first crack at tickets, followed by the next number, all the way to 100, then back to 1. If #45 was picked, #44 is pretty screwed.

Yeah the Yankees did that with playoff tickets for the regular public sale starting in '98 . I had pretty good luck with it except for the '99 ALCS but still got LF bleachers.
Jw

cbbjr

The Stugots wrote:

I remember when they came up with the concept of line tickets (probably late '80s early '90s). If a concert was set to go onsale on a Saturday, you show up at a participating ticket outlet sometime during that week to claim your line ticket number. Let's say 100 tickets were given out, numbered 1-100. At 945 AM they pick a random number, and that person got first crack at tickets, followed by the next number, all the way to 100, then back to 1. If #45 was picked, #44 is pretty screwed.

I remember trying to game that system. My friends and I would go up and get a ticket at different times to try to ensure that our numbers would be spread out. Then one day the ticket guy picked my number to be first in line for a Rage Against the Machine Show. It was great, particularly when a bunch of people who were there came up to me and offered a great deal of money to also buy seats for them (the ticket limit was 20 or something ridiculous like that).

SVRDhand13

its threads like these that make me realize how much of a PJ noob I am.

the tickets i bought were off of ebay.

Zanne

This one experience I want to share isn't as old skool as some of your stories, but the outcome was awesome..

1994, drove about 2.5 hours to the Fillmore in S.F. to get in line for a ticket lottery to see Eric Clapton. Myself and one friend split up to increase our chances as they were doing blocks of 50 people at a time for tickets. As it turned out, we were both in blocks that were called.. limit was two per person, so we ended up with four and got to bring a couple friends. Tickets cost 27.50 each and were only available at the venue. They limited it to something like 500 people and encouraged people to smoke (weird, huh?) because they were filming and wanted a certain ambiance (a small smoky venue). I never did hear of a video put out from that show, but that's ok with me because I was there! YAY! The show took place some months later on November 8th, 1994.

Peace

rhinomagic

How about calling an 1-800 number in '95/'96 for PJ tickets?

Or remember when we mailed 3x5 cards to Ten Club with a money order enclosed?

Those were the days!

.

joebot

Yeah I remember for that '96 tour I had to call the 800 number and then had to pick the tix up at Yankee Stadium, those tix looked really cool. I wish I still had the stubs.
I did the mail order 10c tix.
Does anyone remember if they were guaranteed, I got the tickets I sent out for but what if they weren't available, did they send your money order back ?
Always curious about that.

tkepearljamn

2 gallons of jungle juice + a backpack + a thirsty line + 10 pizzas from the pizza place I worked at = front row ben folds tickets at Illinois State University