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.