Ticket Paranoia!
Staring at the glowing screen with sweaty palms as your heart palpitates; refreshing the screen every second waiting to see that magical “Buy Tickets” button; constantly glancing at the time, moving as slow as Elmer’s glue; it’s all back. This ritualistic stress has returned as we sit on the brink of Phish’s first ticket on-sale weekend in five years. This time, it’s not just three shows, but an eleven show run over two days.
The nerves always become a bit tense in the 24 hours leading up to the moment, as you try to devise the perfect strategy to succeed. Maybe you should open three windows at once? Maybe you should drive a few states away to a random outlet and score in person? Maybe you should try to keep the agent on the phone for the right amount of time? Maybe you should go into work early on a Saturday morning to use their fast Internet connection on multiple computers? Maybe you should split up the shows with your friends and all try for a separate one? The options are endless, and the irony is that there is no clear cut “best way” to score tickets in this age. This fact makes the game all the more fun to play!
Ticket paranoia- it can be paralyzing! As you lie in bed the night before or sit at work waiting for the few hours to pass, your mind can become numb. All of a sudden, you find yourself unable to perform any tasks other than refreshing the browser and your mind becomes obsessively one-tracked. Thinking about, let alone accomplishing, anything else can sometimes be straight up impossible. Maybe that’s where you’re at right now.
As the time approaches, the butterflies flutter a bit faster while your heart rate begins to steadily increase as if you were exercising. Refresh. The clock says 9:57. Thoughts of Phish, the joys of summer, the warm air in the amphitheatre, the first set under the fading sun, the long carefree drives. The clock still says 9:57. Damn! Refresh. This type of pattern continues for the next three minutes- however it seems like three hours- before that :59 finally turns to :00.
10:00. Now the adrenaline kicks in, as you try your best to control your mouse-clicking finger, making sure you do things briskly, yet carefully. At this point, your nerves and adrenaline can actually work against your fine motor skills; your body becomes momentarily discombobulated. But you push through, overcoming as you must. Damn! You can’t read that security word- “Why the hell do they make them so hard to read?” you wonder. You ask for another code word, thinking that this step could be your demise, or mean the difference between a great seat or a lawn seat. Quickly you type in “design” and “snowbank” as quickly as possible while wondering how the hell they choose these random words. You finally click “Enter.” Your waiting time is less than 2 minutes. Two minutes!! You begin cursing in your mind, letting one or two leak out of your mouth. That wheel is spinning forever! Around and around and around and around, then all of a sudden your wait time jumps down to “less than a minute.” “Let’s go, let’s go, let’s GO!”, you think to yourself, waiting for that ticket page to appear. YES!! Like a shaft of light shining on you from above, time stands still as the next screen appears -”Section 103, Row G, Seats 23, 24.” Booyakasha! A hundred pound weight lifted off of your head, and your anxiety turns to momentary glory.
There is no time to rest, you have one minute and thirty seconds to complete a couple more steps. Payment. Since we haven’t ordered tickets in years, maybe you no longer have your credit card number memorized, so you lay it beside your keyboard. Looking back and forth between every four numbers, you carefully type in the digits. Then the expiration. Then the code. Finally, the shipping. You know this info by heart and you breeze through, recheck it all and submit your order. Finally, you can relax.
But this time there is no time to rest with seven shows going on sale! Then four Saturday morning. You’ve got to get your nose directly back to the cyber-grindstone and go for the gold. Today, all of this will take place on foreign territory- Live Nation. For years, fans have cursed Ticketmaster for any and every reason, but we all got very used to their website. We no longer needed to look for anything on the screen. This time through, with a poor user interface, your guess is as good as mine as to how this will turn out. Live Nation may crash and error out orders with the high demand for all we know- even Ticketmaster did that sometimes.
But with all the different shows going on sale at the same time, the demand will hopefully be dispersed enough to ensure that many people can hook up some stubs. With the likely ability to only score a couple of shows, I foresee a lot more online ticket trading before the beginning of June. In the end, if you passionately want to go to any of the shows this summer, besides Asheville and The Fox, your will will get you in. Just don’t give up, and for God’s sake, don’t stay home because you don’t have a ticket! This may be against Phish’s “advised polices,” but if you haven’t found a ticket yet, and you really want one bad enough, you will find one on the lot. Just get there early enough and scour like a madman! Don’t stand like a statue with your finger in the air. It simply comes down to desire.
Best of luck to all in the newest version of the ticket game; this is only the beginning!
Share today’s ticket stories in Comments!
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DOWNLOAD OF THE DAY:
9.14.99 BSU Pavilion, Boise, ID < LINK
9.14.99 Boise, ID
Due to all of yesterday’s talk around this epic show, it has jumped to the top of the pile for today’s download. Celebrate whatever tickets you get with one of the most exciting Phish sets of ’99. Only two words needed here– “Bag,” and “Gumbo.” Enjoy the weekend!
I: Chalk Dust Torture, The Sloth, The Curtain > Waste, Loving Cup, What’s the Use > Wading in the Velvet Sea, Farmhouse, Nellie Cane, Taste, Rocky Top
II: Peaches en Regalia, AC/DC Bag > Gumbo > Down with Disease, Frankenstein
E: Simple, Hello My Baby
Tags: Culture, Summer '09, Tickets
Just got an email that my Hampton tickets were printed and will ship!
35 freakin days can’t go by quickly enough……
I scored 6 tickets for camden lawnseats in the presale and then this morning got throuhgh live nation online a good while after 11 and got 4 tickets for the lawn in pittsburgh! I can hardly contain myself! The only thing that separates me from phish is about 17 weeks and 15 credits…cant phucking wait!!!
Like it or not, people are always going to buy tickets through scalpers and brokers (unless, as I posted earlier, the margin is destroyed and Phish ends up being the bad guy… but that’s nearly as unlikely).
but…
Ticket brokers sell the unsold tickets on a consignment basis to some of those scalpers in the lot… I wonder what it takes to get that job?
“Sorry, bossman. It was nightmare out there. I had to unload them for face just to stay afloat. And even that was slow going. Nobody would play ball… a nightmare, I’m telling you. Here’s your 85%”
Though this is probably how you wind up with broken kneecaps…
fox > alpine secured! what a clusterfuck this morning though. using the LN website was absolutely miserable.
Random thought…I’m looking at the tour dates and they could totally throw in a Cincy show the day after the Fox. Cincy is 6 hrs. from STL and 5 hrs from Star Lake. Just an idea. Carry on…
is absolutely anyone willing to sell me a ticket to the fox show?
^ There’s a lot more dates they could throw in besides Cincy.
^^^ Where do I sign up for that job? I’ll take the broken kneecaps and hand out tickets to everyone for garlic grilled cheese sammys and hugs.
^^ How much did that other guy want for his? Like 350$??
Phishmna!!! check your email!!!!
Lonesome Cowboy Bill!!!!
So, shut out of hampton mail order, shut out of hampton online. Shut out of Deer Creek, Alpine, Asheville and Knoxville via mail order, now shut out again online for Asheville, and the Fox. Trying for K-town tomorrow. If anyone has two Asheville or two Fox’s for FACE (I know, I know…it’s worth a shot) please email me. I’ve never had to try this hard just to get no tickets.
Sooo Bummed… Shut out of hampton and summer tour presale and my POS computer wouldn’t let me get any from those LN bastards. Guess I’m gonna try calling tomorrow for knoxville tix. What Phish needs to do is have half the tix sold through presale!!
Like everyone here, I had a crazy morning on LiveNation.Com and on the phoneline. I must said “Bu Tickets” 110x into the phone today. After being thrown in and out of queues, having server errors and time-outs in the ticket buy section (all these instances happening several times), I had gone beyond frustration. I tried different browsers – Firefox, Explorer, Avant and Safari, but nothing seemed to give me luck. As the 11:30 EST approached and my hair began to fall out, I had to give up, for I had to pick my daughter at school and teach her how to ski for the afternoon. I went out to my car to warm it up and as I was about to leave, my wife told me I had until 12:30, which gave me a few extra minutes burning my eyes out on the computer screen. I went back to the computer to give it one more heave-ho and voila -2 tickets for both nights at Jones Beach. This went down around 11:50 EST – almost two hours after tickets went on sale. So, the moral of the story? I don’t know – perhaps keep the faith tomorrow and let those retinas burn. (sorry for the double post)
“is absolutely anyone willing to sell me a ticket to the fox show?”
…TicketsNow will.
im trying for something other then ticketsnow mans, and i trying for something under $300, perferably under $200
Live Nation has a phone number you can call for tickets??
Sorry to go off the ticket topic but I just remembered something:
I know there’s hope for a Phish provided simulcast for Hampton but a casual Phish fan of mine posed an interesting question to me the other day.
How long before the Phish tapers figure out how to broadcast their recordings in (close to) real time?
Now I’m no techie, but he made the point that with devices like the iPhone might just have enough bandwidth to pull off a broadcast like this with some custom apps in conjunction with WinAmp’s shoutcast…
I’m just saying. Has anyone heard of anyone trying to figure this out? (The future!!)
I have 15 Star Lake to trade for anything at Hampton.
I think blaming the band for this is silly. They are using the same outlets that the whole industry uses. I think summer tour was an honest attempt to avoid ticketmaster. What happened this morning seemed like an overloaded server. And YES I do think there are a lot more people getting into Phish than there were 4-5 years ago.
So if Phish decides to take all of this into their own hands, wouldn’t that be another big responsibility that they have to take on, which is one of the things that led to their breakup in the first place?
This won’t last forever. I’m willing to bet fall tour will be much easier, it always is.
LiveNation phone number: 800-431-3462 Good luck though, I never could get through on the phone this morning on LN. It rings now but says the ticket allotment is sold out (obviously). Good luck all tomorrow!!! I am not going to any shows that are onsale tomorrow, but will be trying for tix to post for face here and on PT. Will try to help out the cause. I hate knowing some poeple are in it for the dough.
Blaming it on the band is stupid.
Tanman – thanks.
I have 4 Camden lawns. Need 4 Great Woods. jrosenquest@hotmail.com
Booookkkkkaaaaakkkkkyyyyyyyyy
God never listens, to what I say!!
I
Numbers for tomorrow:
LN – 800-431-3462 (given on LN website)
LN – 877-598-8703 (on automated services at Alpine Valley Phone #) only use this for Alpine valley
Knoxville tickets:
(865) 656-4444 or (877) 995-9961
Try calling tonight and get acquainted with phone system
i’ll just pot this one last time for today, anyone want to sell me a fox ticket for under $200 bucks? i could get you 2 tickets for both night to alpine (lawn) or/and 2 tickets to knoxvlle