why i go to small club shows

[acroyear]

like the birchmere, the 9:30, the state theater, etc...

tonight's Jethro Tull tickets at constitution hall start at $50 and go up to $80 for the floor.

i have yet to pay a club show price more than $35, with most being under $25 (including last night's Steve Hackett).

why the hell is it that the bigger the venue, the more expensive the price?  kinda goes against standard supply and demand economics, no?

needless-to-say, i'm not going.

sorry, Ian.

Comments

Re: I'll put it a different way for you...

[acroyear70.livejournal.com]

yeah, but my general point is that SOME of those things scale with the number of fans, others go down on average (the lighting, sound, and power requirements generally are less per fan, unless you've got a huge mass of crap like Madonna, U2, or Pink Floyd). economies of scale and all that -- you can only put so much power through so much PA before the echo effect makes it dangerous. ditto lighting -- the same lights for a 4000 seat theater like CH or Pier 6 can work with a 20,000 seat arena; the stage sizes are comparable.

really, like in all american businesses and industries, *people* are the expensive item. putting more people to a problem scales it exponentially the wrong direction compared to any other variable.

its not the lights or their power intake that are expensive; its that programming a light show to be consistent from one night to the next (something club tours don't bother to do) and able to handle a number of variations on the set list (tull have a touring repotiore of 50 songs, of which 27 are rehearsed for a tour and 22 make it into the show) is *expensive*. the guy who does that's a genius, relatively speaking, and geniuses aren't cheap. then tag in that they bring in their own lighting riggers to put it all together (again, club tours simply use the relatively primative lighting already on site) and watch the cost jump.

its not the lights themselves (those are reused too much to be expensive over time; ditto the computer and the rest of the equipment), its the people.