Do you enjoy ass-raping your fans? If your answer is "no", than please
someone
tell me how you are justifying charging upwards of $200 for your latest tour (a pair of tickets costs $464). As of this writing, there are still 13th row tickets available for an upcoming show in Chicago. It used to be tickets to Aerosmith were impossible to get, now you have to skip your car payment to attend the show. According to a recent video message posted by Joe Perry he talked about how great the recent Rock N' Roll Hall of Fame was because fans were allowed to be there. It changed the atmosphere of the event and the stuffiness went out the window and in came a breath of fresh air for a ceremony that may never be repeated. So why limit the majority of your fans from attending your shows? You do realize that when you charge what you are charging you alienate your core fans and open your arms to corporate suits who couldn't name you ten Beatles songs, let alone ten Aerosmith songs. Yeah, I know there is a $35 lawn ticket, but after service fee's its way past $50, for a lawn ticket. Even if they were playing theaters, these prices would be insulting. Not even AC/DC charged these prices when they returned to the road last year and they had a seven year absence from the road. You guys have come so often and played the same songs over and over again is there anyone who hasn't seen you?It's not as if you guys are hurting for money. You have a huge contract from Sony, you've grossed hundreds of millions of dollars between 1997 and 2007 and you have a Guitar Hero game that grossed $50 million in its first three months of release. I understand that you guy got screwed on your publishing and basically snorted any and all money you ever made between 1973 and 1986, but $200 for the best seats is ridiculous. I love you guys, think you're underrated, I think the Geffen years are spectacular and despite my reservations, the September 2007 show I caught in Chicago was spectacular. However, there were quite a few empty seats at that show and the top ticket price was $130. If you couldn't get 12,000 people to attend the show in Chicago (the third largest concert market in the US), how many people do you think you will get at prices ranging from $89 to $200 (before fees)?
You guys toured in ten different calendar years between 1997 and 2007 (taking only 2000 off and even then there were a few scattered international dates that year). 2008 was the first full year you guys had off in quite some time and they couldn't even finish a new studio record. To make matters worse, your co-headline jaunt with ZZ Top doesn't have the Texas threesome playing either show in the Chicago market. Yet, tickets are higher than they are in other markets. For a band who saturated the market with their live show, you would think that every ticket would be $75 and under. I want to like you, I want to see you, I want you guys to rock my socks off, but these prices are pure greed.
Until you guys remove a certain body part from my ass, I won't be seeing you live any time soon and neither will the next generation of music fans.
Anthony Kuzminski is a Chicago based writer and Special Features Editor for the antiMusic Network and his daily writings can be read at The Screen Door and can be contacted at thescreendoor AT gmail DOT com.
