AND YOU THOUGHT THE JOHN VARVATOS ADS SUCKED

Say what you will about Axl Rose, but last year, his hardcore fans were rewarded for their infinite patience (rimshot!) with a pre-sale password for his revamped Guns N’ Roses’ four nights at the Hammerstein Ballroom in New York (a wwwaaayyy smaller venue that a band of such magnitude usually plays) that was given out free to anyone who registered with GN’R fan site Here Today, Gone To Hell. Velvet Revolver could learn a lesson from their former bandmate: now that they’re getting ready to hit the road for an eleven date warm-up tour at some very small venues, they’ve rewarded all their loyal fans with… a pre-sale password that was available only after shelling out almost fifty bucks to join the band’s official fan club (that’s almost equal to the price of the tickets themselves, by the way)- and that’s to say nothing of the V.I.P. packages made avail for close to two-hundred bucks a ticket. Swell.

Needless to say, these shows sold-out very fast, and a lot of VR fans- including yours truly- got left out in the cold; in fact, I was on TicketBastard’s website at 11:58 a.m., two full minutes before the tickets went on sale, just hitting the “refresh” button over and over and over again until noon, and… the tickets were already sold out. HUH? How the fuck did the show sell out the very second they went on sale?

This isn’t the first time this has happened: Tool, Nine Inch Nails, Audioslave, and A Perfect Circle have all done “intimate” warm-up gigs here in NYC over the past few years, and all of these shows have been “sold out” before they even went on sale. Presumably these gigs end up being populated by fans of means who are willing/able to pay scalpers (which is, admittedly, what I may end up doing to see VR in such a small setting) and music industry types- in other words, not really the fans that keep these dudes in business.

With VR, especially, this seems like a real slap in the face to the band’s fans, seeing as they’re supposed to be an authentic down n’ dirty rock n’ roll band. And while some might say this was clearly the work of evil business managers and suits and the band had nothing to do with it, I’ve never bought that bands could be so ignorant of their own ticket prices unless it’s an incredibly willful ignorance- I mean, Mick Jagger has to know that no one who makes less than a hundred grand a year can afford to re-mortgage their home to come see him, right?

Score another point for corporate rock.

-AR