Hey All,
My name is Ben and I'm Beirut's manager. I'm sorry to be late on this, but I just found the discussion on here from last week regarding the Synagogue show. Apparently, some people were calling the box office there and being told the Synagogue was out of its "allotment" and they should call Ticketmaster instead. That immediately got me worried - visions of Bruce Springsteen tickets being sent to ticket merchants, which are owned by crap companies that would only be defended by the likes of Billy Corrigan danced in my head like...like Billy Corrigan dancing - not a good image.
I inquired, pretty pissed off about this happening, and the LiveNation promoter of the show figured out where the confusion lay (with the Synagogue box office) and corrected it. So, from now on, for any show that happens there, they will either tell you they (a) have tickets, (b) are out tickets for the moment but should be getting more in very soon (because the system of how they get the tickets from LiveNation is an antiquated and confusing process that results in them sometimes running out of their batch, even though more are available), or (c) that the show is sold out and there's no way of getting tickets. Referring people to TicketMaster, in my view, is shady, considering all the crap extra charges they add on. So, at least some good came out of this for everyone going to shows in DC in the future.
Of course, the response to this could be "Why did you work with LiveNation in the first place?" Fact is, however a piece of evil dung I find that company to be, they managed in a few cities to hire great people with independent promotion backgrounds to do shows there, and DC happens to be one of them (this is also true in Philadelphia and Los Angeles). I'd rather work with a proven great person who will do a fantastic job leading up to, and the day of, the show than leave something like that to chance. Do I support the TicketMaster LiveNation merger? No way in hell. Would I shed a single solitary tear if the company went down in flames? Nope, because I know the talented promoters involved would do just fine on their own.
Our plan from the start was to encourage people to buy tickets to this show directly from the box office, and to think that TicketMaster is benefiting off people's desire to see the show is a bummer. Hence the reason the above situation got us alarmed.
Please contact me in the future if anything Beirut-related seems strange or suspect. Watchdogs unite!
-ben goldberg
ba da bing
ben@badabingrecords.com
