I totally agree with All the legit complaints about the stage height. I am not to tall to begin with so unless its first few rows on the floor I am not interested. I love a mid range elevated seat where I can see the whole stage including the the stage floor.

Also any chance I can, I love 1st row balcony, nobody in front of me, if i feel like sitting for a spell during a slow song I dont miss anything.

I seriously hope they won't use this stage in Europe.
It's too small and boring for massive stadiums such as Stade de France and San Siro.
Mick and the boys always legitimized high ticket prices with huge stages and terrific shows. Now the prices are higher than ever before, and the stage is the most boring thing they've ever come up with. For the current ticket prices I expect something more than a little circus tent with a catwalk.

It's unlikely they'll bother designing an intricate stage for 15 dates...For the five 50th concerts they justified the high ticket prices with the fact that the stage had cost 1 million ($/£/€ ?) to design and that they didn't have many concerts to amortize it...then they reused it for 18 shows in the US charging even more and no one complained, so they probably thought "why bother worrying about the stage? We're spending $10k/night on Taylor, that will do, thank you very much!"

Besides, hasn't Keith been complaining for years that Mick spent too much money on stage design ? -)

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IORR Links : Essential Studio Outtakes CDs : Audio - History of Rarest Outtakes : Audio



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014-03-02 18:16 by gotdablouse.

Keith has never complained about too much money spent ...but he always said he preferred a simple stage this has always said Keith !I personally am happy to see a simple stage in this Tour, and it does not seem small for the Stadium..see inflatable dolls, special effects, giant towers, flames, was just pathetic ...

Wrong, he's often commented that he thought Mick spent too much money on the "show", the implication being that it was not needed as they were musicians, etc...the first time may have been in 1975 when Mick wanted to bring elephants on stage, hehe...

Obviously no one needs inflatable stuff but the current stage does look rather shabby, the HP stage struck a good balance I think, the "wrapping" screens were particularly effective, no such thing here based on the pictures I've seen, the square screen vs the round "fire" design is lame.

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IORR Links : Essential Studio Outtakes CDs : Audio - History of Rarest Outtakes : Audio



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014-03-03 01:02 by gotdablouse.

If you're charging a ton of money for a nosebleed ticket in stadiums such as these,
you better provide a spectacular show. A stadium rock show isn't only about music.

I agree on the stage. I was at Hyde Park and didn't particularly like it there, and it was weird in Tokyo. The stage itself is very high. This is better for people farther back on the floor as they will be able to see a bit more easily, but it creates quite a bit of distance from the crowd, as the front row needs to be back far enough to see. I would prefer a B-Stage to the catwalk because only Mick really uses it. Also, for those expecting to see Ronnie and Keith use those side ramps, you may be disappointed. At the first Tokyo show, they were pretty much anchored to the center of the stage.

Quote
The Worst.
I seriously hope they won't use this stage in Europe.
It's too small and boring for massive stadiums such as Stade de France and San Siro.
Mick and the boys always legitimized high ticket prices with huge stages and terrific shows.

No they haven't. I've never heard from them about the reason for high ticket prices. In fact, the Voodoo Lounge stage was one of the most spectacular stages ever, they had three of them being transported about in what was it, "150 trucks" or whatever they used to brag about. Still ticketprices were not even half of what they are now.

Other than that you're right of course. The reason they haven't had Fisher studios (I assume they are still at the job without the late Mark Fisher) design a spectacular stadium stage is because it's too expensive for just the few stadiumsize shows.

Why don't they do more shows? Because all the large worldtour acts in 40.000+ venues are essentially over, for all artists. There's no market anymore for all those shows in stadiums. Actually with the Stones in 2007 already this had come to an end. In 2006 lots of shows on the continent were cancelled (Keith' health was just one reason), and in 2007 many stadium shows were done along the long side of the field, thus decreasing the capacity ergo make the stadium look less empty.

It's not that stadiums can't be filled up anymore, it's that acts (or better still, promotors since the acts themselves have a guaranteed income) want to maximise profit. For example a 40.000 stadium would justify avarage ticketprices of 50 Euro. Which would lead to 2.000.000 revenue.
With avarage prices of 100 however, they'd probably only sell say 60% of the tickets. This would make a 2.400.000 revenue. Easy as that. It's better to not sell out. We've seen this happen with the Stones' 2006 and 2007 European tours.

Now let's say one can sell out 15.000 capacity arenas with avarage ticketprices of 200 Euros. You'd earn 3.000.000 and production costs are way less because you don't need a mammoth stage and you don't need the 150 trucks...

What would they do? Easy. They'd only have a nice arena stage designed. And for the few big gigs they still do, they either use the festival stage at hand (i.e. Glastonbury, Hyde Park, Pinkpop...) or set up a cheap stage. The last option was already done in South America and Australia in 2006.

Re. using festival stages: the Stones have hardly played any festival since the early seventies. They either bring all their own stuff or they don't come at all. Since 1989 musically they've never felt comfortable outside their own comfortzone which was created and custom made by Fisher. Furthermore they were too proud for the festival circuit.

So why are they doing all these festivals all of a sudden? Because it's the only way they can still play massive crowds.

Quote
Limbostone

Quote
The Worst.
I seriously hope they won't use this stage in Europe.
It's too small and boring for massive stadiums such as Stade de France and San Siro.
Mick and the boys always legitimized high ticket prices with huge stages and terrific shows.

No they haven't. I've never heard from them about the reason for high ticket prices. In fact, the Voodoo Lounge stage was one of the most spectacular stages ever, they had three of them being transported about in what was it, "150 trucks" or whatever they used to brag about. Still ticketprices were not even half of what they are now.

Other than that you're right of course. The reason they haven't had Fisher studios (I assume they are still at the job without the late Mark Fisher) design a spectacular stadium stage is because it's too expensive for just the few stadiumsize shows.

Why don't they do more shows? Because all the large worldtour acts in 40.000+ venues are essentially over, for all artists. There's no market anymore for all those shows in stadiums. Actually with the Stones in 2007 already this had come to an end. In 2006 lots of shows on the continent were cancelled (Keith' health was just one reason), and in 2007 many stadium shows were done along the long side of the field, thus decreasing the capacity ergo make the stadium look less empty.

It's not that stadiums can't be filled up anymore, it's that acts (or better still, promotors since the acts themselves have a guaranteed income) want to maximise profit. For example a 40.000 stadium would justify avarage ticketprices of 50 Euro. Which would lead to 2.000.000 revenue.
With avarage prices of 100 however, they'd probably only sell say 60% of the tickets. This would make a 2.400.000 revenue. Easy as that. It's better to not sell out. We've seen this happen with the Stones' 2006 and 2007 European tours.

Now let's say one can sell out 15.000 capacity arenas with avarage ticketprices of 200 Euros. You'd earn 3.000.000 and production costs are way less because you don't need a mammoth stage and you don't need the 150 trucks...

What would they do? Easy. They'd only have a nice arena stage designed. And for the few big gigs they still do, they either use the festival stage at hand (i.e. Glastonbury, Hyde Park, Pinkpop...) or set up a cheap stage. The last option was already done in South America and Australia in 2006.

Re. using festival stages: the Stones have hardly played any festival since the early seventies. They either bring all their own stuff or they don't come at all. Since 1989 musically they've never felt comfortable outside their own comfortzone which was created and custom made by Fisher. Furthermore they were too proud for the festival circuit.

So why are they doing all these festivals all of a sudden? Because it's the only way they can still play massive crowds.

Yes they have.
[www.telegraph.co.uk]

The stage in Abud Dhabi seems to me the long awaited (what ever that means) outdoor stage for bigger events or bigger places. To me it seemed logical that the tonguepit stage does not make sense for bigger outdoor places. However this new design is much to high and mostlikely when people have seats like in Tokyo, Adelaide, Macedon those will be further away. Still the catwalk seems to split the stage where one can hardly see on the other side.

the tonguepit stage is still working and for all Arenashows in Australia or Macau and Shanghai it will be this stage like last year and in 2012 during all areanashows.

I hope that there will be a mix of outdoor places and arena shows in Europe to get both ends. To me it seems that parts of this outdoor show may be from Hyde Park as that seemed the cheapest and easiest version and just get a tent over it

Quote
The Worst.

Quote
Limbostone

Quote
The Worst.
I seriously hope they won't use this stage in Europe.
It's too small and boring for massive stadiums such as Stade de France and San Siro.
Mick and the boys always legitimized high ticket prices with huge stages and terrific shows.

No they haven't.

Yes they have.
[www.telegraph.co.uk]

Oh I'm sorry. But surely they're not planning on charging the O2-prices for the outdoor shows this summer are they?

But then again, a field ticket for a BtB show in 1999 cost me about 40 euros. That was one huge production and stage. They were certainly not maximising profit and minimizing effort then, the way they are doing it by now.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2014-03-03 14:56 by Limbostone.

why do we concentrate on stage design, when we would like to hear good music during a concert with some lightning accomplishing the songs and if needed big video screens. Do we really need more?
For my taste the BtB was the most desastrous stage which made the Stones to little gnomes in between steel.

Oh no, for me, the BtB stage was one of the reasons I became interested in the Stones as a touring band! It somehow proved they were the biggest, most extreme, boundary breaking band in the world... They just put down their castle for one day anywhere they seemed fit. And musically, they were up to it. Watch Keith in Bremen, 1998. Those were MY Stones!

Quote
Limbostone
Oh no, for me, the BtB stage was one of the reasons I became interested in the Stones as a touring band! It somehow proved they were the biggest, most extreme, boundary breaking band in the world... They just put down their castle for one day anywhere they seemed fit. And musically, they were up to it. Watch Keith in Bremen, 1998. Those were MY Stones!

Good for you on those times, good for me for now times

The australian promoter had said, that for the stadium show in Auckland, they would used the big stage they used in the Hyde Park concert, in an even more large scale. So i think the same will happen for every stadium show in Europe (ofcourse if there will be any more stadium shows, and if the whole european leg doesn't cancelled).

The Bridges to Babylon stage was SUPERB !! The best Stones stage ever, and one of the best rock concert stages ever !!