Well, I do hate them and not without reason.
I'm a university student and a Stones fan - a combination that might occure often than you might think. You wonder why you never see more of us at the concerts? - the reason is quite clear. We cannot afford the high ticket prices. If I buy a ticket for a Stones concert today, it'll take about 25% of my monthly budget. Last time there were about 50 people from my university, friends of mine that wanted to go, but they simply couldn't because they couldn't afford it.
The result of the high ticket prices is an audience that mainly consists of people that go there because it is a social event, they want to be seen at a Stones concert and they they don't go there because of the music. It's quite obvious imo that this has a very bad influence both on the crowd anticipation and on the setlist choice.
Conservativ and rather old, uninterested crowd --> same setlist without any changes as the audience does only react to overplayed hits.
If you take concerts in South America or Spain or Portugal everyone will praise how great the audience and the concert experience was - I think this is mainly due to the fact that there are lots of young people - and why? Because of the prices.
The high prices stop both the young fans and the hard core fans with limited financial resources from going to a Stones concert. That's a fact - and imo that is not what the Stones should be about. Cheaper tickets would make it harder to get tickets, but at least there would be a fair chance for everyone.
One possibility for university students: link the university database with the ticket agencies, let the university students enter their password distributed only to them and they can allocate tickets to a reduced tarif (only dreaming...)
Belgrade-Bucharest-Budapest-Brno
Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2005-12-05 17:16 by Lorenz.