HummerOfIntenseEvil

They're doing headline gigs in Liverpool, London and "Wulverhampton" (Ipecac's spelling, not mine) on the 25th, 26th and 27th of November. 16.50 a ticket.

I considered going to London to see Fantomas 3 years ago, and the tickets were about 30 then. I only ended up not going since I was already committed to Leeds festival the next day. Reckon I'll go this time.

Mind you, a return ticket for the train is 54.80...

So what they're saying is, students only listen to music you can buy in Asda or J. Sainsbury's Ltd? (I daresay they have compilations with the older songs on them available at 9.97). To be honest, that's like a playlist for Firewater or Garage, so they're (unfortunatley) probably not far off the mark.

It shouldn't be though. It used to be good' date=' vital even, and i wish it was like that again. It was decent even as recently as 2001 but for the odd Andrew WK. But we can only dream when they continue to says things like the Fratellis album is "the most important album you could own".[/quote']

The poster for that album is all over the subway stations in Glasgow. It's fucking ridiculous. To highlight how great they really are, the album the posters replaced was: Sandie Thom. I can't see NME ever improving, they'll always be so obsessed with finding the latest "essential" band that they'll never stop trying to hype up any old shite, and with the majority of their readership being people who see music as something to play in the background to their mundane lives than someting to challenge them, it'll only get worse. They have to pander to the type of idiots who think Channel 4 put on great bands so they're too scared of losing that audience that they'll never try saying "hey, this is different, but you might just like it..." I daresay their writers really DO like the shite they write about too. It should just be stopped. Now.

Should it not be considered that maybe' date=' the industry doesn't really want to stop ticket touting? Look at how it works - if touts buy all the non-refundable tickets up, then the promoter is guaranteed their money. If they now have to process refunds, nothing will be a guarantee anymore - which is bound to have a knock-on effect on risks being taken.

They could restrict the selling of tickets to face value plus a little bit on top - but surely touts would then just operate through a foreign service - ebay.ie, anyone? And of course, that won't stop touting outside venues - so what use is it?

The only way to really stop touting is to print names on tickets, allow name changes up to an hour before the performance (but not refunds, given the consequences of allowing them) and demand mandatory ID to use the tickets. All of which increases the cost of tickets - meaning that we'll be be back to where we started beforehand.

My prediction : nothing will change.[/quote']

Exactly. Apart from the gig-going public, no one actually gives a shit what happens as long as money is being exchanged.

Perhaps the artists themselves could do something to help? I'm not entirely sure what, but presumably after the people who don't get tickets - or have to pay extortionate prices for them - the artists are the next most concerned party. After all, if folk start getting put off gigs because of touts' prices, or the only people turning up are people with money but no real appreciation for the music, a band's gigs are going to become really boring to play. So it's in their interests to ensure their fans aren't getting shafted.

One idea (although not entirely feasible): tickets are only sold to fan club members (free membership of course). Admission to the fan club depends on going through stringent measures to prove you're a genuine fan and not just someone wanting easy access to tickets, and tickets are limited to two per fan club member. A bit like the NIN fan club then, except free. It would mean having to be joined to the fan club of every single band you possibly think you might want to see though, and you're possibly a bit fucked if it's a band you're only just getting into.

Any better ideas?

Of course, we could just wait till the government pushes through ID cards and use them - rather than having tickets, you'd just get your ID card scanned and the venue's database would match you to the list of people who are registered as having bought tickets...

Actually there is a risk with ALL artists.

EG.. you book Oasis for 3 nights at the SECC.... put them onsale online and expect the whole lot to go in a day....

Say the first night (Saturday) sells straight away and the sunday does pretty well but the monday is slow....

You then have to advertise the shows and if you`ve not got anything in budget then you are eating into the profits...

NOTHING is cut n dried....

ross

I knew I should have kept that as "there's surely no risk..."

There's nothing wrong with a bit of discrimination with regards to musical tastes - it's such a personal thing that it really can be quite indicitive of a person's personality, and it's quite an important factor if music is a big part of your life. Although I wouldn't dream of stopping being friends with someone just because I found out they liked Dirty Pretty Things, I can tell from experience that if someone is into bands that I absolutely detest, I'm hardly going to be spending hours discussing music with them. If I tried, I'd probably end up being rather insulting since it's something I have strong views about, so it's best to keep my mouth closed in such situations, especially if the other person's life revolves around (shit) music.

Fool: "What do you think of The Automatic then? I love them."

Me: "Anyone who likes them should die because they're quite clearly a cunt. No offence, like."

Fool: "Oh. Erm... Nice day, isn't it?"

I get along best with people who have similar music taste, so it stands to reason that I'm going to shun someone I don't yet know who likes music that I consider to be appalling.

Actually, my best mate John hates just about every band I like, so all of the above is possibly bollocks. Or it only applies to people who are really into their music. And it's all similarly true/false about peope's tastes in films and comedy. But now I'm just describing common interests really.

But once you give legitimate fans the chance to return their tickets ' date='everyone else IS a tout, which makes it easier for Ebay etc to crack down on them (which they damn well should)[/quote']

I forgot to add, I thought your idea was pretty good

Let's face it though, eBay will never EVER crack down on touts without some form of legislation forcing their hand - the profit margins from concert tickets sold for 2357945897124741.73 are too tempting for them to ignore.

Bastards...

It is a fairly widespread situation that the promoter takes the risk to make very little profit from the final 10% but will absorb 100% of losses if something doesn`t work..

Chances are it'll mean that promoters will be slightly less willing to take on a show unless they are certain that it will recoup.....

To be fair though' date=' there's no risk in booking someone like Morrissey or putting on a high-profile festival, and these are the kind of tickets that suddenly appear on eBay for 100% markup seconds after "selling out".

"The vast majority of people selling online are selling for personal reasons, normally because they cannot attend an event," he said.

I hope the man who said this doesn't HONESTLY believe his own bullshit.

Touting football tickets in England and Wales is prohibited under criminal law. Surely there can be some law against reselling concert tickets over face value? I'm pretty sure touting is supposed to be illegal in Scotland already mind, and I've yet to see a policeman outside a concert making an easy arrest. What they should do is make it illegal to sell tickets for more than face value, then police this by going on eBay every now and again and winning the ticket auctions. Then instead of sending a cheque, send a bobby round to their door and nick them. They wouldn't fucking bother though.

What I find hilarious, however, are the touts who say they are doing people a service, because they're "selling tickets to people who couldn't get originally". THEY COULDN'T GET THEM BECAUSE TWATS LIKE YOU BOUGHT THEM ALL UP IN THE FIRST PLACE!!!

Has anyone ever heard a tout outside a gig who WASN'T English?

Ahh, if only the BBC would put Friday/Saturday Night Armistace on DVD. It was utterly fantastic, especially the time they broke into the Blue Peter Garden and filled the time capsule with porn mags and stuff, for a truer representation of 90s kids' lifestyles.

They could do worse than put This Morning With Richard Not Judy on DVD too. I daresay neither will happen though.

I just read on wikipedia that he produced The Mary Whitehouse Experience too! That's another programme they should put out on DVD.

Fact: Iannuci has the only existing Alan Partridge Facemask in his possession.

Not as good at being Scottish though:jester:

I'm sure a couple of them could give Nigel Quashie a run for his money in that respect

Don't get why one girl had nipples drawn on her top and one with a penis-shaped wobbly hairband thing. Kiddies night out and all.

I'm wanting to be in it next year for sure.

Make sure you think of the kiddies if you do then - no one wants to see a fanny or cock.

Me and my mate were sure we read last year that the throwing of coinage was banned - this wasn't the case then?

A few points:

Scotland would perhaps lose out financially because nobody has heard of it. Oddly' date=' even well-educated foreigners use the term England to describe the whole of the UK.[/quote']

You're confusing "well educated foreigners" with Yanks there. Everyone knows their geography lessons extend to "Engerland is made up of Britain, Whales, Scotchland and Northern IRA-Land".

It's hard to see what would Scotland would do if they went independent.

Whatever Norway have done, as well as concentrating more on our high-fat dietry issues perhaps (England couldn't give a fuck - they don't even HAVE macaroni pies).

They would have to take out huge loans based on future oil/gas revenues I think to pay for the sudden increases in spending they'd need to boost eduction and health levels.

Everyone knows Gordon Brown already has Britain lending stupid amounts of money, and our education system is far superior to England's already, without ANY more money being spent on it.

And taking the entire UK economsy into accont, being something like a trillion doallr economy or thereabouts, oil is not so huge an input, in the 70's for example, the cost of council housing alone soaked up most of the oil revenue.

I dunno about that, but I DO know that without Scottish oil, England would be crying themselves to sleep. Probably.

He won the world cup with Brazil who were definitely not favourites at the beginning of the tournament and who had pretty much no defence.

To be fair, even Aberdeen would have gotten to at least the quarter finals of that particular World Cup...

Well, maybe.

Dont hold back Hummer:laughing:

Ahem...

I actually deleted several "fucking"s just before I pressed submit

It brings back annoying images of people trying to get things for cheap for ridiculous reasons when I worked in a shop. People just like my mum in fact...

Why on earth would it be the shop assistant that's being unreasonable? No one was MAKING you buy it.

I actually can't believe you asked for a pound off - are your resources so low that the difference between 7 and 6 has such an impact on your bank balance? Displays such as that just perpetuate the myth that Aberdonian's are tight-fisted bastards.

If you're getting CDs for less than a pound per CD, you're already doing very fucking well.

What was the box set anyway?

That's the kind of thing that's so obvious, it's ridiculous someone hasn't done it before.

Lovely stuff.

I had a look at a Morrissey website' date=' and it seems taht he has only being doing one encore song a night anyway, so he didn't cut it short due to the "crackheads".[/quote']

Aye, and it was refreshing to see the woman who reviewed it for the Evening Express didn't bother researching this at all, instead choosing to decide he only did one song cos he was pissed off. Typical EE journalism...

I was a bit bemused by the gig. I think the new album is quite good, but for some reason I just didn't get into the gig much at all, apart from the "classics" and Life Is A Pig Sty, which is just utterly brilliant. I came away feeling quite underwhelmed.

However, the next night in Stirling, he played the exact same set list, and yet the gig was 10 times better. Maybe it was cos the Albert Halls was more packed than the Music Hall was or something - even at the back you could barely move. Also someone jumping off the balcony onto a speaker and then onto the stage just inches from Moz's head possibly helped too.

I know Moz says he bases his set lists on what he feels like playing, rather than what he thinks the crowd want to hear, but as someone said, you really do need a balance. SO many classic songs left out, and Still Ill and Girlfriend In A Coma just showed how magnificent it is to hear some different Smiths songs than usual.

If he'd played Stop Me If You Think You've Heard This One Before or Speedway however, I wouldn't have found it possible to find fault with the gig. Looking forward to Glasgow anyway.

You've got to love his "I was trying to think of famous Aberdeen bands..." banter though.

Morrissey (Saturday): alright

Morrissey (sunday, in Stirling): tons better for some reason

Morrissey (thursday, Glasgow)

Killing Joke (Glasgow, next sunday)

That's all so far.

Find a 24 hour garage' date=' those things are like pilgrimages when your drunk and hungry.[/quote']

Lots of luck, considering they're shutting down garages like they're... things that should be shut down really quickly.

I saw the one in Mannofiled today all boarded up... I could barely believe it. I can now think of about 4 garages (BP ones anyway) left in the entire city.

I'm all for encouraging people to use less fuel, but this is the wrong way to go about it.

"Volvo Death Spell" look forward to hearing people's comments about our set...

For anyone who turned up expecting to see a proper "StroZZZZZZZek" set, I hope you weren't put off.

Especially not by that cheeky sod we had on keyboards/vocals

"WE ARE THE FUTURE OF MUSIC!" indeed

When I worked in Lawries in Queens Road there was one old lady in particular who I looked upon as a sort of adopted granny since my last remaining grandparent died not long before.

Some old people are ace, it's a shame their good name is tarnished by the cunts who try to push in front of people cos they think they have special rights, as well as the old "youth today!" clan.

Oooh, that'll be my mum in a few years...

i read that without reading hog's quoted bit and thought you were talking about basic instict 2.

But I WAS on about Basic Instinct 2

(ahem...)

It was actually our Richey (oooh I sound like Cilla) that found them, but http://www.myspace.com/shewantsrevenge are rather funky.

I have decided that the Giant Drag album is possibly the best thing I've heard in about 842 million years. I am listening to that and Station to Station constantly at the moment...

It's certainly made me think 2006 is going to be considerably better for music than 2005 was.

I essentially bought the album cos the girl is rather cute, but it's a fab album anyway. I was in Glasgow the night they were playing barfly, but ended up not getting to the gig

Very good for an NME band anyway. I allowed myself to buy it as I read about them in uncut or something first AGES ago, thus I can say to myself "NME just copied them. honest."

Not as good as Khoma or Killing Joke's 2006 albums though

Do you know who it is Micheal? Sssssshhhhhhhhh!!! People will just have to find out who will be joining Volvo Les and Death Spell Doug on stage tonight.

Death Spell Doug? I'm using that for my ring name when I join the WWE.

Syriana is a film Im wanting to see.

I think you'll have to wait for the DVD release now (June 20th apparently), but it's a film that probably requires a couple of viewings to completely understand all the various strands, so it'd be well worth it!