Calling out U2 for their sheer undiluted arseholeness is a bit like lambasting the rain; it might relieve some frustration but it’s ultimately pointless. After a while, you start to suspect that it isn’t really their fault, that they might just be genetically conditioned to be such complete and utter tools. But then comes news so irritating. so mind-bogglingly energy sapping, that you just can’t let it pass without a bit of a whinge.
To much fanfare and backslapping, our Irish friends announced that they will be donating the profits from their forthcoming tour to charity, which is a magnificent gesture and one which ELM heartily applauded. Till we read on a bit. When we did, we found out that they will donate about €9m (£8m) of their tour profits to charity. Which is still great, even if it means that the line ‘donating profits to charity’ isn’t strictly true and should more accurately read ‘donating some of their profits to charity’. But still. It’s terrific.
And then you read what they are ACTUALLY doing; at every gig, up to 600 stage-front “Red Zone” tickets will be auctioned. Minimum bids of between €95 and €1,015 will give fans a chance to buy some of the best seats in the arena. This money will then be given to charity, minus a cut going to the promoters (of course!)
Ah.
Firstly, this isn’t U2 giving money to charity, it’s U2 giving their audience’s money to charity. Secondly, it encourages the dreaded spectre of tickets for prime gigs being auctioned, and the fact that Live Nation are taking their cut sets a precedent that you know those bastards will want to follow in the future. Thirdly, it creates a two-tier system at the gigs, with rich punters in the box seats and the plebs stuck at the back. This from a band who perennially preach about fairness? Shameful.
U2 are encouraging a system which will ultimately end in tickets to popular gigs going by auction. Oh, sure, they are doing it for all the right reasons, but it doesn’t matter. There actions here will end up seeing their less well off fans priced out of gigs. It’s wrong. Give some of the ACTUAL profits to charity, don’t fleece people out of yet more of their hard-earned to do it. U2 aren’t doing anything which affects their bottom line, the grasping gits. They’ve simply kept all the cash they were going to keep and created a new revenue stream, which will go to charity this time but I’ll be willing to wager that the same revenue stream in 2011 will see the cash go straight into their bank accounts. We all know it.
As U2 get older, they grow less talented and more annoying. I don’t grudge them a penny; they’ve earned every single one of them. What I grudge them is their craven sense of self-satisfaction, this bloated image of self-worth. They are doing a bit for charidee and they DO want to talk about it.
Filed under: General Stuff, gigs Tagged: | charity, Concert profits, gigs, Live, music, scams, U2
Serves them right for going to see U2, I say. Unless they get a complimentary bottle of piss to throw at the blue-rinsed whining little twat, in which case, I bid a tenner.
I think that you have a definite point about this business of auctionning tickets. What takes place on eBay and the likes cannot have escaped the attention of the music industry, as album revenues continue to fall.
Yet another reason to keep it indie, people!
Yep LO, they will see this and abuse it.
Its a tough moral question , but if you could have killed U2 at birth – knowing the suffering you would have prevented to millions in years to come…would you have ?
Hmmmnn. I’ll take it under advisement.
The first and perhaps greatest ‘magic circle’ was Live Eight.
“Come to the experience…see Madonna….save the planet….but stand 1 mile from the stage as only places you can see anything are taken up by freeloading celebs and their entourage…”
Yes, and those celebrities were of the Fearne Cotton level. Euurrgh.
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