Entertainment For Lively Minds
So, Ticketmaster is offering insurance...
Posted by itf on 15 May 2009 - 9:04am.
Bought a ticket this morning and was surprised to find an extra option for insurance - a couple of quid - which meant that if you were ill or otherwise unable to make the show, you could claim and get your money back.
This is all well and good, but I don't think they've gone far enough - I want them to insure against the following:
- Disappointing album released after tickets go on sale
- Generally feeling like you can't be arsed on the night
- Being sat next to someone who talks all the way through
- Artist over-refreshment / apathy
- Bob Dylan's off nights
What do *you* want them to insure against at gigs?
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Apoplexy
On discovery of the size of the booking fee.
Buying the "best available" tickets, in the roof and at the back, the day before "hospitality" make again available the front 10 rows at a fraction of the price you paid for the tickets thru' a 3rd party agent.
I never buy any tickets where there's a hospitality package
Because I know they'll be on sale for face value the week before the show.
Best available
Bought 'best available' tickets for Nick Lowe for Bristol tonight in March, stalls row 'U'. Checked yesterday and found tickets available in Row 'G'. Called box office asked if we could exchange - answer no as I'd bought them online( via their box office) not in person!!
" A Bob Dylan off-night"?
They'd never make any money
Ticketscamster find new way
Ticketscamster find new way of insulting you by charging even more for nonexistent 'services'. They charge you, in the rare event that you claim the 'insurance', they sell it to someone else, making more service fees (which of course will not be refunded by your 'insurance'. Hey, brilliant idea, Roger from marketing, selling the same ticket twice! How can we chisel even more from the suckers?
Not sure it would work like that
The insurance is via a third party, and if you were sick on the day they wouldn't have time to re-sell (and hey, prove I wasn't sick rather than just couldn't be arsed...)
When seeing heritage acts...
You get a £5 refund for every new song they play. £10 if they play it when you've just got back from a toilet break.
people who do "funked up throwaway" version
of their hit.
All Julian Cope concerts.
Rubbish beer.
being patted down like an suspected suicide bomber when you only want to see some work-dodgers play a few tunes.
the cost fo cab when the main act don't come on until tommorrow
I've got another
Instrumental solos of more than 5 minutes, unless audience is specifically pre-warned.
Standing next to someone who thinks he's Caruso...
and insists on singing along to every word. The reality is he sounds like Rod Hull and Janet Street Porter's tone deaf bastard offspring.
The Clappers
People who clap along to the songs, uninvited, thinking they're in time or that they're actually aiding the music. It always speeds up and sounds more like the audience to a Michael Barrymore TV show.
No, worse, it's the performers
who raise their hands above their heads and mime a clap, invoking the whole sorry situation. Usually grinning like idiots.
Dave Pegg, I mean you.
Have you ever...
Seen that last the whole song? It always dies about 3 seconds after the performer stops clapping.
"Come on! Let's see those hands!"
shudders...
Low point - Portishead's Roseland NYC live album
When playing the exquisite "Roads", a great chunk of the audience decide that what this song really needs is a massive clap-a-long. Thus destroying what could have been a classic.
Well done, "fans" ...
Singalongs
The performer failing to perform by getting the audience to sing for them while they lean forward eagerly and hammily, holding their ear, as is customary.
Also any instances of lead singer doing call and response such as 'everybody say yeah!!''everybody go yo yo yo!' etc.
On the other hand
(and in no way prompting any thought of an insurance claim).
RT, solo, at Cambridge four(?) years ago: "Would you like to sing?"
We did. Beautifully.
I almost felt like paying extra.
That is definitely Dave Pegg
(Blimey, as a supposed Fairportophile I am fairly giving vent to their bass players today.....)
Beer Insurance surely
Against finding only (insert word here) Carling on arrival. The Academy in Bham which is now 02-branded has changed to Tuborg, which more or less has the same absence of taste.
Also queueing insurance against having to decide whether to risk missing the encore to get the last pint in
And toilet trauma cover (perhaps festivals only)
Insurance/Performance
Sing alongs should be spontaneous, and never forced.
I would like to be insured against the following:
*Having your view blocked by someone filming the gig on the mobile.
*Finding yourself in the middle of a moshpit during a non-metal/hard-rock gig.
*Having to wait for longer than two minutes between songs as the guitarist swaps his guitar for the seventeenth time during the gig.
*Hearing the same "banter" from the lead singer, line for line, from a previous gig in the tour.
*Soundchecks that last longer than necessary, and bands that give the false impression that they're about to come on.
*Rubbish encores.
*Unwarranted clapping to anything that's in 4/4 time.
*Drum solos
*Bass solos