Subject: the Eagles cancel

Hi Mr Lefsetz,

Just wanted to drop you a quick note. So are you really an impartial observer when you comment on the Axl/Irving fued. I mean Irving is Irving right?

I really just wanted to mention this Eagles fiasco. I wrote you the morning of the stadium onsales and told you exactly what had happened. How horrific the sales were. So now that the shows are all going down will you start to wonder if Irving and Rupino have a clue? Gee, would you need me to point out that last week your boys at Live Nation rolled out a Limp Bizkit amphitheater tour. Limp Bizkit in an amphitheater! What did they pay for that fiasco? Do you know that these shows did not even sell out of a 7 row GA pit in most venues? So that pit tix were sitting there for " face value" while they were also being offered on the same page for $300 per. Now Fred Durst comes out and tells his fans it was cancelled because they want to play in bigger venues! That is some funny stuff. So who is going to expose this nonsense? If I was a shareholder with any power Irv and Rupino would be gone TOMORROW!

So how about we talk about how they rolled out the Kings of Leon " paperless" tour. Sold like crap until they just flat out took the paperless restrictions off. Hmm. Are you aware they just changed the price on the poorly selling Lilith Fair? Was $257 + in many market and they dropped it by more than half. And poor Sarah thinks there are only 300 tickets priced that way. Ah sorry Sarah, but you have $700 tickets, $500 tickets and on and on. Now they have reduced the top face ( for regular seats not with your laminate and other goodies) down to $107 per. Do you need me to tell you that this is still probably twice as high as what it needs to be to make this a successful tour. Remember when Lilith was about helping new artists break out?

So you want to know a band that has a clue. I am not even a fan of theirs. But Tool doesn’t tour constantly so there is some buzz when they do. Go look at thier sales, tickets are decently priced, the band is not whoring themselves out with some putrid meet and greet ripoffs, they go play a show and they let the tickets sell. Sure a few guys make a few bucks reselling them, but that is better than allowing corporate hacks driving up the prices and using the secondary market to excuse their gluttony.

Oh, and while it does not directly relate to music in a way it does, because its about the entertainment dollar. So this weekend the Mets practically can’t give away tickets for the " Subway Series’. Hmm, 16,000 less seats than Shea and they have so overpriced this park that they have nearly destroyed their market. It is %100 what the people at Live Nation/tm are doing uder the guise of capturing the secondary market money.

So go on and keep defending the pracrices of these hacks and I will continue to occasionally drop you a line pointing out these fiascos. Oh, and this weekend big onsales, Jonas Brothers with front 20 or 25 rows priced at $250 per. Lets see how the moms like that. Eventually the arenas that Irv and the boys don’t own are going to get tired of 1/4 filled events. Pretty funny that just last year Rapino said this. "In my business, the cheaper the ticket price the better. I’d love for more consumers to walk into an amphitheater, park, have a beer and eat a hot dog. There’s no advantage to me to have anything but sold-out shows."

Peace! Thanks for your time. Oh, and you should see the work going on in downtown Middlebury if you haven’t visited recently.

Michael

Eagles, Dixie Chicks, Keith Urban Cancel Two Stadium Shows