Live in Concert

I was able to nab a pair of tickets to see Bruce Springsteen when they went on sale on Monday. I'm excited about the show, largely because I've never seen Bruce live. But I did experience some guilt and hesitation before making the purchase, because the tickets were so expensive.

A hundred bucks is a lot of money for a concert. When I went to see my first rock concert, which was Queen at the Providence Civic Center back in 1977, I think the ticket cost $8.50, which seems like a pretty solid deal in retrospect. I have long had an unofficial ceiling of what I am willing to pay for a concert ticket, somewhere in the vicinity of $50. Normally this amount is only exceeded by the biggest acts at the biggest venues, so it hasn't been much of an issue. I've passed on seeing U2 one or two times in the past decade because I didn't feel like it was worth $75, and I'd seen them two or three times back in the 80s anyway.

So when the Springsteen shows were announced with tickets priced at $65 and $95, plus Ticketbastard's outrageous fees and "service" charges, at first I balked. I can afford it, but that isn't really the point. Would it be worth it?

I know that Broadway show tickets broke the $100 barrier a while back, but I don't necessarily have a problem with that because, even though I don't care for musicals and would be very unlikely to go to the sort of big, elaborate, mainstream show that is Broadway's bread and butter, I understand how expensive they are to produce, and how many performers and crew members are required to stage those shows night after night. Even though a concert tour also requires support staff, to my mind it just isn't on the same level of magnitude.

Then I looked at it from the other side. I've been a fan of Bruce's music for thirty years. (Before I started working, I used to babysit for friends of my parents, and once I accepted a copy of Darkness on the Edge of Town as payment for an evening's babysitting.) Since I've never gone to one of his shows, I've never spent money on tickets to one of his shows, so after all this time a hundred bucks doesn't seem like such a big deal. (A bit of rationalization, I know.) And the seats are excellent, right at the front corner of the stage (the venue's web site has a cool tool that lets you see the view from your seat), but a few rows up, high enough so I won't be craning my neck the whole time. I'm sure it's going to be an excellent show, and I'm sure when it's over I'll feel like it was worth it. But I probably won't do it again, at least not for a while.