vertigojds

Pretty much every track on that CD is a winner. I'm usually not a fan of tribute recordings, especially when I love the originals, and I think most U2 covers sound terrible, but that CD is pretty amazing. The different pairings of artist to song are fantastic.

I'm going to the show tonight but I've got upper level seats this time, so no rush to get there just yet. Hope everyone else heading in has a safe trip, and looking forward to seeing everyone tonight!

Hi Discman, the thread is still showing up in the NY area for me... but I'm far from a forum tech wizard, I have no explaination! For ticketing issues, fortunately I was pretty lucky, but this is what I remember the issues being this time: - U2.com fan club seniority was not respected the way it was in years past. For previous tours, they had several tiers of fanclub membership. First tier was people who had been subscribing since Propaganda Magazine, and on past tours they got first chance at tickets. Second tier was people who had been members of U2.com prior to the announcement of the tour, but not Propanda members (so, from 2005 or later). Third tier was people who joined U2.com after the announcement of a tour. For this most recent tour, they eliminated the Propaganda tier and just divided it into two groups: "people who had a membership before Songs Of Innocence came out" (which they called "Experience") and "people who had tickets after the album came out" (which they called "Innocence"). This means that the people had been members of the fanclub the longest (for example, in my case, almost 20 years) lost a lot of seniority in buying tickets with no warning. - Ticketmaster and venue seating charts provided during presale access and first days of ticket onsales were not accurate. The stage layout misrepresented where the Red Zone was located. The seating chart also failed to distinguish where the main stage and e stage were located and which was which. The seating chart did not properly identify which tickets had rear or side views, or partial or obstructed views. - Because of the inaccurate seating chart, people who bought tickets that were obstructed view, rear view, side view and partial view were not informed of these obstructions when they were offered the tickets for sale on Ticketmaster. However, when the tickets arrived later, or when checking their purchase status after the purchase had already been made, they were then informed that the tickets they purchased were in some way obstructed view/rear view/side view/partial view. I think those are the biggest complaints regarding ticketing.

I just received an email from U2.com: "Got tickets to see the band in NYC? First of eight shows at Madison Square Garden is tomorrow, Saturday. Don't forget that there's no opening act on the iNNOCENCE + eXPERIENCE Tour. The stage time is 8PM. Leave yourself plenty of time to get to the venue. You don't want the band opening the show without you..." All of the tickets for every other city except NYC had a 7:30pm printed showtime, and the NYC tickets had an 8pm printed showtime. (Madison Square Garden often insists upon an 8pm start even when every single show an act is doing at every single other venue in the counry is at 7:30pm.) I think the point of the email is just to say that the band will start at 8:15ish as they have been doing, and not starting later than that just because the printed showtime is different than all other venues. That's my take on the email, at any rate.

I bought Red Zone tickets for Sunday's (7/19) show when they first went onsale, and was sent paper tickets by mail. NY law does not allow for paperless-only tickets (as a lot of other venues in other locations have had on this tour), so a lot of ticket types which were ticketless at other venues are being sold as regular tickets in NY.

I just got an automated email from Ticketmaster reminding me that the U2 show is on Saturday... As if I was gonna forget!

At MSG, it's entirely possible for a band to drive into the building without having to get out and walk through a crowd. But that's pretty much true of all arenas, regardless of where they're located - they're usually designed so that vehicles can drive right in to unload. From what people in other cities have reported about the band stopping by the GA line earlier in the day and doing autographs, it seems like they're making a point of being a little more accessible and less stealthy. For MSG, but not U2 specifically, I've seen artists enter through one of the fenced off loading areas on 33rd St between 7th and 8th Ave, across from One Penn Plaza. But that was also before they renovated the building a few years ago, so I'm not sure if they've changed where artists enter since then. In other words, that might be the first spot I check out if I decide to try to meet them, but if it looks like it's wrong I won't stay there. Sorry to not have a more concrete answer for you.

Hi Mia, in general U2 allows non-professional cameras, and most venues end up defining "non-professional" as being a camera that doesn't have detachable lenses. Since your camera does allow you the possibility of changing lenses, the security person you run into may consider it a professional camera and thus not allow you to bring it in. If it were me, I'd probably err on the side of caution and leave it at home. You'll probably still run into people inside the venue who end up having larger sized and more professional looking cameras, but that doesn't really matter if the security person who's line you ended up in has decided that your camera can't come in and takes it away from you or sends you home. The Garden, in my experience, is very rigid when it comes to entering - I can't think of any recent show where I didn't get both a metal detector screening (usually the wands instead of the actual walkway thing) and some kind of patdown, so it won't be easy to hide a camera. So essentially, you're going to be asked to open your purse, they're going to see the camera, and then it's really up to whether or not they decide it looks "professional" or not. And then you're faced with the choice of either throwing away the camera and going in, or losing your spot in the GA or Red Zone line you've waited in to bring the camera back to your car or back home. So that's just my two cents, to err on the side of being overly cautious. I'll be going to the July 18th show as well (my first one this tour), but my seats are so high up that night that unless I had the Hubble telescope with me, I don't think there will be any photos worth taking from where I'll be.

I'll be there for July 18th - pretty much the last row of the upper level section, which is somehow $150 a ticket face value, but I'll be there nonetheless!

Guy Oseary is their manager now - I think all complaints need to go in that direction. Not to say that Oseary himself is personally responsible for every ticketing issue, but he's the band's representative and all of this would fall under his management. He's on Facebook, Twitter and Instragram, but I am having a hard time coming up with a specific address for him. I'm sure that's not an accident that it's hard to find a way to contact him or his management company directly. You can also try Arthur Fogel, who is the CEO of LiveNation and has been the LiveNation person who has spoken to the press most about this tour. Like Oseary, there is no easily available direct contact information. But I think, for better or worse, that the ticketing situation is basically playing out as U2 want it to. After PopMart, the band and especially Larry, said that they were never going to put themselves in a situation of doing a big tour where they sponsored it with their own money. They've been getting more and more hands off since then - the last time Propaganda did its own ticketing was for Elevation. And following the Vertigo tour, the band sold their touring business to LiveNation for a huge sum of money. The idea behind that deal is basically that LiveNation will write them a giant check just to show up, and then LiveNation has to figure out how to make all of that money back, and if they come up short, it's LiveNation's loss, not U2's. And so everything is monetized to an extent it hadn't been before. Within that arrangement there are most likely some provisions for fan-friendly things (for instance, offering GA tickets at a lower cost than the top priced seated ticket), but by and large, it's become LiveNation's game to price it. When Paul McGuinness was still their manager for the 360 tour, it was most likely his involvement that at least led to things like a supply of $20 tickets at each of the shows, something that's not being offered now. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that U2 have no idea what their tickets cost. They might be told that the average price is a certain number, but I wouldn't be shocked if they didn't realize that half the tickets on the current tour have a face value of near $300, and that obstructed view tickets are being sold for nearly $100 at some venues, or that U2.com is no longer honoring Propaganda subscribers seniority. Without wanting to put words in anyone's mouths, I feel like the moderators here have basically said that they have very little ability to contact management when issues arise. I don't think this makes U2 evil, and I definitely hate Ticketmaster as much as the next guy, but I don't think this is solely Ticketmaster's fault. Ticketmaster doesn't offer resale tickets for every artist; they only offer it when the artist enables them to resell tickets, and the artist most likely gets some part of the cut for the resale too. If U2 tickets are offered for resale on Ticketmaster, it's because U2 (or one of their representatives) is allowing it. I think LiveNation is the bigger problem here, in my opinion. But LiveNation didn't just get control of U2's touring business by accident or by hostile takeover, they got it because U2 made a decision that they didn't want to be as hands on with the behind the scenes part of touring as they had been in the past. If you're getting offered a giant check for more money than you've ever made touring before, that extra money has to come from somewhere, and this kind of stuff is how they get it. I also think the choice of Guy Oseary as manager may have had something to do with his proven track record of maximizing profits - he's Madonna's manager and there's no such thing as a cheap ticket to a Madonna show. Regarding the Denver shows and local residents being inconvenienced by the late add-on, I think the only reason Denver was added was because they didn't sell out eight shows in Los Angeles. L.A. had been originally planned to go eight nights and demand for tickets, as priced by LiveNation, stalled out around five shows. They had the open days on the schedule, it wasn't too far geographically out of the way, and every day you're not putting on a show when you're on tour you're losing money, so they were added. But I think the original plan would have had U2 playing longer in Los Angeles, had the demand for $300 tickets been there. Discman, I pretty much agree with all of your points. I've said in other threads on this topic that I'd love to be able to have a calm, polite and respectful discussion with Mr. Oseary over coffee and just take five or ten minutes to explain what I think has gone wrong on this tour (in terms of ticketing and venue policies) compared to every other previous U2 tour. I'm not looking to get them roasted in the press or sue them or anything like that. It's just that in all of the years I've been seeing them play live, they really seemed to care about their fans, and their prices and ticketing policies mostly reflected that - until this tour. I don't think there's any shot that they'd change their minds or do anything differently at least for the shows already on the books, but it would be great to explain to them the difference in quality of experience from this year vs every previous tour so it would at least be on their minds before doing the next one. But again, all of that comes from an assumption that these are accidents happening because the band doesn't know what's going on. I think there's at least a chance that these things are going on because the band has decided they don't want to be involved in this minutiae anymore and by deciding not to be involved, they are basically endorsing the current status quo. So for me, the question isn't, "Do I love U2 more than I hate Ticketmaster?" so much as it is "Do I love U2's music more than I hate the way U2 are running their business?" - and the answer is still yes.

I would trust the Ticketmaster listing (as well as the official posting on the Madison Square Garden website) and disregard whatever Stubhub says - at the end of the day, TM and MSG are the official providers of tickets and host of the event, and Stubhub is only a reseller. http://www.thegarden.com/events/2015/july/u2.html#

Nah, I've got seats for three nights, Red Zone for one, and GA for the other four. If I had been able to get GA tickets at face value for all of the shows I would have, but I think I'm pretty lucky to have gotten it for as many as I did. Two of my seated shows are behind the stage (one of them is first row behind where Adam is, and the other is third row behind where Edge is). I had some behind the stage seats for the Vertigo tour in 2005 and it was pretty cool seeing the show and the audience from their perspective, and they were also pretty cheap. I got those in the middle of all the other standing shows, so it'll be nice to give my legs a little bit of a rest those nights.

I'd love if every song played on the tour so far got played at least once in NYC! Going to them all, so it would be really cool to hear everything that every city's gotten so far. At the least, I'd love to hear "Crystal Ballroom". Of the stuff not played on the tour so far that's not looking in any way likely, I'd love to hear "Discotheque" again - I think it would look and sound awesome with the mirrorball lighting they've used for some other songs.

I'm glad the question was asked and that he acknowledged that they're basically ignorant of the day-to-day ticketing operation these days. That doesn't really fix anything but it kinda confirms my feeling that the problems we've been having weren't due to intentional malice on behalf of the band, but them just not paying attention to some things they maybe should be paying attention to.

I don't really know if I need to go to all of them, but I just have this feeling that if U2 were playing twenty minutes from my house and knowing I could have gone but didn't that I'll be kicking myself for not being there. I'm hoping that with 8 shows I'll get to hear most if not all of the songs played on the tour so far and Crystal Ballroom at least once each. And I really do love the new stuff so I'm not at all unhappy about hearing those songs so many time. More than the rear/side stage thing not being articulated, I'm a little bummed the Red Zone isn't by the e stage as on the original maps, I think I liked that configuration better. I don't get why they were so sloppy this time around, and seemingly okay with that, when the previous tours were better communicated. Getting to go to multiple shows is a luxury that allows me to live with not every seat being perfect. If I had only been able to go to one or two and my seats turned out to be not as advertised I'd be a lot more upset.

If that were completely true, we wouldn't be paying $80 to be on the floor, and the Red Zone would be the front rail, judging from how many other bands do things... I'd bet that within the contract are stipulations like "GA tickets should be offered at a lower rate than the highest priced ticket", but how they offset that "loss" is left up to LiveNation - so yes, we get $70 GAs (up $20 from the last tour), but we also get upper level seats at nearly $300. And the Red Zone does take up a large portion of the front floor rail. I'm sure that U2 and their management had certain conditions for their ticket sales so it wouldn't completely be about the rich, but my point was that in terms of communication and cost, this has been their least fan friendly ticket onsale ever, and I don't think it's a coincidence that it's Live Nation running it. If the band want to make as much money as possible, or nearly as much as possible, that's their decision and it is a business. There's no requirement that they keep the prices under $100 as people like Bruce Springsteen does. And even though I personally hate the argument of raising prices to what scalpers used to charge because that's what the market allows and what people are willing to pay, it's hard to argue with the truth that the market generally accepts these prices (if it didn't, there wouldn't be 8 sold out shows in NYC). And as early as the year 2000, when ATYCLB came out, Larry was on a VH1 special about U2 talking about how they barely broke even doing ZooTV and PopMart at $50 for all tickets and they were never going to do that again. So none of this is a surprise to me. Live Nation offers the band a great deal - guaranteed money up front. That lets them dream big and design a crazy and innovative and expensive show without having to worry about whether or not they'll get that money back. From the band's perspective, they can worry about their art and leave the money stuff up to others knowing they've already got their check, and I totally get that desire. As I've said before, my real objection is in how the management and Live Nation has handled the communication. The initial seating charts made available when tickets went onsale were at best incomplete, and at worst misleading. The descriptions provided (or not provided) with some tickets left out vital information, like informing people before buying that their seats were limited or partial or rear view. (If a seller on Stubhub failed to disclose that tickets were marked limited or rear view, for example, Stubhub would refund the buyer's money and penalize the seller. That's a resale marketplace but I think it's a good rule. Why can't the actual original sellers of tickets here be held to that same standard?) The band talked about doing two different shows, with management promoting that line and encouraging people to go to multiple nights, and then they dropped that idea after the tickets had been sold. My complaints are due not to the show itself, which I'm very excited to see, but with what they said the show would be when they went onsale vs what it turned it to be when the tour started. I think U2 had a very ambitious idea for a tour, and the problem is that for the kind of tour they wanted to do, not enough details had been finalized before tickets were put up for sale. If they had announced the dates in December but waited to have put the tickets onsale until rehearsals began in March, all of these problems pretty much go away. It's been mentioned by Willie and others close to the band that the two shows idea was kept in mind until almost the last minute because they were worried people would be disappointed or jealous that the other night got the songs they wanted. Other bands do tours where they play different complete albums from night to night or other variations on that idea, but the fans don't revolt. That's because they announce what each night is before the tickets go on sale, and/or sell tickets in packages where fans can buy tickets to multiple shows in a series in one transaction. I'm guessing that if they had done two shows, Night 1 would have been more like Set 1 and Night 2 would have been more like Set 2. Would have been very easy for the band to say "Night 1 will be new songs and a mix of older songs mostly from their first 15 years" and "Night 2 will be new songs and a mix of songs mostly from the most recent 15 years" and that gives the audience an idea of what to expect without nailing them into a set that can't change. And if they had waited until the set was finalized to sell tickets, and clearly communicated with Ticketmaster and fans what the design was (a main stage on one end, a smaller stage on the other, and a screen in between, with all seats having a view of the band but not all seats being able to see the screen), you wouldn't have any complaints about people being surprised with what they got. I think most of these problems are related to rushing the sale of the tickets without providing enough information for people to make informed decisions. And when all tickets are cheap and the same price, that's not really an issue because everyone's got the same shot at a good seat. But when you're asking people to pay very large sums of money and make decisions about questions like "Do I need to buy tickets to two shows to get the full experience?" and "What am I getting for $300 a seat?" and "Am I missing anything if I go with a $100 seat?", I don't think it's fair to ask for that much money and not give people the information needed to make those decisions. If you or any other fan feels that they haven't been misled at all and feel completely satisfied with the concert itself and how ticketing has been handled, I'm not here to try to make you feel bad or unhappy. But it's also my opinion that there are some legitimate complaints and that people who do feel upset aren't being unreasonable for having those feelings. Speaking for myself, I'm very excited to be seeing U2 next month and it's going to be a great pleasure to see them play 8 times in my hometown. But when I bought those tickets, I thought I was getting two shows 4 times, instead of one show 8 times. I'm disappointed only in regard to what was originally offered vs what is actually being delivered. And though I'm not unhappy that I'm behind the stage for one or two of those nights because my experience tells me that's an okay seat, I think it's a little annoying that wasn't disclosed at time of purchase - as it had been for every other rear stage seat for every other concert by every other band I've ever seen in my life. It wasn't an unreasonable expectation. I'm not interested in suing the band or anything like that. I don't want to call anyone names and I'm willing to accept there's another possibility or explanation I hadn't considered. What I wouldn't mind would be sharing a cup of coffee or a drink with management and having a friendly ten minute polite and productive conversation about how I feel, why I feel this way, and ways that this could be done better in the future. And they'd obviously under no obligation to agree with me or do anything I said. I think most of these mistakes weren't done maliciously. But I also think it's fair to point out that when scalpers got unfair access to early Vertigo tour tickets and fan club members got overcharged on ticket fees, Larry publicly apologized and management did what they could to fix the remaining onsales and get the overcharged fees refunded. And I think it's fair to point out that ten years later, there's been nothing but crickets coming from the band and management on these issues. And that's the simplest and best example I can think of how things used to be handled vs how they are today.

I have seats behind the main stage for a couple of the MSG shows (and GA tickets and upper level center for other nights). My behind tickets were at the lower price level ($70 or something like that) and I'm looking forward to seeing the show from that perspective. I had some behind seats for the Vertigo tour and although you miss Bono and Edge looking at you for most of the show, it was still an incredible experience because of how close I was to Adam and Larry, and how cool it was to see the same view of the audience that the band had - for two hours I felt like I was actually in U2! But I got these for one of the added shows and by then they were marked as rear view seats so it wasn't a surprise to me, I actually sought them out intentionally after I wasn't able to get GA for those nights. But I know it's a luxury to be able to attend all the MSG shows - basically forfeiting my vacation for the year to do so and it still had to be cheap tickets most nights to make it happen. But as a silver lining I think it will be cool that I get to see the show from almost every angle. If I was only going once or twice, I'd probably feel different. And I absolutely agree with everyone who has pointed out how badly the communication has been handled this time around. Between the leaked San Jose seating chart and being super familiar with MSG because of Billy Joel's residency, I had a pretty good idea of what would be where, but you shouldn't have to read a zillion message boards and attend ten other shows by different bands at a venue to know what you're getting. And if all the tickets were $50 regardless of seat location, they could argue its first come, first served and just luck for who gets what, but with all these different price categories and most going for a lot of money (my pair of Red Zone tickets for one night cost more than my single tickets for the other seven nights combined), to not give people a reasonable idea of what they're buying seems unfair. When Paul McGuinness and Principle Management ran things, this stuff didn't happen. When Guy Oseary and Live Nation took over, it did. I don't think Oseary is a bad guy intentionally out to screw people, I just think the priorities are different and the result of having different priorities (maximizing revenue per show) combined with really bad communication, has led to this outcome and a perception that now that they've got their money, they could care less. I'm sure individually the members of U2 care about fans but part of selling the touring business to Live Nation was a statement of "we don't want to deal with the little details anymore, we just want to show up and play and get the check and let someone else lose sleep over this". I don't really blame the band for feeling like that, but I do think their selection of management and touring partners has led to this entirely predictable result. Every time Live Nation has taken over tour management and/or venue management of a band or location I liked, fan friendly service has been replaced by a corporate "how can we get as much money as possible" attitude. And part of that is probably because to get those contracts, Live Nation has to offer ridiculous amounts of money, and then they need to get it back somehow.

I'm trying to petition the IFC Center (a local NYC movie theater) to show U2 3D while the band are in town - they've shown it before and it seems like it would be a great excuse for a bunch of U2 fans to get together after a show or on a day off between shows to hang out.. I started a thread for that: http://zootopia.u2.com/topic/31270-lets-try-to-get-u2-3d-shown-in-nyc-when-the-band-are-here/ If you're interested, send the IFC Center an email and let them know! (all the info is in the link above)

I love "Song For Someone" (almost as much as I love "Every Breaking Wave"), but on paper at least, I don't love the segues into the next song after their performances - Sunday Bloody Sunday after Song For Someone, and Bullet The Blue Sky after Every Breaking Wave. When I finally get to see them in July I'll see if it works better in person, and it very well may, but on paper at least, the songs that follow each of the new songs really seem to blow the mood that those two newer songs are creating.

If you end up deciding to sell your GA ticket for 7/27, I'd be interested in buying.

Nerve injuries do take a long time to heal (my stepfather screwed up his hand when I was younger and it took a long time before he got full use back, he says it still feels weird to him but you'd never know looking at it today), but if he's moving more that's probably a good sign. I'm not expecting to see him with a guitar this year but maybe next year? For the past few tours, the only songs played frequently that really had a regular Bono guitar presence were One and The Fly, so musically the show hasn't suffered without it in my opinion. (And in 2001 they played The Fly without Bono's guitar, so it can be be done.) They haven't done a ZooTV/PopMart style double acoustic guitar thing in ages so I wasn't even expecting that in the first place, injury or not. I don't think it's going to be a thing that they let limit their song choices; I think it'll just be a thing like the keyboards where there's a guy hidden under the stage to throw in a few notes when necessary.

Last night I saw a clip of U2 on YouTube from the Vertigo tour in 2005, one of the few times they played "Discotheque" - really loved that particular performance of it, and I'd love to see them surprise us and bring it back. Especially if they deploy the mirrorballs!

I did that on the 360 tour in Pittsburgh!

I bought a Red Zone ticket for MSG through Ticketmaster, and they have yet to send out an email with specific instructions for the day of the show. I'm sure they will at some point, but probably a lot closer to the show itself.

I remember in Providence in 2001, some people left DURING the first night's concert to start the second night's line - how crazy is that, to be in the first two or three rows inside the heart, on the floor, and then walk out in the middle just to be close for the next night's show? And not like during the last song, but in the middle of the concert. Dumbest thing I've read. Whyyyy would you leave half way to line up for tomorrow????? Beats me, I thought they were crazy. Fortunately, the universe has a sense of humor about these things. They left the show early to be first in line, but people who didn't have tickets to Night 1 had already started the line, so they didn't even get to be first and missed half a show. Meanwhile I got in line after the first show ended, didn't miss a note, and ended up in a better spot than those people did.