so, for purely altruistic reasons from the goodness of their hearts Oasis are once more allowing some fans to give them a little bit of money in exchange for hearing a few familiar songs. well, let us be fair, they are permitting many fans to give them f***loads of money for such, look you see. no, i didn't get tickets for this one either, so if you want to assume all of this is a whine, that's fine. otherwise, a peek behind the curtain at what might have been, plus other stuff.
being really, really fair and "some" lessons appear to have been learned from ticket sales from the first reunified Oasis tour. at the very least (and this is two sides of the same coin) certain "PR" or image lessons sank in. making it so that only if you were (cough, cough) randomly selected to get a code could you get a chance of buying the tickets. well, last time it was widely known that certain people (and a lot of them appeared to be connected to Manchester City Football Club) got codes that "guaranteed" a ticket or as many tickets as they wished. i believe the same was applicable this time around, too, but such codes got given to "people in the industry". at the least, then, people were not spending an entirety of a day hopelessly hoping the ticket website would accept they were a real person.
first stage of trying to get tickets for the imminent (2027) tour, then, was to register to get a random code. no problem. you had to use an email address which was linked to an active (as in used) ticketmaster account, which (also) was no problem. oh, they also asked you what album the band released in 1995. easy enough.
now that i think of it my email address was probably (or likely) blacklisted or otherwise blocked by Oasis. this won't be off of any abuse i sent them, but rather due to how my ticketmaster account will show that i have (very much) indeed previously bought tickets for the Manic Street Preachers and Suede. rather (in)famously, in response to the initial reformation, Simon Price wrote this article, which mostly is a textbook example of what uncontrolled being full of yourself can lead to. in his rather scathing, scornful words of pure unadulterated hatred in the belief of being the omnipotent bastion of truth and correct thinking, all he really did was give the band a lovely tagline ("the most damaging pop-cultural force in recent British history") to use. inexplicably, yet understandably, Liam somehow manage to interpret how much Mr Price fawns over the Manics as him being in the Manics, and fired off several abusive comments about them in response. oh well.
at once i was the paradox (or what have you) of not in the slightest bothered about not getting a code whilst also tremendously disappointed. let me try and explain, but yes, i get it, should all of this sound, if not read, like a whine (or "sour grapes"), no worries. zero, for the reasons in the post on the first reformed tour and beyond, appeals about seeing them again. by the admission of the band themselves it's not all that much of a performance they give, and they strive to just deliver live renditions of songs as they were done in the studio. let's not upset ourselves by discussing the make up of a certain section of the crowd.
yet i wanted to do nothing more than purchase, at the great (and real) threat of putting myself into some financial difficulties, three (3) tickets. why such a specific and precisely odd number? nothing more explicit nor simple sounding than i thought it might be an instance for me to have a day out with my brother and sister once more. which would be the first instance of such in many years, and could well have proven to be the last, but boy what an epic last that would be. for reasons i am not going to go into, oddly (if not perversely) getting the Oasis tickets would have, by some distance, been the easiest part of this entire idea. oh well.
in regards of those who got tickets, well, ace, nice one, hope it's all as excellent as the first tour all sounded like it was. for the "PR" side, it was good to see all that "dynamic pricing" sh!t, where people felt pressured into paying x3 or x4 more for the tickets because "reasons", was gone. although it was, it seems, replaced with a "similar but different" thing (i did not say scam) in that the more modest priced tickets were not available, but ludicrously expensive ones (including hotels, travel, etc) were. go figure.
quite enjoying reading the (and i am grateful to a dear friend for this term) mental gymnastics some are currently doing to be at peace with the ticket prices they have paid. one in particular, as it happens. someone has taken the time, trouble and (disturbed) imagination to say that "when you think about it" the price is decent as Richard Ashcroft is (yet again) the support, and he himself "would be at least £70 to see". no, no he would not. he is on the support bill out of a misguided sense of loyalty (early on Oasis were support for The Verve) for PR reasons, in reality he is there as he is cheap and there is no threat at all of him upstaging the main act. as for seeing him being "worth" £70, i think not. from memory there were all of three (3) decent Verve songs, the most famous of which was the one the Stones had done all the music for. his solo career is niche, with "selective" appeal. risking further blacklisting, i got tickets for the Manics and Suede joint tour, and then for Holly Johnson supported by ABC and Heaven 17, for a little south of £70 each. there is a sense of perspective (perhaps too much f*****g perspective) for the claim of what seeing Richard Ashcroft is worth.
some might say (see what i did there) i could (or should) reach out to Liam or Noel, explaining how i would very much like to be together with my brother and sister just one more time, and that for whatever (see what i did there) reason Oasis is the only thing likely to make that possible. nah, no. there is a clue in the name of my blog as to my feelings on fate, etc. besides, likely there are going to be tens of thousands of (vaguely) similar stories to mine of people wanting to be there. perhaps some of them had fate decree it was to be, and all the best to them. also, if we are honest, their "really caring" for the fans is on a lip service level, as in it goes as far as PR needs it to. they are a great band with songs that have become anthems, but never forget they are also a business.
righty-ho, that will do. sorry if this has (indeed) sounded like "sour grapes" or whatever, that really was not the intention. don't realistically see how they could have come up with a "fairer" way of selling the tickets or doing more dates, although that does not defend the nice workaround they found for not being able to do dynamic pricing. rock and roll, one and all.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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