Dead Heads Have Lost Their Goddamn Minds, Tickets To ‘Fare Thee Well’ Concerts On Sale For Over $100K

Without question the most highly anticipated concerts this summer are the three-night ‘Fare Thee Well’ run in Chicago by all the living and active members of the Grateful Dead (Bob Weir, Phil Lesh, Mickey Hart and Bill Kreutzmann), who will be joined by Phish guitarist Trey Anastasio, pianist Bruce Hornsby, and keyboardist Jeff Chimenti.

The 3-night run will be held at Chicago’s Soldier Field, and as of this past weekend it is officially sold out with roughly 210,000 tickets sold. From the moment the ‘Far Thee Well’ tour was announced it’s been a complete clusterfuck. In the first round of ticket sales people wanting to attend the concert had to send envelopes with money orders to some address with decorations and explanations of why they wanted tickets (well, they didn’t have to include all that but most people did), and nearly everyone who submitted via mail got rejected. Then the tickets went up for sale on the shit show that is TicketMaster, a company designed to both fuck you out of going to concerts and charge you as much as possible when by the grace of God you’re able to get through their shitty system and purchase tickets. The tickets for sale on TicketMaster sold out in record time and many people reported the TicketMaster system crashing on the, though TM denies that.

I tend to inhabit circles of jamband fans, and many people in my life were attempting to get tickets to these concerts….Not a single person I know secured tickets to the ‘Fare Thee Well’ tour, not a SINGLE person.

So who the fuck are these 210,000 ticket holders if it’s not all scalpers? Long story short: it’s probably all scalpers.

Mashable reported over the weekend that tickets were going on sale for $15,000…which is a completely fucking ridiculous amount of money to pay for three concerts. There’s general admission seating for part of the stadium, so in theory that $5k/concert would get you up near the stage and close to the band….But that’s when tickets were on Stubhub for just $5k/concert. Now there’s a handful of tickets on there listed at over $116,000! AND HOLY SHIT IF YOU PAY THAT MUCH MONEY TO SEE A BUNCH OF OLD MEN WHO PASSED THEIR PRIME THREE DECADES AGO YOU ARE AN ABSOLUTE MORON.

I love the Dead as much as the next guy, but a) you should never spend five figures on a concert ticket (definitely not 6 figures), and b) if you have $100,000 to drop on concert tickets you should be important enough to know someone who can get you into that show. What’s the point of having that much expendable income if you haven’t met like-minded people who are willing to hook you up in exchange for that expendable income? Maybe I’m wrong, but I just feel like f you have that much cash laying around then you’re likely able to trade favors in place of massive sums of money. But I’m often wrong about many things in life.

There’s also the question of ‘Will people end up shelling out this amount of money to get into the most sought after concert in the Summer of 2015?’ or is this some scheme by scalpers to artificially inflate the overall price of tickets to trick concert goers into shelling out more than the market value?

As someone who has seen this happen (though not as extreme) time and again for Phish tours I’m tending to think it’s scalpers trying to fuck anyone and everyone by driving up the prices. It only takes one schmuck with too much money for them to buy a 3-day pass at over $100k to completely ruin the market value price of these tickets, and it seems like scalpers are banking on getting lucky and finding that schmuck.

Billboard reports:

The Grateful Dead Fare thee Well concert, set for Chicago’s Soldier Field July 3-5, is officially sold out.

After being blown away by mail order ticket requests and VIP experience demand, producers of the concert saw general public on-sales through Ticketmaster blow out in minutes Saturday (Feb. 28), with the event now officially sold-out at about 210,000.

Requests for tickets are believed to be in the millions. The shows are produced by Peter Shapiro, 42, in association with AEG-owned Madison House Presents.

“This is f—-n’ nuts,” says Shapiro, who was attending his 5 year-old son’s soccer game as ticket sales launched, receiving updates via text from Ticketmaster and Madison House’s Mike Luba and Don Sullivan on the growing online queue.

Nearly 500,000 were online waiting to purchase tickets when the “box office” opened at 10 a.m. CST, Shapiro says, adding that tickets went completely clean in less than an hour.

“It would have sold out in an instant, the only thing that took a little time was the computers and stuff,” he says, adding that the Ticketmaster handled the volume as about 100,000 were sold. “Ticketmaster did not go down.”

“We knew on Jan. 20 that we had a massive response, with the press covering post offices being overrun by Deadheads,” he says, adding that mail order demand exceed 500,000 requests for tickets.

On Jan. 27, VIP tickets and experiences, orchestrated by Dan Berkowitz’ CID Entertainment, sold out in seconds.

At this point, Shapiro and Madison House are fine-tuning plans to host after-show concerts and events at various venues around Chicago, as well as finding a way to provide an experience for the millions of fans who want to see the show but can’t get in the venue.

Well, if anyone has a ‘miracle’ and wants to sell it to me for face value you can find me in my Twitter below or by emailing me at Cass@BroBible Dot Com….

For now I’ll just sit idly by and wait for Phish to announce their tour dates only to get fucked over once more by the wretched scum that is TicketMaster.

And for those of you willing to shell out asinine amounts of money this Summer to get into the ‘Fare Thee Well’ shows, just keep in mind this is NOT the band you’re seeing (that band died a long time ago).

As of now there are ‘obstructed view’ 3-day passes available for ~$1,500 so if $500/night sounds about right to you then I suggest you hop on those tickets quick.

[Mashable via Billboard]