Day: March 16, 2009

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Review: Pearl Jam – Ten (Remixed Edition)

51cxntsmd0l_sl500_aa240_If you don’t know already, Pearl Jam are gearing up to celebrate their 20 years as a band (in 2011) with re-releases of their albums. The first is the re-release of Ten, which is their biggest selling album to date (and to some, their favourite album).

I love this album and am excited when the Super Deluxe Edition hits my doorstep next week…filled with remastered, remixed copies of the album on both CD and vinyl, along with a vinyl copy of a concert they held, a demo cassette of the first songs Eddie Vedder submitted to the band…there’s a lot of stuff in this set and I’m pumped!

The remixed album did leak onto the Internet this week so I downloaded it to take a listen. Now, I’m more excited about the remixed album as it will give the listeners a fresh listen to an album they love. Brendan O’Brien has mixed all the Pearl Jam albums except for the first one and the band never really cared for the glossy 80’s style production that was on the album so they asked their friend to come in and remix it for this release. This is quite the daunting task as he says that he did not want to mess with what people felt to be ‘the definitive version’ of the song…the album that kids listened to 100 times in a week…the album that you threw into your car on a road trip. That’s why they released both the original and remixed versions in this set so that we would have the choice.

After listening to the album this morning on the bus, I must say that I think the remixed version is superior to the original! It sounds more…Pearl Jam! They’ve got rid of a lot of the reverb that was all over the album. The instruments are more clear…you can pick out guitar bits better with the ear and certain songs resemble how they are in their live incarnation (like Porch. Mike McCready soars with his lead guitar work near the end of that song…something that I never really picked up with the original version).

The album also comes with a few bonus tracks which consist of some leftover songs (Brother, Just a Girl), some demos (Breath and a Scream, State of Love and Trust) and some outtakes (2000 Mile Blues, Evil Little Goat). The demos are interesting to hear as they are rough compared to the their final versions…

If you are a fan of Pearl Jam, I really encourage you to pick up their rerelease of Ten next week. The remixed album is amazing and let’s be honest, Ten is just a killer album from the birth of the alternative era. I don’t think there’s one person in Kapuskasing who was a teenager in the early 90s who doesn’t own this album.

To those fans who have liked Pearl Jam over the years but never listened to their studio albums (Mike, this is for you), give Ten a listen. It’s still their best album and it just got better.

iplaying: Why Go – Pearl Jam (Ten)

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Excellent Points Regarding Scalping

Trent Reznor posted up the following entry concerning the world of ticket sales. I’m copying the text in case in the years gone by, my grandchildren will still be able to read what it has to say as we all know the link will be dead in about fifty years:

Original Link: http://forum.nin.com/bb/read.php?9,548515

As we approach on-sale dates for the upcoming tour, I’ve noticed lots of you are curious / concerned / outraged at the plethora of tickets that somehow appear on all these reseller sites at inflated prices – even before the pre-sale dates. I’ll do my best to explain the situation as I see it, as well as clarify my organization’s stance in the matter.

NIN decides to tour this summer. We arrive at the conclusion outdoor amphitheaters are the right venue for this outing, for a variety of reasons we’ve throughly considered*. In the past, NIN would sell the shows in each market to local promoters, who then “buy” the show from us to sell to you. Live Nation happens to own all the amphitheaters and bought most of the local promoters – so if you want to play those venues, you’re being promoted by Live Nation. Live Nation has had an exclusive deal with TicketMaster that has just expired, so Live Nation launched their own ticketing service. Most of the dates on this tour are through Live Nation, some are through TicketMaster – this is determined by the promoter (Live Nation), not us.
Now we get into the issue of secondary markets for tickets, which is the hot issue here. The ticketing marketplace for rock concerts shows a real lack of sophistication, meaning this: the true market value of some tickets for some concerts is much higher than what the act wants to be perceived as charging. For example, there are some people who would be willing to pay $1,000 and up to be in the best seats for various shows, but MOST acts in the rock / pop world don’t want to come off as greedy pricks asking that much, even though the market says its value is that high. The acts know this, the venue knows this, the promoters know this, the ticketing company knows this and the scalpers really know this. So…

The venue, the promoter, the ticketing agency and often the artist camp (artist, management and agent) take tickets from the pool of available seats and feed them directly to the re-seller (which from this point on will be referred to by their true name: SCALPER). I am not saying every one of the above entities all do this, nor am I saying they do it for all shows but this is a very common practice that happens more often than not. There is money to be made and they feel they should participate in it. There are a number of scams they employ to pull this off which is beyond the scope of this note.

StubHub.com is an example of a re-seller / scalper. So is TicketsNow.com.

Here’s the rub: TicketMaster has essentially been a monopoly for many years – certainly up until Live Nation’s exclusive deal ran out. They could have (and can right now) stop the secondary market dead in its tracks by doing the following: limit the amount of sales per customer, print names on the tickets and require ID / ticket matches at the venue. We know this works because we do it for our pre-sales. Why don’t THEY do it? It’s obvious – they make a lot of money fueling the secondary market. TicketMaster even bought a re-seller site and often bounces you over to that site to buy tickets (TicketsNow.com)!

NIN gets 10% of the available seats for our own pre-sale. We won a tough (and I mean TOUGH) battle to get the best seats. We require you to sign up at our site (for free) to get tickets. We limit the amount you can buy, we print your name on the tickets and we have our own person let you in a separate entrance where we check your ID to match the ticket. We charge you a surcharge that has been less than TicketMaster’s or Live Nation’s in all cases so far to pay for the costs of doing this – it’s not a profit center for us. We have essentially stopped scalping by doing these things – because we want true fans to be able to get great seats and not get ripped off by these parasites.

I assure you nobody in the NIN camp supplies or supports the practice of supplying tickets to these re-sellers because it’s not something we morally feel is the right thing to do. We are leaving money on the table here but it’s not always about money.
Being completely honest, it IS something I’ve had to consider. If people are willing to pay a lot of money to sit up front AND ARE GOING TO ANYWAY thanks to the rigged system, why let that money go into the hands of the scalpers? I’m the one busting my ass up there every night. The conclusion really came down to it not feeling like the right thing to do – simple as that.

My guess as to what will eventually happen if / when Live Nation and TicketMaster merges is that they’ll move to an auction or market-based pricing scheme – which will simply mean it will cost a lot more to get a good seat for a hot show. They will simply BECOME the scalper, eliminating them from the mix.

Nothing’s going to change until the ticketing entity gets serious about stopping the problem – which of course they don’t see as a problem. The ultimate way to hurt scalpers is to not support them. Leave them holding the merchandise. If this subject interests you, check out the following links. Don’t buy from scalpers, and be suspect of artists singing the praises of the Live Nation / TicketMaster merger. What’s in it for them?