Neil Young played a multi- night stand at New York’s Beacon Theatre in February, 1992 which turned out to be his preview to the “Harvest Moon” collection which was released later that year. As I recall, the concerts did not receive overly great reviews at the time which, in retrospect, is kind of amazing considering the accolades and popularity for the Harvest Moon album that was to happen after its release in November, 1992. My only beef at the time, as I recall, was that the solo acoustic shows were on the short side, about an hour and a half, maybe even an hour and a quarter, and the set was almost entirely the new tunes that had not been heard, for the most part, yet. It reminds me that on one of the nights, I was supposed to go to the Beacon with my lifelong buddy Eric who was working at A & S Department store in Manhasset at the time. He had a dispute with a girlfriend that day, punched a wall at work, broke his hand or wrist snd ended up in the emergency room. Now he had to miss the Neil Young concert that evening so he gave me his ticket to sell for him. I arrived at the Beacon Theatre close to show time and quickly sold the loge seat to the left of the stage to someone outside at a huge discount and went inside. The show started and at some point an apparent homeless guy, who stunk to high heaven, sat down next to me in what should have been Eric’s seat. No good deed goes unpunished as the pungent odor put a bit of a damper on that particular Neil Young experience.

Surfer Joe and Moe the Sleaze

Rock on

GQ

My personal archive entry for this particular Tom Petty concert was a little off so I am hoping I found the correct date off of Tom Petty’s concert archive on his website (which is pretty easy to scroll and use). If my memory serves correct (not a guarantee) it was a show attended with Mr. Vegas AKA Mr. Nut and the band performed on stage in front of a giant tree that reminded me of the Rainforest Cafe at Roosevelt Field and which stage set up I was not particularly thrilled with that night; “Rust Never Sleeps” it was not. I remember I was not particularly digging the show but that could partly be because I had to go directly into work for a midnight tour; I do not recall if I worked the night before but that would have only added to the exhaustion level if I had. I did see Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers with much better results at the Beacon Theatre and on their final tour at Forest Hills Stadium where a black SUV with tinted windows slowly drove through the concourse crowd at the outdoor venue shortly before the band hit the stage. I wondered then, and I wonder now, if Tom was staring back at us as we watched the vehicle travel past us. Getting out of Forest Hills Stadium is always problematic as the tennis stadium dumps out into one mass exodus into sort of pen along the railroad tracks, so we decided to beat the crowd, we listened to the band perform “American Girl” as we walked toward the Forest Hills business district.
Tom Petty suddenly and unexpectedly passed on not too long after that Queens summer concert; I am so glad we got to see the band perform one last time and at a great venue.

End of the Line

Rock on!

GQ

Let me start off by saying I am an Eddie Vedder fan and Pearl Jam did try to fight the good fight against Ticketmaster price fee gauging back in the day, but I have been occasionally checking in on. the Vedder dates at the Beacon Theatre scheduled for this week and I am wondering if he has any say on ticket pricing for these gigs. The shows have been periodically “sold out” making his real fans anxious in these live music scarcity times, to sporadic seats at hundreds of dollars for sale popping up occasionally, to today where entire rows for both gigs have suddenly become available at a slightly more reasonable $281 plus (it makes me glad I took a road trip with Mr. Nut to see a solo Vedder sitting in a giant hand chair at an Albany, New York theatre some years back). Ticketmaster’s “dynamic” pricing is completely out of control, and I suspect many ticket purchasers do not even realize they are being hosed. A couple of weeks ago I was contemplating picking up Zac. Brown tickets at Citifield (ugh) for my wife, and while I hesitated buying the approximately $130 pit tickets when they first went on sale, the prices jumped 20 or 40 bucks.” out of nowhere. Right now the Zac Brown prices are all over the map; it is really rather insane, like trying to hit a moving target to get a good deal, or to just not get ripped off.
Who is making the money on these wild pricing variations, the performer or the promoter?

Mr. Vedder, your fans should not have to pay over $600 per seat in desperation only to have similar tickets sold for less than half of that today (I will not even get into what the TM charges could be on a $600 ticket).

Jones Beach Theatre just added a couple of more shows for the summer that include a Black Keys/Band of Horses concert. Hopefully the summer outdoor concert season pans out and life can continue toward normal.

in the meantime, I will check the Beacon day of show in hopes that some standard price tickets for Vedder pop into the system; otherwise I will be skipping this one.

Earthling

Rock on!

GQ