Last night, to see the Chieftains. $150 for two. Two of the senior fellers (Molloy and Keane) weren’t even there because of illness. Only Paddy and Conneff, but they managed to find some interesting younger folk. Since I had never seen them live, it was the “have to get around to it” concert. Sure was pricey and I wish the other two had been there.
I didn’t hear enough regular tunes to make a formal conclusion, but I tell ya, Maureen Fahy is a fiddler of incomparable power and expression. Wow. I didn’t even know about her, but I’m not up on all the performers these days.
Any Fahy fans out there?
Or, you could stay on topic and give your pricey performance tale.
It’s been so long since I’ve been to a concert, other than a house concert. I think the last time I went to a major concert, it was The Moody Blues at Walnut Creek Amphitheater in Raleigh, NC, and I think it was around $50 per ticket (so $100 for the two of us). Of course, that was more than 15 years ago, and I imagine that kind of concert would be pricier now.
Actually, Tom and I saw them last year, and the “cheap” seats were about $50 a piece. This was at a higher class, indoor venue, so the orchestra seats were about $75 a piece.
That’s not too different, then. Our tickets were the “pricey” ones (we’ve loved The Moodies for years) back then, for that particular venue.
Walnut Creek was the coolest venue…I loved going to concerts there. We always paid extra for good seats under the roof, just in case one of those NC summer storms rolled in. Nice way to spend a summer evening!
We also saw Jimmy Buffett there too, and we had AWESOME seats! Those were dead cheap…they were promoters tickets (so close enough to the stage that you could practically count the bass player’s nose hairs), but my boss couldn’t use them and offered them to me for $30 per ticket. Heck of a deal…he puts on a great concert (Jimmy Buffett, that is, not my boss!).
Sounds like the $38 I paid to see Altan in Seattle at the Triple Door on Thursday was a relative bargain. Would’ve been only $35 if I’d purchased a reservation ahead of time. Then again, a Guinness at the TD is $6.00, and it wasn’t even a full pint!
What are you doing later this week. CA is a big state but…
Thursday 28th February Off to California
Venue: Cal Poly State University
San Luis Obispo, CA, USA
Friday 29th February Leap Year Chance in CA
Venue: Community Center
A late addition to our tour, Traditionally the last day in a leap year gives women the opportunity to formally propose marraige to their partner. Let us know if you are contemplating such a move at the concert and we will suitable serenade you!
I’m an usher, but they do pay me (very little, I might add).
The most I paid was $45 to see Sarah McLachlin and Butterfly Boucher in Columbus, but by the time I bought gas and food for my boyfriend and me, I spent over $300. The show was wonderful, but I’d never do that again.[/url]
The Sarah McLachlin one was the only one I’ve ever paid for. And we ran out of gas and money half way back home so I went in a Wal-Mart and returned a CD cleaner kit at 3am my ex had bought four days earlier so we could get enough gas money to come home (this was before gas was as expensive as it is now). They weren’t supposed to return it at that time of day but we explained that we were never going to get home if we didn’t get money for gas.
Keane may be sick now, he is also scheduled to play a number of concerts with Liam O Flynn in Ireland this and next week.
Fahy used to be in Riverdance for years, did one ‘solo’ album on the back of that but is generally not heard of much. She’s well placed at the junction of several fiddling families (Aggie Whyte was her aunt on the mother’s side)
She was sitting next to an kid from Canada, Jon Pilatzke (he and his brother dance at times during the show, the former stays onstage to fiddle). They were playing the same tunes of course but you should have seen the difference in the way they bowed. She held the bow old-style, hand down, he classical (I think). I guess that accounted for the difference. But side by side with another, it was striking how the bows moved differently, because I have seen other two-fiddle groups and they usually look pretty similar.
But when she soloed, she probably got the most applause from the audience (but part of that was spectacle, because she danced a bit too). She also gets a lower viola-like sound from her fiddle even though obviously they were all at concert pitch. She kind of wallops that fiddle, it’s not a light, airy style at all, but dark and muscular. I truly enjoyed her performance the most of all of 'em but like I said, they play so much program music rather than reels and jigs that it’s hard to evaluate. Unfortunately, Moloney was improperly mic’ed so I couldn’t hear enough whistle except on true soloes. Come to think of it, I couldn’t hear his pipes that well either.
Not including festivals the most I’ve paid is probably about £25 for a big act like The Killers, Muse or Foo Fighters last year.
Most of the time I go to smaller gigs where it costs £3-£5 to get in. It basically depends on the size of venue. The small venues charge small prices, mid size venues would be £10-£20 and the large ones would be upwards of £20. Who’s playing will affect the price as well but aside from very exceptional circumstances I wouldn’t consider paying more than £30 to see a gig.
