It's Not Fair: Ticket Sales in an Online World

I was browsing around Ticketmaster Canada today as I'm wont to do on a fairly regular basis to see if by some miracle a band I want to see is actually coming to Winnipeg. Lo and behold, I discover that Bloc Party is coming in May. I immediately attempt to buy a ticket. (The blood is buzzing in my ears at this point as it usually does when I try to get tickets online.) Already in my heart, I'm fairly certain that I won't get floor seats - it's the Burton Cummings Theatre, a vaudevillean venue that generally sells out its floor in seconds. I still remember what one of my friends and I will forever call the "Franz Ferdinand Debacle"; despite both of us being on the Ticketmaster Web site at the same time trying to get tickets for the gig, which happened to be a double headliner with Death Cab For Cutie, we both got locked out of the site and all of the tickets were gone in a minute. We still largely blame overzealous Death Cab For Cutie fans and their pre-sale passwords for this. I maintain that this is not the only reason I hate Death Cab so much. Back to my current Bloc Party situation... Sadly, I am correct, and I resignedly settle for a seat in the first balcony. It's Bloc Party - I need to go. I'm satisified enough just to be going at all, but when I look online for information about this concert announcement, I'm rankled by what I discover. The official announcement appears to have occurred on January 14, and there was a pre-sale password.

Now, I understand that the world of ticket-buying has irrevocably changed since the advent of online sales. I accept that. However, what I refuse to accept is the fact I have to have a coronary every time a decent band comes to this city. There shouldn't be such a thing as some elite pre-sale that only those in-the-know have access to. I'm not cool enough to be in-the-know. Or the loop. I'm already a lot more obsessive and crazy than regular music fans when it comes to monitoring things like this, but I realize that it would be physically and mentally impossible for me to keep tabs on every band I love to see when they might decide to brave the trek to Winnipeg. Perhaps teenagers are more adept at this because they have more time and energy to devote to such pursuits, or because they don't have hundreds of bands to worry about. At any rate, it's inevitable that every time a band has a pre-sale, there will be either no good seats left or no seats at all. Winnipeg is generally pretty starved for good gigs, so when they come, there's a rabid scramble.

I'm old enough to remember the times of pre-online ticket sales and pre-pre-sale ticket sales. When I was a teenager and barely twenty or so, I would dutifully line up outside ticket sellers and try for the best seats possible from the agent. This is how I procured third row tickets for David Bowie. I also remember being able to get tickets by phone. This is how I ended up on the floor for Muse (albeit after leaping over a couple rows of seating when the lights went out in order to evade security).

I would also like to point out that this isn't a rant against ticket touts, which seems to be a growing problem all over the world (though, I've heard most about it in Britain) because I'm fairly certain the majority of people who bought up the good tickets for Bloc Party genuinely wanted to go. In the end, this is probably more of a rant against pre-sales and annoying venues. What I mean by annoying venues is the aspect of assigned seating. I am most happy at a venue that has no seating at all. To me the democratic way of concert-going is rush seating. That guarantees that you don't have to have a grand mal trying to get tickets first, and it ensures that the more committed the fan, the better the position in relation to the stage. If you have the motivation to arrive at the venue's doors an hour or four in advance, then you surely deserve a prime spot by the stage. I have operated this way many times - in fact, I've gotten used to this manner of doing things over the past couple of years. Perhaps that's why I get so enraged at a place like Burton Cummings. Although, in the past, before this ticket frenzy nonsense, I recall being up against the stage at the Burt for The Arcade Fire and for Muse. But pre-sales have obviously changed that. I may never set foot on the floor of the Burton Cummings ever again.

Additionally, I seem to forget that most of the bands and artists I like are considered relatively obscure, thus when I've gone to their shows, I got to go to tiny venues that were automatically rush seating. This is why I wish bands would get out here before they get too big (this is how I managed to see The Killers with a couple hundred other people and nearly have Brandon Flowers step on my hand with his loafers). I can't compete with the army of indie fans that can finagle their way to the best spots for shows. At least not online. When it comes to physically competing for spots at the stage, I have sharp elbows and a stealthy nature, and I can stand outside a venue for half a day in sub-zero weather easily. My only small consolation is that the people at the Burt seem to be adamant that the Bloc Party show will have strictly assigned seating; however, having been in this position several times at other shows, I have witnessed the tide of fans leaving their assigned floor seats to press the stage regardless of security or rules. And I will be trapped like an obese pigeon up in the first balcony.

I feel sorry for those people who aren't techno-savvy and think they can actually purchase concert tickets by phone. Or by standing in line somewhere. Those days are long gone. My fear is that the days of online ticket purchases will soon be out of sight for me as well.

One Month Off - Bloc Party

Atonement - Bloc Party

My Top 40 Albums of 2008: Numbers 8 Through 1

And so we've reached the end of this year's journey through my top albums. Before we get into the top eight, I'll try to sum up which albums released in the last few months of 2008. September brought offerings from Jenny Lewis, Mercury Rev, People in Planes, Butch Walker, No and the Maybes, Glasvegas, Santogold, Jon Ryman, Metallica, Chairlift, Kings of Leon, and a sophomore record from former Suede frontman, Brett Anderson. There were also a few that have already made this countdown, including TV on the Radio, Ladyhawke, and Okkervil River.

October's albums was jam-packed with records from Empire of the Sun, Department of Eagles, The Sea and Cake, Eugene McGuinness, Of Montreal, Kaiser Chiefs, Keane, Euros Childs, Bloc Party (the physical version), Los Campesinos!, and AC/DC with their long-awaited return. There were also a couple of disappointments from The Cure and Cold War Kids. Snow Patrol demonstrated that they couldn't compete with Chasing Cars while Oasis produced another unneccessary album. And there were several antlered mammals afoot with releases from Deerhoof, Deerhunter, and The Dears. Again, there were several released in October that you've already seen in this series, namely, from Simon Bookish, Maps of Norway, Polarkreis 18, and Twig.

November saw records from We Are Standard, Glass Candy, Razorlight, Threatmantics, Max Tundra, Thieves Like Us, Kanye West, and The Killers. Of course November was also the momentous occasion of Guns 'n Roses' Chinese Democracy. I apologize, but as the year wound down, I didn't note any albums released in December except for an inexplicably successful comeback from Britney Spears.

To recap, the countdown thus far is:

40. The Penguin League - Antarctica Takes All!
39. This Gift - Sons & Daughters
38. Apocalypso - The Presets
37. Sea From Shore - School of Language
36. The Colour of Snow - Polarkreis 18
35. L'anthologie des 3 perchoirs - Duchess Says
34. Everything That Happens Will Happen Today - David Byrne and Brian Eno
33. For Emma Forever - Bon Iver
32. Seventh Tree - Goldfrapp
31. Die Off Songbird - Maps of Norway
30. Hercules & Love Affair - Hercules & Love Affair
29. The Devil, You + Me - The Notwist
28. The Jade Motel - Zeigeist
27. The Stand-Ins - Okkervil River
26. Evolutionary Sunset Call - stanleylucasrevolution
25. Oracular Spectacular - MGMT
24. Life After Ridge - Twig
23. V - Van She
22. Cut the World - Moscow Olympics
21. O My Heart - Mother Mother
20. Hold On Now Youngster - Los Campesinos!
19. Dear Science - TV on the Radio
18. Saturdays = Youth - M83
17. Aurora - The Deer Tracks
16. We Just Are - The Japanese Popstars
15. Dig!!! Lazarus Dig!!! - Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds
14. Do You Like Rock Music? - British Sea Power
13. Limbo, Panto - Wild Beasts
12. Surreal Auteur - Allegories
11. Everything/Everything - Simon Bookish
10. Ladyhawke - Ladyhawke
9. Velocifero - Ladytron

Drumroll please...

8. Lust Lust Lust - The Raveonettes

The Danish duo are on fire this year with both this brilliant album released at the start of the year and then four outstanding EPs spread throughout the rest of 2008. Kicking off with the distorted, brain-shredding wall of sound and dirge-like guitars in Aly, Walk With Me, Lust Lust Lust is a triumph from beginning to end, and after so many successful releases, it is even more of a victory. The reverb effects applied to their dissonant, clanging guitars produce some haunting, slightly Western film-tinged soundscapes; songs like Aly, Walk With Me, Lust, and Expelled From Love give you the feeling of trekking through a wind-sculpted desert of volcanic ash during a peach-hued sunset. These darker songs share space with peppier, sweeter songs like Dead Sound, Blush, You Want the Candy and Blitzed. This record achieves a perfect balance between JAMC/Sonic Youth fuzzy noise and chirpy melody. Sune Rose Wagner and Sharin Foo have every right to sound aloof and cooler-than-thou - they are the kids with black lollipops in their mouths at the prom.

Aly, Walk With Me - The Raveonettes

Dead Sound - The Raveonettes

7. A Certain Feeling - Bodies of Water

This Californian band was so impressive live when I saw them early this year in Toronto that I bought their debut album, Ears Will Pop & Eyes Will Blink, on the spot. Then they released their sophomore album this summer and I continued to be enthralled with their rich harmonies and inventive song structures. The epic album opener Gold, Tan, Peach, and Grey still plays my vertebrae like a xylophone, and the choral gusto of Under the Pines that strips the breath from my lungs. Throughout the album, there's a fragility juxtaposed to a straining intensity and a keening mourning abutting an unbridled celebration. Styles are hard to pin down in this record as they swirl and eddy around your knees, threatening to drag you under and stir you into the sand. It's a baptism worth experiencing.

Gold, Tan, Peach, and Grey - Bodies of Water

Water Here - Bodies of Water

6. The Midnight Organ Flight - Frightened Rabbit

This sophomore effort from Scottish band Frightened Rabbit is a continuation of their brand of painful, almost self-flagellating, honesty over shambolic folk and taut, whip-snap percussion. Singer, Scott Hutchison, sings in a ragged, broken wail that can sometimes remind me of Conor Oberst and sometimes of Gary Lightbody back when he was in Polar Bear not Snow Patrol. They may have grown more accessible, but they are no less stingingly accusatory or violently truthful. Like the modern leper in the album opener, the band sounds like it's going down kicking and screaming against a senseless world full of heartbreak and internal conflict. But like a slight brightening at the edge of the horizon during a thunderstorm, The Midnight Organ Flight tempers the gloom and harsh proclamations of the human condition with a sliver of salvation in the gloaming.

The Modern Leper - Frightened Rabbit

Keep Yourself Warm - Frightened Rabbit

5. In Ghost Colours - Cut Copy

And so the last of the Modular artists on this countdown makes their appearance. When I first heard So Haunted, the first song released prior to the album, I wasn't convinced that Cut Copy was heading in a direction I could follow them into. I had been so immersed in their first album, Bright Like Neon Love, and its cooler, airy genre of electro, that it took awhile for me to adjust to the higher energy, brighter style. Now I've come to the conclusion that In Ghost Colours is actually an unexpected, but massive leap forward in the Cut Copy sound. I would even go so far as to elevate them to the same innate feel for melodic dance music as that of New Order in the 80s. There's a shimmer and twinkle to the album that ranges from the twee sprays of baby's breath of Feel the Love, Unforgettable Season, and Midnight Runner to the pumping, technicolour electro-disco of Out There On the Ice, Lights & Music, Hearts on Fire, Far Away, and Nobody Lost, Nobody Found. At least two thirds of the album have been or should have been hit singles, and I never tire of listening to it. It's like listening to a rainbow so dazzling that you hope you never find the pot of gold.

Feel the Love - Cut Copy

Far Away - Cut Copy

4. Intimacy - Bloc Party

While all their Brit Invasion of 2004 contemporaries have either produced disappointing second and third albums or faded away all together, Bloc Party has forged onwards with a respectable second album, and this year, a genius third. Their Gang of Fouresque minimalist post-punk has exploded into a razor-sharp hybrid of stark, crisp guitars and electronic acrobatics with interludes of vulnerable candor. The album begins with the brain-searing volley of Ares, Mercury, and Halo as the band wields their guitars like machine guns before dipping into the delicate melancholy of Biko, Signs and Zepherus. The bonus tracks, Letter to My Son and Your Visits Are Getting Shorter, included on the physical copy of the album that released well after the digital copy are equally gorgeous; in the latter track, the overlapping samples of Kele Okereke's voice emulate a scattered and conflicted stream of consciousness perfectly. And of course, Okereke's lyrics over the whole album are as beautifully poetic and insightful as always, creating deft allegories and intelligent commentary on human behaviour and relationships; the words are sung with such urgent passion that you can feel the desperate searching of another's eyes, the aching need of the mouths depicted in the album's cover art, and the turmoil over recoiling from closeness with another.

Mercury - Bloc Party

Biko - Bloc Party

3. Skeletal Lamping - Of Montreal

It would have been difficult to top Hissing Fauna Are You the Destroyer?, but Kevin Barnes manages at the very least to equal it in boundless imagination and myriad stylistic turns. If anything, Skeletal Lamping is labyrinthine in its construction as it blazes through glam, funk, psychedelia, twee rock, and electro, often all in one track. This unpredictable mixture was deliberate as Barnes created the most experimental and ambitious album of his career and attempted to flit through musical and lyrical ideas which seem to last about thirty seconds each. The genius comes in the composition because despite the seemingly capricious insanity, the album hangs together as a coherent, intricate whole without disintegrating into self-indulgent proggy wanking. You also get the feeling that Barnes isn't taking himself so seriously and is there to entertain, a flair that extends to his famously flamboyant live shows and his alter ego, the black she-male, Georgie Fruit. Barnes has the ability to innovate and the panache of the legends he channels on this record, including David Bowie and Prince, but he takes these attributes and stretches them into the farthest reaches of his psyche and libido, daring to tread beyond his heroes.

Nonpareil of Favor - Of Montreal

Beware Our Nubile Miscreants - Of Montreal

2. American Demo - The Indelicates

This highly literate, arch English duo have gotten nowhere near the amount of attention they should have from music fans and critics. This debut album made me believe in brilliantly witty lyrics again, and what's more, the music lives up to the words with its melodic sensibilities and propensity for gushingly expansive anthems. I like artists who make me think about things from a different angle, and The Indelicates do that more than the majority of new bands I've come across in the past few years. Their lyrics are definitely on par with anything Morrissey or Luke Haines created, and they make American Demo a piece of zeitgeist literature, a document of a mass media fatigue and disgust at a bloated, meaningless popular culture. They lambaste everything within reach, including feminism, sacred cow idols like Jeff Buckley, the rotting music industry, and youth itself. Perhaps the most surprising and startling track is Unity Mitford, an extraordinary song from the point of view of Mitford and her sympathetic love for Hitler - the concept and the lines "the indescribable beauty/Of a million hands raised to salute you/Like poppies lean when winds caress them/Cut flowers pressed to solemn duty" are enough to forgive the Gallagheresque guitar solo. Unity Mitford is a far cry from the trendy use of communism and fascism mocked in the song Sixteen while stand-out track New Art For the People, which acts as the theme for the album, is a bittersweet epic of a pathetic couple with all the romance of tragedy drained from them. These anthems make you believe in ideas like you did when you were young - they're like an adrenaline shot in the heart. I get chills every time I listen to the song Heroin and its rushing merge into We Are the Kids, the culmination of a generation frustrated by promises of inspiration in art, but which rather ironically provides the inspiration it violently mourns.

Unity Mitford - The Indelicates

We Hate the Kids - The Indelicates

1. Vanilla Swingers - Vanilla Swingers

Many months ago I stated that this album was my frontrunner for album of the year, and lo and behold, Vanilla Swingers managed to fight off all the other bands snapping at their heels. This self-titled debut is a concept album about two people who fall in love in the present, run away to the past (specifically, the 1980s), lose each other on their return to the present and then meet again in the future. It's a fluid work of art that takes John Gray's philosophical book Straw Dogs, which denies the progress myth of the human race, and weaves it into a narrative that defies progress by its convoluted, non-linear use of time. The London duo, comprised of Miles Jackson and Anne Gilpin, spin their tale over a backdrop of bittersweet, hushed melodies, which showcase the interplay between their diaphanous vocals and the intelligent beauty of their lyrics. This album makes me think about the innate human capacity to tell stories and to create myths in order to understand the world and humans themselves. Without our stories we are nothing. And these myths include one of the most perpetuated ones alongside progress: romantic love.

Vanilla Swingers deconstructs and plays with this myth as history erodes it from all sides and dimensions. At the same time, this album makes me understand why we cling to the myth of romantic love: romantic love provides us with an escape from reality, but in its bittersweet tragedies, it also gives us just as much pleasure from pain and heartbreak. Songs like I'll Stay Next to You and Back to the Present are romantic precisely because they present the transience of love and speak to our fetishization of the fleeting. The music complements the theme elegantly as it flows like quicksilver in an hourglass and period details of the 80s creep in with bubbles of electro and washes of Pet Shop Boys synths. In the world of this album, there is no golden past, there is no improved future, and there is no true escape from the present. But human salvation and self-preservation comes in the form of storytelling. In the track Goodbye Lennon, which is set to the sound of a heartbeat and a ticking clock, a graceful fusion of different measures of time, the following lyrics appear: "I didn't find myself back there/But I lost myself in you/And it felt so.../It doesn't have to end this way/Cos you can always start again/It's just a possible world." And that is how Vanilla Swingers transcends the rest of the albums this year; Vanilla Swingers have shown how humans can make an ellipsis pregnant with meaning and how our survival is bound up in the creation of possible worlds.

I'll Stay Next To You - Vanilla Swingers

The Hive - Vanilla Swingers

The honourable mention for this final installment is Brett Anderson's Wilderness, a rather welcome surprise after what he has produced post-Suede. While I didn't find too much exciting about his debut solo album and his not-so-impressive reunion with Bernard Butler as The Tears, Wilderness is an acoustic guitar-led, intimate album that made me believe that there is some talent left in Anderson after all. There is an almost dark medieval tone to the record as Anderson sheds his former self-assured preening for an unguarded glimpse of his exquisite fraility.

Funeral Mantra - Brett Anderson

And so ends the countdown and a crazy year of New Kids on the Block reunions (an event that I was convinced was a practical joke for months) and of RIAA reassessments; of Chinese Democracy and of threats to Blogger MP3 blog democracy; of Russell Brand's fall from grace and of Noel Gallagher's tumble into the monitors at the Toronto Virgin Festival. Thank you for coming along for the ride down my rather bumpy lane of musical memories. This weekend brings the final part of my weekly mix round-up, and as an extra special gift for the end of 2008, there will be a New Year's Eve mix waiting for you on Tuesday.

The Greek Chorus of Relationship Guilt: Bloc Party's Intimacy

Released in digital format on August 21 (and to be released on physical format with some bonus tracks at the much later date of October 27), Bloc Party's latest album, Intimacy, had become one of those albums I forgot to anticipate or expect. Its release blindsided me a bit. I've been a fan of Bloc Party since before the release of their first album, Silent Alarm (which was released considerably later in Canada than in the UK) - I consider them the best of the bunch that all seemed to appear on the music scene at the same time (Kaiser Chiefs, Maximo Park, Franz Ferdinand). Their jagged, jerky post-punk guitars and windmilling drums paired with often vicious and/or political lyrics stood out from the rest of the pack, and I took them far more seriously than their contemporaries. And despite their sophomore album, A Weekend in the City, being a bit of directional change (more electronics and more personal lyrics), I still really enjoyed them - the commentary on life in London in the 21st century was just as political and meaningful as direct commentary on broader global themes. With Intimacy, it seems Bloc Party have taken the next logical step in evolution: even more electronic influences (which was hinted at with non-album single Flux) and even more personal lyrics ostensibly about singer Kele Okereke's recent breakup. If Silent Alarm was an abstract comment on a global situation and A Weekend in the City was a more localized remark on 21st century youth in the English capital, Intimacy brings the focus down even closer as it comments on Okereke's personal situation of a fraught relationship - the album often brings the microscope down so forcefully it shows the spidery cracks of the slide of Okereke's personal life. Though Bloc Party have strayed considerably from their commentary on world politics, they have still found a way to discuss politics - in this case, relationship and sexual politics, which I think can be seen as world power struggles and politics in microcosm.

Bloc Party has always been exceptional at presenting a dark, intelligent vulnerability rather than the cheeky bravado of their contemporaries and with Intimacy, they have opened up even further while filling out the rattly skeletal frame of their Gang of Four guitars with bigger electronics. It is also readily apparent that this record features numerous Greek mythology references, giving the piece a feeling of overarching theme. Appropriately titled after the god of war, album opener, Ares, is an aural assault of one of the most violating kinds with shredding guitars and electronic noise grating up and down your spine. It feels like a catharsis of frustration expelling your insides onto an anonymous dancefloor Bacchanalia where it will be trampled into something more intoxicating. Mercury, which is the only single to be officially released as of yet, takes Bloc Party's former jagged angles and refashions them into an electro angularity with its skipping, clipped chorus of "mercury's in retrograde"; this chorus is also a lovely metaphorical one that can be read in a variety of ways, including in the astrological sense, in a temperature sense, or of course in a Greek mythological sense. The skipping, synchopated style of the chorus gives a sense of slipping and sliding backwards like a jittery Sisyphus. Halo is more rock-based, hearkening back to Bloc Party's debut, but perhaps is a little too reminiscent of Helicopter, although its interlude of raucous guitars and cymbal crashes is still quite good. Its lyrics hint at infatuation at first sight tempered by a knowledge that it's just too good to last.

The album takes a softer turn with Biko, which seems to be both about Steve Biko, a noted black South African anti-apartheid activist who died from injuries suffered during interrogation and a personal relationship with someone who is slipping away. Biko begins with a lone(ly) guitar before blooming into a more frenetic pleading as Okereke returns once again to Greek mythology by invoking a crossing of the River Styx. Trojan Horse is one of my favourite tracks on the album with the beautiful lines "You used to take your watch off before we made love/You didn't want to share our time with anyone." Amidst the squeaks and squawks of feedback and sound effects, Okereke manages to smuggle in a core of tenderness and disillusionment. Signs reins in the rocking pace with tinkling chimes and glockenspiel while building beyond the childlike music box atmosphere as the lyrics once more linger over the death of a loved one.

One Month Off swings back to an angry tone as heavy drums join even heavier guitars, which remind me of Klaxons' Atlantis to Interzone. It also features some of Okereke's best lyrics, dripping with vindictiveness: "I can be as cruel as you/Fighting fire with firewood/I can be as cruel as you/Fighting lies with lies." The idea of fighting fire with the futility of firewood is a brilliant image, and this chorus just seems to shortcircuit itself with stuttered fury by the finale. Zephyrus, which is named for the Greek god of the west wind, features a Prayer-like drumbeat and lyrics which reference the fact Zephyrus abducted Chloris and made her goddess of flowers: "And your face is still wet from the fight before/As your tears hit the ground, blue flowers spring from them." There is also an eerie choir in the background, seemingly acting like a Greek chorus of guilt as the narrator seems to be feeling the guilt of falling out of love with someone. Better Than Heaven uses a bouncier beat and toned-down melodies for Okereke's attack on the concept of original sin and the danger of knowledge until a firestorm of guitars whips the song apart like a volcano of desire. Final track, Ion Square, features lines from E.E. Cummings' poem I Carry Your Heart With Me and uses an insistent piano and rippling wistfulness similar to LCD Soundsystem's All My Friends to convey a desperate grasp at preserving the initial heady feeling of love and attraction. The gentle vocals and baby's breath sprays of electronic sound meld into a hopeful tribute to whatever could pass as undying love in a mortal world.

I'm still pretty bitter about not being able to see Bloc Party during their North American tour, but hey, if you live somewhere other than Winnipeg, you likely have a good chance of going to see them. Enough complaining. I think Intimacy is exactly where Bloc Party should be right now - translating age-old quandaries of the human condition into a "postmodern" theatre where people still wear masks when loving each other.

Ares - Bloc Party

Trojan Horse - Bloc Party

Ion Square - Bloc Party