About 5 years ago I bought tickets to see Madonna in Vegas. 4 people, $2000. Start time was supposed to be 830PM. Not my first or even thousandth concert, so we showed up at 930 and they made us put our phones in the little faraday bags. I was late 40s at the time, most of the audience seemed to be my age or older, and most of them were in their seats before we got there.
There was 1 opening act that lasted about 30 mins from around 10-1030. No announcements were made about delays or anything. Of course you couldn’t check your phone to see if something was going to happen, she wasn’t performing, zombie apocalypse, whatever.
People started leaving that I could see around 11. We left at midnight, and I got my phone out of its bag in time to see an announcement that Madonna had just taken the stage. Around 1215.
So - do I expect concerts to start on time? No. But do I expect a little bit of courtesy for the audience? Hmm.
Anyhow, I didn’t think I’d get any kind of refund since the show actually happened, and when I called Amex which I used to buy the tickets they initially said no. But then I said “Hey, the ticket says November 5th [or whatever].” “And?” “And she didn’t perform on November 5th. She started performing on November 6th.” I was shocked but I got my refund.
That works both ways, especially since Madonna and her promoters should be more familiar with her habit for performing late than a bunch of fans who may have never attended a Madonna concert before.
If she wants to perform at 10:45, then why don’t her promoters plan accordingly and advertise the show as starting at 10:45?
In comparison, if your airline flight is delayed for reasons under the carrier’s control, you can get credit or a refund up to double what you paid for the ticket, and the airline has to get you to your destination anyway, if you still want to go. Even better benefits in the EU. What if you couldn’t stay hours longer for one of these incredibly delayed concerts? Just sayin’.
Fortuitously, I have never had to wait hours after post time for a performer to start their show.
I’m sure also buried in there is a proviso that damages are capped at the price of the ticket.
That’s pretty close to victim blaming there.
Concert, plane, play, movie, magician hired for a birthday party. If the start time is 8:30, then the performance should start reasonably close to 8:30. If something happens — tour bus breaks down, plane arrives late, 17th drummer died in a freak accident — it is basic courtesy to let the audience know that there is an issue, offer a good faith estimate of when it will actually start, and offer a refund to anyone who decides they can’t wait.
So much this. Reason why I don’t go to many concerts anymore. It’s isn’t acceptable to tell the sitter “I should be home by eleven, but I’ll definitely be back before you’re supposed to get to school tomorrow morning.”
Most definitely. It’s both a power trip and a sign of self esteem issues.
I don’t think there’s any inherent contradiction between the positions “I love Madonna’s music” and “Madonna’s promoters shouldn’t advertise her concert as starting at 8:30 if they know damn well she’s not going to perform until 10:45.”
First world problems? Absolutely. But that’s where she makes her living.
Just because most people weren’t annoyed enough to sue doesn’t mean they weren’t annoyed. I’m glad you don’t need to care about an event starting two hours late, but some people can be really inconvenienced by it, and I don’t see why they should be dismissed out of hand like that.
fwiw. i would like it if shows started on time. i’ve been burned by it more than once myself. it’s just such a given, that i can’t get too worked up over it.
at this point, to me, it seems like part of the risk of it all. maybe the sound will be good, maybe the band will show up and not be too hungover, maybe they’ll play live and not off a backing track, maybe i won’t get a beer dumped on me or elbowed in the face.
The last two gigs, one outdoor, I went to there was an enforced ending time, so the headliners and support had to start roughly on time or cut their sets down.
Worked well, but at the same time, less rock and roll.
Sometimes “the show must go on” means that they have to run it, even if the technical difficulties are horrendous. Perhaps the promoter meant it when they said that? The audience would be pretty pissed off if all the effects didn’t fire and the sound was shit. They are hyper-critical and expect perfection.
As an aside having talked to musicians who toured with her, so is Madonna. She’d flog the band in practice to exhaustion and then go next door to do it to the dancers! They were in awe of her.
No, it’s a federal court in the US. Major shows are advertised for early starts here and, in general, start bang on time. The performers face fines if they go overtime so they finish bang on time also. I go to smaller gigs but I haven’t been to a show that started two hours late in decades (that was LCD Soundsystem on their first European tour and I think they figured out that the concert venue was also/really a nightclub and that room wasn’t being used so they could start at a more appropriate time for their music. I couldn’t have been happier and it was a banging show.)
That’s why I said “pretty close”. I don’t disagree with your and @Akimbo_NOT ’s premise that someone attending a live event needs to have contingency plans in case things run late. But there is a fundamental difference between a concert or sports event starting two hours late and an event going two hours over time because the performer decided to do several encores or the game needs to break a tie.
In both circumstances audience members can choose to leave if they run out of time, but in only one do those people get the entertainment they paid for.
My guess: they understand that her audience is aging with her. Concerts starting at 10:45 ending 1:00am is cool when you’re 20, not so much when you’re 60. Would she still sell out a venue? Maybe. It is Madonna, after all, and her concerts are events. But maybe they’d only sell 3/4 the number of tickets if they advertised the actual start times, because some people can’t make that work, or don’t want to stay up that late, or have things to do the next morning. So the promoters decide it’s better to piss them off with a late start but make it up with a hell of a show and hope the negative feelings go away.
I think that some act’s fans are more aware of that act’s tour habits than others. And have different expectations. When Madonna played around here the first time, people were upset that the songs didn’t sound exactly like the studio version. A Grateful Dead fan would be upset if the songs did.
As long as I’ve been attending concerts, I’ve been baffled by the aggressively adversarial and predatory “fuck you” relationship that ticket sellers and venues (and some artists as well) have with their patrons. It’s gotten much worse over the years* with e.g. the rapacious Ticketmaster inflation and surcharges, but I’ve always found concert-going to be an anxiety-inducing mixed bag, and however much much I might enjoy the actual performance, can never shake the feeling of overall hostility to my experience from the concert-making complex. This is just one of many ways that the industry makes live shows unpleasant. It doesn’t have to be this way.
*Although I suppose getting murdered by Hell’s Angels security isn’t so much of an issue anymore.
I’d be upset about that for any performer I’m seeing live. If I wanted to hear them sound exactly like the studio albums, I’d stay home and listen to the albums where it’s comfortable and I don’t have to pay $50+ a ticket.
Hah! I went to see Hawkwind (fucking Hawkwind), got super-high, turned up late thinking we’d have prolly missed the soundcheck and the support act had been on, done their set in about 20 mins and Hawkwind were halfway thru theirs…
