NOT ONLY do The Smashing Pumpkins have a new record out soon (see my previous post about pre-ordering it) they are touring.
I have always been jealous of Dalton having seen them at The Eagles Ballroom in Milwaukee years and years ago. I remember coming across the ticket stub in his pile one day and exclaiming “YOU saw Smashing Pumpkins?!”. He smiled and said yes, and it was awesome.
But then they had broken up, and the odds of ever seeing them became none existent.
Or so I thought!
Yes, with the new album came touring, and beyond my wildest belief… they are playing in Madison! Booyah!
The first show of the tour is at a new music venue in Madison called The Sylvee.
I couldn’t believe it. I immediately told Cindy “we are SO going!”.
Then I had to wait for a week until tickets came up for sale. It was a long week. I kept getting notices of pre-sale events, but was unable to order any. I set up a text to alert me when the tickets became available and tried to put it out of my mind.
Then the day came when the tickets went on sale and I was busy and didn’t think of it, and didn’t get the text alert, and didn’t notice until 10 minutes after the sale to the public started. UGH.
I jumped to the website and immediately saw that the $75 dollar general admission tickets were all gone. There were some re-sale tickets though for a higher price. I took a precious few minutes to consider how much I wanted to spend, then went for them.
Too late.
There was a message saying something to the effect of “Sorry, someone beat you to the tickets. Please choose different tickets and try again.”
I adjusted filters, I chose higher priced seats, nothing… try it all again, no good. Sigh.
I decided to try one more time and got 2 tickets in my queue and went though the whole purchase info screen and added my info and clicked “BUY”.
“Sorry, someone beat you to the tickets. Please choose different tickets and try again.”
OMG. Hurry up, try it again! Same deal, got through all the screens again only to get that same message and NOT get my tickets. I was to use a fancy word, crestfallen. I really wanted to see this show. I gave it one last try and managed to score 2 tickets that would have cost me over $300. I got to the “BUY” button, then hesitated and ultimately shut it down.
I let Cindy know the news and surprisingly (that’s my awesome wife) she told me to go for it, Happy Birthday.
So… I went back at it and surprisingly, I managed to get a pair of re-sale tickets that were cheaper than the $300 pair. I made it to the “BUY” button and… and… and…
P U R C H A S E D !!!
This is the most I have EVER paid for a pair of concert tickets, though I realize that you could easily pay a whole lot more. It almost didn’t happen. Literally, and in more ways than just one. Later that night I saw this:
SOLD OUT.
I am not surprised, which is why I was waiting so hard for the public sale to start, and why I was so bummed when I forgot about it. I wonder how long it actually took to sell out. Whew!
We’ll be there. See you soon Billy and company.
The Aural Retentive 