dolls ticket scalpers. (Patreon)

Well then.

There are now scalper stubhub tickets on sale for the upcoming Dresden Dolls shows for $3,372 a pair.

This makes me really sad.

Let me remind you that the band will eventually do bigger tours and everyone will be able to come music with us. You should get on the band’s mailing list.

Again, there’s like that 2% of my heart that get thrilled and ego-stroked that tickets for my band are this wanted.

But this also veers into the realm of horror when I look at what the band is going to earn from these shows (very little) and the fact that one scalper who took advantage of our relatively honor-based system could literally earn more than both members of the goddamn band, who are going to rehearse our asses off for two weeks and then soundcheck and perform nine hours of music over the course of three long days…just because they grabbed a dozen tickets and can now sell them for a kings ransom.

This scalper could - in all seriousness - make more money than the band and the crew combined.

This really hurts, because my band and my crew work really hard. We are good at our jobs. We deserve to get paid more than a clever scalper.

Lots of bands have tried lots of things to escape scalping. I remember a few years ago when NIN put tickets on sale IN PERSON. You literally had to go stand in line with your ID and get the goods in the flesh.

I talked to a local woman in Woodstock about a week ago and she was bemoaning the fact that she couldn’t get tickets…and then she texted me that she was just going to blow the thousand bucks on stubhub. She was thrilled. I was not.

I don’t think people understand how much it hurts, when you’re the musician, and you know the math.

Could I have squeezed her onto the guestlist and asked her to just give *me* that $1,000 in cash? Sure. Would I ever do that in a million years? No.

The band also could have sold ALL these Woodstock tickets for $300 each and they probably would have sold. But we didn’t want to gouge our community. We sometimes sell VIP tickets, but we have always, always tried to keep our general tickets really reasonably priced even when we knew we could make more money by charging more. Because FAIR.

There is really no way to fix this at the moment. These scalpers already bought these tickets and we cannot get them back. Our team looked into systems for the internal community to buy and resell tickets - and we will implement that when we eventually tour - but that doesn’t help us now.

These tickets on stubhub are VIP tickets; as evidenced by the fact that you get a merch package with the ticket. That means that either some scalper had to be on our mailing list, or some actual fan of ours decided that it was worth $3,372 to not see a band they love.

So many people are struggling right now. Me included. I haven’t been able to properly tour in a few years, because of the collision of mothering a young kid and pandemic, and belts are tightening all around the world. My patreon numbers are falling. The exit polls show that people are having to budget more tightly.

I wonder how much you’d have to bribe ME with to not attend these dolls shows.

Like, if someone just flat out offered me $5,836,386 in cash to cancel these three shows, would I do it?

Does everybody have a price?

More critically:

Will I ever go back to making posts about art, songwriting, and music?

😀

I guess all I want to say is this: to whatever person is selling these tickets, I hope it’s worth it to you. It’s making me and my band sad, you’re taking advantage of some pretty nice people and pissing in a system based on kindness, and whatever you’re spending the profit on, I hope it’s not meth.

We will figure this out, my friends. Bear with us.

I just posted this to social media, and immediately got three text messages from pals who had extra tickets and were wondering what to do with them, and offered to sell them back to the band at face value.

YES. If you have tickets you want to sell back to us, we will take them and find them good homes. Email management@amandapalmer.net and we will sort it and thank you up and down.

Also, here’s a post about all the patron and extra dolls stuff you need to know (yoga! brunch! brigade!!) https://www.patreon.com/posts/73301948

There is also the shadowbox forum, where we have a thread going with housing, ticket trades, ride shares and all that.

https://forum.theshadowbox.net/t/dresden-dolls-november-10-11-12-woodstock-ny-need-offer-ticket-ride-couch-buddy-info/9860/6

And if you have or need tickets right here and now, feel free to comment below and find one another.

xx

AFP