A (11:00)
Oh, suicide. Yeah, maybe. Yeah. He unalived himself, as they like to say on the Internet. He un. Alived himself, I think. I don't want to. I don't want to misspeak about that because I don't want to be disrespectful to. To Chester. Chester Bennington. Death. Let me see here. Death, yes. Unalived by hanging. And the details aren't important. What's important is that he unalived himself in a moment when Linkin park was not at their zenith, they were not at their most powerful. They had seen their moment. Like oftentimes, this happens with every major musical act. They see their height, they fall from grace in the public's eyes. The public gets sick of hearing all about it, hearing the same song over and over again, whatever it is, and then they go away for a while, and then everything old becomes new again. And they see a resurgence in popularity. We're seeing that all over the board, all over the map right now with 80s bands, 90s 80s bands and musical acts. 90s bands and musical acts. Some have stayed. Frankie valley, Frankie Valli, 50s acts. That guy is dead. I'm still not convinced he's alive. I still go, Google Frankie Valli. Tell me. And Google Frankie Valli live and look at any of the concert footage from the last three years and tell me you're not 100% convinced that's not a Boston Dynamics robot with Frankie Valli's actual skin pasted on it. It's amazing. But his mouth doesn't move. He's singing, but his mouth doesn't move. Or they claim he's singing. And it's so hard to tell. And I'm a. I consider myself a master lip sync like detector. Anyway, so right now, the concert business, especially the concert business, is just insane. And we all Know this because we are seeing one of the. We are alive at a time. We are seeing one of the artists who is truly at the zenith of popularity, Taylor Swift. She just went on her world tour and you couldn't get a ticket. And if you could get a ticket, you were paying thousands of dollars even for the nosebleed seats or the standing. Standing room only seats. Thousands of dollars. And if you went to a Taylor Swift concert during that period of time, you will know that every ticket was standing room only. Everybody was standing, screaming and singing the songs you could almost not hear. It almost made it unenjoyable. I went and saw her at her last concert in la, the one that's on Disney plus right now. And I. It was a gift to my wife and it was the most expensive ticket I have ever paid for. And it was insane, but worth it to see her face, to see the enjoyment in her face. But it was just crazy to me that we were paying these kind of ticket prices. And Linkin park is not at the zenith of their. Their power. Chester passes away. Then years later, 6, 7, 8, 10 years later, they decide they're going to put the band back together, but with a new lead singer, as some would say a PR problematic singer. She has some ties to the Church of Scientology and some other cultish type behavior, but some people really like her voice in place of Chesters. And some people don't appreciate it. But they announced a tour where they were playing stadiums. 50, 60, 70,000 seats. And you told me the other day that they were having problems selling those tickets and they were downsizing the venues. Opening acts like Queens of the Stone Age were pulling out, probably because they couldn't be paid the same amount of money with a different sized venue, I would imagine. You know, I don't think they were like, oh, fuck Linkin Park. They were probably thinking to themselves, well, this isn't a good payday for us. And they're downsizing because they cannot sell the tickets at the price they need to sell them to in order to make the money they expected to make or to pay the crew or to fit those kind of arenas. They are even discounting tickets from $59 down to $39. The cheapest of seats, which is a today's day and age, is a pretty reasonable ticket. And there are still lots of seats available to these tickets. We heard this with who else? We've heard this about Katy Perry, we've heard this about who else just had to roll back her shows. Jennifer Lopez had to roll back, cancel her shows. Who are the two guys? The one that plays piano. Not White Stripes, but one plays piano, one plays bass. Do you know what I'm talking about? Black Keys. The Black Keys had to cancel all of their stadium dates and arena dates and go to smaller clubs. This is happening more frequently. The reason is because you and I have less money to spend on tickets right now. Because every ticket that we buy is exorbitantly expensive. Because you can't get them when they go on sale at the normal price. And even at the normal price, they're exorbitantly expensive. Comedy shows, entertainment, live show, all of it. And there's a complicated hodgepodge of reasons why that is. But the artist can no longer afford to go to a place like say Dodgers Stadium, like Lincoln park was scheduled to play and only sell 2/3 of the seats. They need to sell 100% of the seats in order just to make the kind of money they need probably to cover the costs and get a little bit of money themselves. And so rather then take the chance that they won't even six months ahead of time and they can see it coming down the the pike, they decide to go to an 18,000 seat venue rather than a 60,000 seat venue so they have a chance of breaking even and making money themselves. It used to not be like that. There were lots of concerts that I used to go to when I was a teenager and in my 20s where the it wasn't sold out. But now you won't go to a not sold out concert because they can't.
