I want to see her sing..I don't want to buy her for the night.

This is a rant.

Remember when you used to go line up to buy tickets to concerts? You would stand in some crappy windy parking lot for four hours just hoping to get decent seats to see someone that you really wanted to see. Of course you wouldn't admit to seeing half of those bands today because you are soooo much cooler now. (Mine was Blue Oyster Cult with The Outlaws and Molly Hatchett...what the hell was I was thinking?). Then they started giving out wristbands so you could come back at an appointed hour...but you still had to get in line for the wristbands. And even then, all the good seats were gone because the "ticket agencies" (scalpers) had either made deals with the promoters or they paid homeless guys to camp out overnight to stand in line so you were sitting in nosebleeds making Sammy Hagar (yes...I saw him too, with Quarterflash.....groan) look even dinkier than he already was.

Now, when you go to a concert, you just get screwed financially. Two weeks ago I bought tickets for the Dixie Chicks (no...not for me...for the wife and daughter, and I love them anyway) and paid $62 apiece for them, to which Ticketmaster added a "convenience charge" of close to $10 per ticket, then there was the "Order Processing Charge" of $3.50. Final price: $150 to see a chubby little singer and a couple of pickin' and grinnin' sisters cover a Stevie Nicks song.

Today...Annie Lennox. Okay, Annie is special. Rarely tours...doesn't record much, so I could justify the $52 tickets (top price ticket $102). Covenience charge $9.70 per ticket. Order Processing Charge $3.10. Total price (I bought six tickets for our "group") $373.30.

Now keep in mind that the tickets were purchased online, so that the convenience cost of $58.20 for Lennox was for using my computer and Ticketmaster's site. The order processing charge is to spit out the tickets and mail them to me First Class. The extra charges for six tickets were more than the cost of one ticket. Yeah, yeah, it's what the market demands, but only because of exclusivity agreements between the promoters, venues, and Ticketmaster.

This must be the invisible hand that the Libertarians speak about. I'm just not too wild about where the fingers of that hand are going....