Wednesday
Mar242010
How Long Would You Wait?
Wednesday, March 24, 2010 at 12:01AM
Let's say you've paid for a concert ticket and are waiting at the venue for the band to start. You wait and wait and wait...and the band never appears...or appears hours later. How long do you stick around? I ask because I just read Axl Rose kept Guns n' Roses fans in Chile waiting four hours the other day. Of course, we all know Rose has been keeping fans waiting for years now, but come on. It's disrespectful and I can't imagine just sitting and sitting and sitting...On the other hand, I'd hate to walk away from a show that cost a hundred bucks (or more) to attend.
Again, I ask: how long would you wait? I'm going to put my wait limit at around an hour. If a band can't get it together within an hour of the posted start time, then there's a serious problem. You can bet I'll be at the box office, demanding a refund - and I'm a pretty persuasive arguer, thank you very much.
Bands that keep fans waiting are lazy, really. Performing - and on time - is part of a musician's job. The high cost of ticket prices keep a lot of fans from attending shows these days as it is. I highly doubt many artists want to go the way of Axl Rose and just piss off music lovers more. Thoughts?
Reader Comments (47)
People work everyday saving money to see him. They have to factor in traffic, parking fees, drinks and food at the venues, and even babysitters! This all costs a small fortune considering what ticket prices are. Needless to say, they have to be home and get some rest to go to work or school the next day. Meanwhile, Axl sits around in his hotel room or backstage with his cigarette and glass of wine whining about his voice being fucked up... asshole!
I would love to punch him in the mouth for it. I simply won't even bother going to see GNR ever again in my life because of it. And none of my many friends will either. Axl has become a running joke... we actually take bets on whether he'll decide to fix his wig and show up for a show.
Oh yea, and the promoters pay the price for it, roadies that have families to feed are depraved of much needed rest. And he has fired roadies before for looking at him funny.
Hey Axl, if you ever read this, you're a fucking douchebag... get your head out of your ass and show up on time to a show. Respect the fans that made you who you are. Your job consists of 2 hours a day, while the rest of the World slaves away 8 hours just to make ends meet.
Axl being late is actually predictable. If he started showing up on time or even taking the stage early then he would really be shocking his audience
On the other hand, I typically wait 6-10 hours before a show opens to get to the barrier, so....
I understand that Axl is all about unpredictability, danger, etc., and agree that it adds to his mystique. But c'mon -- that's just selfish and disrespectful to his fans. Most of us have lives & responsibilities that we need to own up to, and it's hard to enjoy a show at 1am when you know that you need to be up in 5 hours to take care of your infant and get ready for work.
I've seen artists refuse to go on stage because it's too cold outside - and I've seen an 80's rap group refuse to go on stage for 200 fans until they received a bottle of booze. Stuff happens...
I managed to see GNR in the early days at Toledo Sports arena in (89? hard to remember now) when Appetite was first getting played (maybe 3000 people?) - that show was awesome, they came out pretty quick and put on a great show. That GNR I would go see any day.
An odd side note, when I saw Velvet Revolver, we waited forever for them to come out - not 4 hours - but a long time. Great show, but what is it with nutty front-men getting it together and getting onstage?
Whoever got us accustomed to the idea that it's cool to be late, especially when it comes to rock concerts?
Okay, I get it...
The anticipation! The excitement! The build-up! The hype!
Man, just plug it in, crank up a couple cool sounding, "Brang, brang, brang"'s and let it wail.
Maybe 20 minutes late, just to add to the thrill of anticipation. Any more than that just, well, SUXX!!!
It just ain't P-R-O-F-E-S-S-I-O-N-A-L!!!
H-U-L-L-O-W!!!
The people on here who say, "I was ok with it" crack me up that you're willing to go along with the whole "Axl showing up late game" being completely acceptable as though it's part of some kind of standard ritual of attending concerts and thus, you are perfectly willing to tolerate his particular brand of overprolonged and interminable jack*ss self-entitled bullsh*t.
And I say "F*CK HIM!"
Why duz everyone keep fawning all over this bizarro corn-rowed overplastic surgeried shell of what was once a formidable L.A. Scenester with one perfect album under his belt?
He's a jerk everywhere he goes (I could go on and on about unpublished stories of him in NYC back in the day). Goes through employees like poker chips in a wind tunnel and his okay-ish "Chinese Democracy" was released to a collective sigh of boredom, way too little, too late.
Funny to think, the guy has shown up ridiculously late nearly his entire career for tour dates and then his precious album showed up super-super-super late, almost like he was consciously trying to go over-the-top to top Def Leppard and Boston when it comes to protracted album release date.
Can't you hear our beloved national treasure, Haxl's tequila soaked brain churn, "Must beat Def Leppard and Boston" in the Guiness Book of World Records for "The Longest Time Wasted In Between Albums".
Hell, Coaxial was gone so long making that record, he had to get plastic surgery (and bad, at that, which is really bizarre, but most likely, just plain stupid, when you consider where he lives), in an attempt to sustain the illusion that no time had past since "Use Your Illusion, I & II".
Maybe that's what he was asking us when he bestowed the album(s) with the title "Use Your Illusion"(no doubt, his idea, as it's kinda corny, even though it's taken from the name of a painting of the same name by Mark Castabi, a stylized detail of Rafael's "School of Athens", which was also used for the album covers. Corniness seemed to have become Axl's de rigueur modus operandi at this point as he also forayed into Liberace-land with stuff like his 'magnum opus', "November Rain" on the album).
Perhaps Axl was prebeckoning us to do so when "Chinese Democracy" kept eluding us, especially when he showed up overweight, cornrowed and weird-faced -- asking us to "use our illusion" when his apparition finally appeared, not only too late, when it came to the album's eventual unintentionally fanfareless release (another idiotic move when he made this a BestBuy exclusive), but also when his visage finally appeared on stage nearly over a full half-decade (and the customary 4 hours) late.
The album took 14 years to be released but Axl did show up occasionally out clubbin' (ask Hilfigah) and what not, holding inpromptu "Chinese Democracy" after hours unofficial listening parties or attempting an intermittent derailed world tour (replete with the obligatory ultra-late starting times for the shows) here and there, pre and post plastic surgery. About the only thing constant here was a pot belly, cornrows and the uncanny ability to make people think it's cool to sing like a little old lady.
When you open up your tattered but pretty much unread paperback copy of Merriam Webster's Dictionary and look up "Joke", there should be a pointilist illustration of Waxl(face) next to the definition.
To recap for y'all on here again, I saw G'n'R in October '87 at what Slash characterized as "the last club we ever play"*, the Bayou in Washington D.C. in front of a capacity crowd of a whopping 250 people.
It was an incendiary set, I believe, because they really were playin' it like it was their last club show, actually, as though someone would if they were told it would be their last show they were ever gonna play before being sent directly to hell.
The same old beat up bus from their vids with the "Paradise City" sign above the windshield was parked out front.
G'n'R came out immediately and proceeded to tear the place apart for over 2 hours, Axl complaining about Poison (hilarious!) between nearly every song -- something about "the problem with Poison" [being inauthentic].
Little did he know, at that time, "real" Metallerz n' Rockerz were generally viewing G'n'R as authentic Rock'n'Roll Jesus figures and Poison, nothing more than artifice and cartoon Glam. He was worried about Poison. Truly comical is how it came off. Sounds more like early signs of paranoia and thin brain cell count, more like.
I didn't see 'em again until what was dubbed as a "warm-up" for the "Use Your Illusion World Tour"... 1 night at the Ritz in NYC... They didn't go on late and I stood next to Iggy Pop, who was really cool but really short, too, not like that means anything. They tore the roof off the place.
Then I saw 'em three times at Madison Square Garden...
It was cool waiting in line with Kyle Kyle from Bang Tango and his babe, 'specially since the brunette I had with me at the time was equally shmokin'. The dates of the shows were December 9th, 10th and 13th, 1991... Gotta say, I was bored by the third show. I saw 'em within the first sixth rows each night (what can I say, it helps to know, or shall I say, to have known hot chix in high places (one set of tix belonged to Don Ienner -- the famed Sony Music Chief, who couldn't make it and gave 'em to his assistant who gave 'em to the first of three different dates, etc., etc.).
Knaxl made us wait over 2 hours every show, which actually wasn't too bad because they had a nice long game of "Flash Your T*ts" up on the Jumbotron while Kraxl was having his nose powdered for the 8th time or whatever it is he was having done, if you get my drift.
The real hilarity here is the fact that we are so needlessly obsessed with this Axl freek. I mean, c'mon, as I've said on here before, close your eyes and listen to him sing the refrains of "Welcome To The Jungle" and tell me if that duzn't sound like your Grandmother singin' it. The guy has the voice of a whining little old lady, for Chrissakes!
When will clowns like Kaxl learn, "Tardiness is not next to Godliness".
See ya in hell, Axl, where you'll, no doubt, be providing the entertainment 24/7.
*They actually did play at least one more club date after that historic Bayou show in D.C., an acoustic set at CBGB's (which you can see in clips on YouTube) on October 30th, 1987, just a couple weeks after I saw 'em in D.C. The reason I call the Bayou "historic" is because one could claim it was the last electric club show G'n'R ever played, unless you want to call the Ritz a "club" (Personally, I think it's too big to be called that, IMHO). And remember kidz, I'm really only into stuff like G'n'R because I think it's funnier than Spinal Tap.
With Axl, you know its like going to Vegas. It's a gamble. If you buy tickets, you bought into the bullshit that goes with it. Should you HAVE to? No, but by buying that ticket you just AGREED to. Can't wait for the SUMMER TOUR!