Pavement on Thursday, No Yorke and No Gainsbourg

Several weeks ago, my good friend Marteen called me up with exciting news. Marteen had just purchased two tickets to see Thom Yorke in Oakland on April 15th, and he wanted me to come to the show with him. I had flaked on Marteen a few months ago when the two of us were set to see a Pixies concert, also in Oakland, and I was thrilled and honored to accept his generous offer to take me to see Yorke.

Everything was planned out for the Yorke show in advance. I purchased a plane ticket to fly up to San Francisco the week of the concert, and I also bought tickets to see Charlotte Gainsbourg perform in San Fran the same week of the Yorke show. Not only would I be up north for both Yorke and Gainsbourg, but I would also be in the Bay Area on April 17th, Record Store Day, a fun event for record lovers who go to the Amoeba Records, Streetlight Records, and Rasputin Records stores spread throughout San Francisco, Berkeley, and San Jose.

Our plans changed drastically a week ago when Marteen called me up to say that he was moving out of the country on the same day I would be flying up for the concerts. Possibly missing the concerts wasn't a big deal to me, I was more surprised that Marteen was leaving for a job in China and it was bittersweet to think we most likely wouldn't hang out for another year or so until Marteen planned to return to the U.S. Marteen said he would give me both tickets, and that I could take whoever I wanted. It looked as if I wouldn't have to miss the Yorke show.

Unfortunately, Marteen bought the Yorke tickets through W.A.S.T.E., Radiohead's official web store. For the tickets, W.A.S.T.E. has this cumbersome and complicated policy in which the ticket buyer must show up at the concert with both a photo I.D. and the credit card the tickets were purchased with. Marteen called both W.A.S.T.E. and the concert's venue, The Fox in Oakland, to see if he could exchange the tickets under special circumstances. According to Marteen, neither party was helpful and they both reminded him that the no exchange policy was strict and binding.

I'm not writing this post to complain. I'm incredibly grateful to have had the opportunity to see Yorke though I won't see him now due to the wasted W.A.S.T.E. policy, and I'm also very grateful that I will be seeing Pavement in Orange County on the day I would have seen Yorke in Oakland. My point at the end of this anecdote is this: for all of the accusations of greed and domination understandably leveled at Ticketmaster/Live Nation, those ticket tyrants do make exchanging tickets a relatively simple procedure. Now that I won't be going up to the Bay to see Yorke, I'm currently in the process of selling or giving away the Gainsbourg tickets I purchased through Ticketmaster. I will be able to print the actual tickets off myself and send them to whoever gets them or I could even turn the tickets into a PDF and e-mail them. If concert ticket sellers not affiliated with Ticketmaster/Live Nation want to make more of a dent in their business, then making these type of policies more customer-friendly would be a step in the right direction.