Head Tale

So after pushing my post from a couple days ago about the upcoming Paul McCartney concert out to Twitter and mentioning in passing a couple reasons why the show in Regina might not have sold out, I ended up getting a call from Shanelle Kaul, a reporter for Global Regina who wanted to interview me for my thoughts on why this was the case.

They did the interview and I’m sure I’ll be a five second blurb in their story at the most but I thought I’d do a blog post to more fully explore the reasons the show isn’t (at least as of today) “sold out”.

In no particular order here are some reasons why, barring a lot of last minute sales tomorrow, our show wasn’t a “sell out”…

• Cost – someone told me top tickets to the Rolling Stones, who sold out their first show in 2006 so fast they added a rare second show, went for $100, Top McCartney tickets are twice that which is a huge difference, even given a nearly decade gap between the concerts.
• I can’t remember what night of the week the other big recent concerts Regina has had (Stones, AC/DC, Bon Jovi/Kid Rock) were on but it could be because the show is mid-week and that’s harder to get people out for if they have to work the next day or whatever.
• A related reason – could just be “big concert” fatigue in general for a relatively small market (Winnipeg = 3x Regina’s population, Calgary = 5x, etc.)
• One of the things I hate most about being “out” as a partisan NDP guy is that I feel like anytime I make a political point, it’s easy for people of other viewpoints to say “Well, of course you’d say that – you’re a big NDP supporter!”) But the reality is that maybe the economy isn’t as hot as Brad Wall says and people simply can’t afford to go to *another* expensive “once in a lifetime” show.
• Could be a generational thing – Paul McCartney is now “Dad Rock” for a lot of people and the kids these days don’t like him for that reason (or even just don’t “get” him) which means there’s a whole swath of young people (since I just turned 40, let’s say “a whole swath of people under 40”) who might not be interested in attending this show.
• A related reason – there’s an argument to be made that by not putting their music on various digital formats early (iTunes) or still to this day (Rdio, Spotify), the Beatles/McCartney are hurting their reach with new generations (to be fair, most McCartney/Wings albums are on Rdio, just not the Beatles.)
• As a “super fan” (Global Regina™), I pay attention to whatever McCartney’s doing, buy all his new CD’s, etc. But for some people, McCartney hasn’t really put out a huge hit song since Wings (okay, technically his last US/Canada #1 was “Say, Say, Say” in 1983 and that was arguably as much to do with Michael Jackson as McCartney.)
• One thing I said in the interview (which I’m glad they didn’t use) is that the reality is that McCartney isn’t getting any younger and your chances to see a living legend, live and in person, are decreasing every year. But at the same time, it kinda reminds me of how everyone was a Johnny Cash fan *after* he died but he had trouble selling out shows before he died.
• Taylor Field has upgraded seating capacity for this year’s Grey Cup so the actual number of seats is higher than it was for the Stones, AC/DC and Bon Jovi w/ Kid Rock.
• McCartney isn’t known for putting on a dynamic, high-energy show compared to some of the other bands that have played here (he’s about the music – imagine!) but if you’re paying $250/ticket, you probably want a Vegas-style show with lots of laser and pyrotechnics.
• Bonus: my favourite reason comes from a friend on Facebook who said “Everybody knows this isn’t the real Paul McCartney but an imposter so who would pay for what is essentially a tribute act?” 😉

Those are 10 (11) possible reasons the show didn’t “sell out” but there’s a good reason to put those words in quotations.

We’re about as close to a “sell-out” as you can get – after I did the interview, I talked to someone who told me he’d heard there are only 800 tickets left on Ticketmaster.  That means the show is 99% sold out – not out of line for some other Out There tour dates. And in the Global story, a rep from Evraz Place said they’ve sold 40,000 tickets so again, not a “sell out” but really close to capacity for sure.

To put it in even better perspective, Winnipeg, a city of ~800,000 people, sold out with all 31, 200 tickets taken for the show at their venue.  Regina, a city of 200,000, isn’t “sold out” but we’ve sold 40,000 tickets.

I wish I was smart enough to have had this point at the ready for the interview but I literally had ten minutes from the time I talked to the reporter to when they arrived at my house (and six of those minutes were me rushing through the shower after a day spent cleaning house and our vehicle!)

Anyhow, I suspect I know which sales figure the concert promoter and Mr. McCartney would prefer to have between the Winnipeg and Regina shows.

And I’m sure the people of Regina can look forward to seeing Coldplay or Beyonce or Madonna or whoever else is considered the creme of the world’s musical touring artists, even if we didn’t “sell out” for Paul McCartney! 😉