Yeah, that review is ridiculous.

I had issues with the show, but none had to do with John or the band. Rather my complaints had to do with a very placid audience, and one that was largely MUCH older than John's fanbase at the height of his popularity ought to be. I'm 38 as is my friend that attended. My girlfriend is 34. And I felt we were amoung the youngest people there, though I did see a smattering of younger, and even a few kids. I compare this to a Tom Petty concert I went to a couple years ago were at least a third of the audience was under 30 years old. Anyway, back to John .....absoulutely nuts that there were people sitting down in the first ten rows after the opening song. They were GIVEN the new album with their ticket(speculation on my part that the tickets were dogs with scalpers and were returned to the shady as always promoters who just gave the tickets away to anyone and therefore those people had not heard the new album) and should have known the songs. Even sitting during Walk Tall which is a great song, No Better Than This...another rocking amazing song, and significant lag in recognizing Jack and Diane, Small Town, and Pink Houses. L-A-M-E. And BTW, I give credit to the few 50-somthings who WERE up and dancing the whole show. Good for them for enjoying the concert as much as I did.


Back to the review...what the heck....John is just supposed to run through old hits? He's got a great catalog of music as well as continuing to write new and vital music. As John says...."if you're not part of the future, then get out of the way". I can't imagine how sad it would be to be limited to listening only to music I first heard in high school or college, and sticking only with that for the rest of my life.

About ticket pricing....
Most of the time, it is NOT the responsibility of the artist.
Instead there is a bizarre and difficult to navigate maze of entities that are involved, several of which seem to add little value but seek to profit anyway.
The basic setup goes like this:
Ticketmaster has exclusive contracts with promoters. Promoters have exclusive contracts with venues. Artists wanting to play those venues and have their tickets distributed MUST agree to have their shows put on by said promoters.
It works best in big cities with high ticket prices...LA, SF, NY, Boston, Chicago, LV, etc.

Occasionally an artist will attempt to circumvent this maze of garbage. On occasion, it works. Just a couple years ago, Foo Fighters played a show at the Forum in LA, a basically defunct venue, at less than $35 a ticket. Garth Brooks did a tour about 5 years ago where tickets were under $50, and I'm not sure how that was accomplished. But most of the time that is not the case, and the solution is to either attend or not attend.

In the case of this tour, I justified buying $100 tickets because I've never seen John play, and the 6500 seat Nokia Theatre is a much smaller venue than I'd normally be able to see him play at. I have noticed that ticket prices in some of the smaller cities are MUCH less expensive.