18 December 1–7, 2022 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER Classified | MusiC | dish | Culture | unfair Park | Contents Month XX–Month XX, 2014 dallasobserver.com DALLAS OBSERVER | Classified | MusiC | dish | Movies | Culture | Night+day | feature | sChutze | uNfair Park | CoNteNts | Shake Them Down Let’s play ‘would you rather’ with the super expensive tickets for Taylor Swift. by Danny GallaGher I t’s no big secret that Ticketmaster sucks. Music fans have endured its bloated prices and unnecessary fees for years. Some bands have even tried to go around it. They failed. The problem just grew like a cancerous mass. The ticket behemoth continues to gouge patrons with unthinkable prices for shows and allow scalpers and brokers to buy up spots and charge even more for seats in the nosebleeds. Now the company has finally pissed off the wrong group of people: Taylor Swift fans. The singer’s army of fans — also known as Swifties — are loyal to their leader. Ticket- master didn’t just poke the bear once too many times. It put a hornet’s nest on the poking stick and gave each Swiftie hornet an even tinier poking stick. Like Wu Tang, Swifties ain’t nothing to fuck with, and if the two got into a bare- knuckle brawl, Vegas bookies would still give 9/2 odds on the Swifties turning the Wu Tang Clan into sausage meat. The response to Tay-Tay’s first concert in four years collapsed the Ticketmaster web page and made the already exorbitant prices reach Scrooge McDuck levels of wealth. The seats for Swift’s show next April at AT&T Stadium start at around $450 and just get more and more ridicu- lous when you get to within squinting dis- tance of the main stage. This got us thinking. What would one person living in Dallas have to sacrifice for a night of hearing Swift retelling the his- tory of her Match.com dating profile in mu- sical form? That’s got to be a lot considering we’re living in the middle of one of the most expensive times in the city’s history, just when it comes to basic stuff like rent. So we pulled some numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, compared them to the average ticket prices for the show and did the math for our- selves. Screw Klondike bars. What would you do for a Taylor Swift ticket? Let’s find out. Very back of the Upper Concourse: $448 This is what you’ll need just as a starting point. It’s the place where the Cowboys staff stick their ex-wives on game days. You can have either one of these seats or 26 days of covered grocery bills. The Winner: Taylor Swift Eating and drinking just prolongs your problems, even if it makes them seem like they are years away when you’re full and wasted. It’s better to be able to say you were there when Taylor went back on tour than to eat and drink so much that you can’t remem- ber whether you went or not. Mezzanine: $621 These are the highest points of the stadium’s stands on each of its four corners. They’ll give you a good bird’s-eye view of the con- cert, which is great if you’re an owl. A seat in this section will cost you a month’s worth of insurance premiums for your car, health care, house/apartment and any other cover- age you have to pay for so insurance compa- nies can hire lawyers to help them weasel out of their responsibilities when you actu- ally need a payout. The Winner: Taylor Swift No contest. It’s worth the risk. There’s no way the state is going to do anything about insur- ance scams anytime soon, and all you’ll give yourself is headaches when you try to do something as brazen as file a claim. If some- thing is gonna make you cry, it’s better if it’s from listening to Taylor sing “Bigger Than the Whole Sky.” Front of the Upper Concourse: $927 These seats put you a little closer to the ac- tion, but you’re still gonna have to shell out a considerable amount of money even if you’re just going by yourself. You can either have one concert ticket or transportation (including car payment, gas and parking, or public transit, cabs or riding-sharing ser- vices) for an entire month. The Winner: Taylor Swift You can still get around on your own. If our ancestors could travel on foot through a desert, so can we. Plus, the health benefits of exercise will come in handy when you’re fighting your way to the front of a ticket line or cramming yourself into one of those tiny folding seats. After plaid shirt days and nights when she made us our own, you can mail back your things and walk home alone. Club Mezzanine: $1,125 These are some of the best seats in the whole joint before you start reaching black market, sell-a-body-part prices. Ironically, this one will cost you a little more than what you spend in two and a half months of going out and doing stuff for fun. That includes things like movies, video games, non-civic minded sports and other shows and con- certs. The Winner: Taylor Swift The fact that you even had to ask which way this clock would wind is a little insulting. One epic, once-in-a-lifetime concert is worth not knowing how the next thou- sandth Marvel movie franchise ends. Nor are you gonna sit your grandchildren on your knee and tell them about the first time you saw Are You There God? It’s Me, Marga- ret. back of the Main Floor: $1,373 We’ve finally reached sea level, which means we’re within shrieking distance of the stage. This one will cost you just over two month’s worth of new clothes and shoes. The Winner: Taylor Swift Man, this is a real toughie. You gotta have clean clothes or risk being nicknamed “Stinky” at work or getting a charge that puts you on the sex offender registry. Either way, you’ll be sad and need an excuse to just listen to Midnights on repeat. Front of the Main Floor: $1,487 Now things are starting to get a little heavy budget-wise. You’re really gonna have to make some sacrifice if you want a seat here, maybe even a Satanic one. A seat in this sec- tion will cost you three and a half months of health care costs. The Winner: Taylor Swift Medicine may be able to treat your irritable bowel syndrome, acid reflux and fibrodys- plasia ossificans progressiva, but only Dr. Swift can treat your broken heart. Also, alco- hol helps, and it makes house calls. Main Field: $5,464 OK, no more fooling around. It’s time to re- ally test your mettle for Tay-Tay. It’s time to put on your prom dress or hang it up in the back of the closet. You can either have a sin- gle seat right in the heart of the action or three and a quarter months worth of rent. The Winner: The Rent Have you seen rent prices in Dallas lately? A Taylor Swift concert might be worth being starving, bored, sober and even sick, but not homeless. You can’t actually live in your memories of a great concert. Unless you’re a Grateful Dead fan. ▼ New Music The NIghT KINg Hunter VaugHan is merging tHe sounds of long-gone clubs and modern beats for His original album. by ElviS AnDErSon D evout dance music fans love to remi- nisce about the good ol’ days. On nightclub patios all around the world, ravers share cigarettes and war sto- ries from “back in the heyday.” Dal- Mike Brooks Taylor Swift is performing in Arlington in late March and early April. | B-SideS | ▼ Music >> p20
