LCD Soundsystem Adds Four Shows @ T5

we didn’t sell out hollywood bowl, and that was with both hot chip and sleigh bells. there was, i repeat, no expectation of our selling this out either. my main concerns at the time were things like ticketmaster charges—how they were going to make the tickets ridiculously costly… we never dreamed some shitbags would try to get thousands for our show. it’s insane.
but it happened. we all looked at each other in horror and sat there. i mean, aren’t you supposed to be psyched? your band sold out madison square garden! i live in nyc, and that’s the place. i saw the jackson’s victory tour there when i was a kid.
but there it was—the shit was gone, and people—not just people, but fucking proper fans—were pissed. nancy from the band tried to buy tickets. failed. i tried. failed. our best friends—not wanting to hassle us for guestlist spots tried—failed. i bought 2 tickets to my own show for 3 times the value like an idiot to see if real tickets showed up. my family got burned.
it was, to say the least, weird.

we tried getting another day at msg. i’d mentioned this before and most everyone kind of rolled their eyes at me. “2 madison square garden shows, dude? really?” i thought, well, just in case, you know? maybe some people would fly from other places or something. but msg, being one of the most popular venues on the planet, was unsurprisingly booked. (for the record: just because it doesn’t look booked on the internet, doesn’t mean it’s available. just saying.)
we tried calling our lawyer about the ticket scalping. “it’s legal”. no joke. it’s fucking legal. i tramped around with friends and band getting insane. i wanted to buy some expensive tickets and then track the seller down to beat him. i acted stupid. i did some classic, shakespearean vain “fist shaking”, etc. i made angry tweets. (i’m wondering now what on earth could be less effective and more of a first-world spoiled idiotic move than “angry tweets”? jesus.) i read conspiracy theories about how this was some cash-grab i orchestrated. i read that there are 50,000 seats at msg (i think our show will have 13k). i read that people had already bought flights, hotels. wanted to bring their kids. waited in the cold. i read that some people thought this was one of the reasons we were calling it quits (check). i read that this was a media stunt we planned. i read very funny comments from my friend aziz, one of which was taken seriously (that msg had given me 30,000 tickets personally for guest list). i read that i was giving all the tickets to my “new celebrity friends” (aziz is about the closest thing i have to a “celebrity friend”, and we met at terminal 5 watching hot chip when we were, well, not very “celebrated”). i read that we should cancel the show and put the tickets up on sale in a better fashion. i read that we should not do that, for fuck’s sake. i read that we should go fuck ourselves.

i read a lot of stuff, waiting to hear if we could get another night at msg, which seemed like the only option. but it failed. then i kind of sat in my house, trying not to worry for 20 minutes, and made a very, very good coffee.
i don’t know what people think about us, really. i’d love to say i don’t care, but i do. these people in my band—they are my very good friends. i love them very much. i love this band very much. everything about it. i’m very proud of it—of us, and i get defensive when people talk shit about us. i feel like we’ve been able to do something sort of special for 9 years: making music we like the way we like it. going on tour and playing, no computers or bullshit. no in-ears. a bunch of weird substitute teachers just trying to play something like the bands we loved growing up. whenever anyone said shit about us being sellouts or something, it stung, because i consider this entire thing—the band, everything—to be a communication between us and whoever is listening, and not just a thing unto itself. i remember being a fan and seeing bands, thinking “this is us. this is you playing and me/us watching” and how real that connection was, and i always wanted to honor that strange relationship with our band. so when someone felt wronged or hurt or outraged, it stung. it stung because, on some level, regardless of the “you can’t please everyone” stuff that gets rationally said to you when this shit happens, it meant that i’d failed. i’d failed to communicate. on the other hand, i’ve had my world turned upside down by a lot of amazing things people have said about us, or to us. i’ve met fans and made friends, and felt very strongly how that relationship actually works—and how we brought ourselves, each other, finally here, to where we play our last show—and biggest show ever—together, at this amazing place.

and then, this fucking ticket thing happened.
so to the point. you can’t make everyone happy, and i’m sure this will wind someone up somewhere (“but i paid $600 for one seat at msg!!!) or seem like some shitty “plan” to someone else (“they were gonna do it all along!!! it’s all a big retirement money plan to bilk the fans!!!”) or something else that someone who theoretically likes our band thinks (why are you trying to buy a ticket?? how could you even listen to a band that you think is capable of some of this shit!??) but we’ve come up with the best solution i can think of, as quickly as possible so as to deflate the market for those scalping scumfucks.

we’re going to play 4 shows at terminal 5 in nyc leading up to the msg show, and they will include most if not all of the songs we play at msg. the farewell run-up to the last dance. it’ll be the 28th, 29th, 30th and 31st of march. obviously we’re going to look seriously at the way we sell these tickets. not “paperless, (i’ve been advised that the “paperless” thing is apparently now illegal in ny… seriously—don’t ask me) but there are some ideas floating around that could be just as effective (though it’ll take a minute to get folks in the door.)

we’ll announce the shows officially early in the week, and tickets will be on sale soon after. we’re announcing all the shows at once, and if they don’t sell out, i don’t care. i just want to give people who actually want to see us a chance to see us. for a reasonable ticket price. and i want to drop the price of the msg tickets being sold by piece of shit scalpers.

oh—and a small thing to scalpers: “it’s legal” is what people say when they don’t have ethics. the law is there to set the limit of what is punishable (aka where the state needs to intervene) but we are supposed to have ethics, and that should be the primary guiding force in our actions, you fucking fuck.

and to everyone else: thank you. you rule. don’t let the shitbags win.

i feel like conan o’brien.

james

Tickets for the Terminal 5 shows will cost $40 and go on sale next Friday, February 18th. You’ll need to show ID on the day of the show to claim your tickets. We still want to go to MSG, though. How about you?

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9 Responses

  1. Although that was obviously sincere and heartfelt, it just confirms my suspicion that he is a naive, dumb bastard.

    Oh, and this isn’t going to work. Not by a long shot. I’ll be sure to check them out on the festival circuit in 2014.

  2. What does it matter if he’s dumb and naive? How does that have any effect on anything whatsoever? If I were him, I’d be pretty surprised too if my band sold out MSG is a matter of miliseconds and my own parents had to hit up StubHub for tix. Fuq that ish. Anything I could do to shove it in the scalpers arse would be a benefit to all mankind as far as I’m concerned.

  3. I think he rocks! He didn’t have to come up with a solution, he could have sat back and let the scalpers win. Instead he got mad about it and made the attempt to rectify the situation. I liked the music before, now I’m a huge fan!

    You skeptical fuckbags need to suck it.

    –Lee Ann

  4. As someone that scored tickets through the presale, I’m disappointed that this show is going to have a bad vibe hanging over it now.
    However, it seems that the legality of the second hand market is beside the point here. The better question is, how did these tickets get scooped up by the second market sellers so fast? Someone at ticketmaster or MSG had to have a hand in this. That should be looked into.

  5. as stated below, there is the unanswered question of the widely reported 4 minute lock out. many people claimed that tickets did not go on sale until 11:04 and when they did, it was already sold out. this seems to be the real issue, scalpers or no scalpers.

  6. James and LCD you are awesome!!

    To grover and everyone else that is bitching bout how LCD failed and they should be ashamed or that they are just trying to get more money: EAT A DICK

    I was shocked that the tickets sold out like they did. I had the presale code on wed and two laptops ready to go that morning. I was pressing refresh on my browser like every 3 seconds until TM allowed me to buy tickets. When the box office page became available I pasted my code in the boxed requested 1 ticket (all in less then 15 seconds from when then went on sale) and got something in the 200 section. I was like screw that I will try again (thinking it was some glitch) next time 300 section, then 400s then nothing. I was constantly trying for 20 min (even though presale appeared to sell out in about 15min). I was stunned. I assumed that there was only X amount of presale and that those were gone but surely that was only a small percentage and there would be another chance on friday. Friday came and nothing. I was there with my two laptops ready to go pressing refresh every 3 seconds. Nothing, nothing, nothing. They were gone. I tried for a solid 10mins without ever getting a chance to buy a single ticket.

    I blame scalpers partially but not entirely. It is the fact that a very popular band at their peak is calling it quits and you only have 1 chance left in the US to see them. People freaked out.

    Ok that was a rant. Anywayzz.. Thanks LCD you ROCK!

  7. Thanks LCD!
    As a Phish fan this is the norm. you fight for tickets you dont get them then you go to the show to see who has extra at face. And if you relly want to see the show you go to the stub hub booth bc they had to lower their prices and buy one for 89.

    My idea is never buy from stubhub,tickets now or any other broker again!! If they have to eat the tickets they wont mess with certain gtoups. This is a ticket broker thing and needs to stop. LCD play different sets than at msg would make for a bigger build up. See ya in 2015

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