When an album cost a couple bucks, and a concert cost 10... well, lets see what that would be like in todays money.
A cd for ... lets call it 15 dollars. There doesn't seem to be a normal price, they range from 12 to 17 for most of the rock CDs on Amazon.
Concert tickets... if the math was the same as this 1974 concert.... then you'd pay 5 times the cost of a cd, so 5x15=75 bucks. Ok, I can see $75 for that bunch of groups, DP, ELP, Sabbath, EWF, Eagles, Seals and Crofts and BOA. Hell, I'd whip out the wallet to get to that concert right now.
But, what's an Eagles concert now? Well, Eagles and Zak Brown Band are coming around and playing in San Diego ... $1600 for near the stage, 600 for near the field.
Lets agree they are for rich old people, and no one else is going to waste money on an Eagles concert.
Ozzy, front and center, 175. then 70, and why bother being so damn far away you can't see him are 25.
Deep Purple and Judas Priest, 120 to 60 to 20.
I can't even see new good rock coming to a concert near me on the listings. All the old farts are still on tour, Rod Stewart, Ozzy, Deep Purple, Beach Boys, Roger Daltrey, Journey, Smashing Pumpkins... that's all decades past their prime stuff on retirement tours if you ask me. Not rich enough yet to figure they can afford the medical insurance, and pay the taxes on the mansions.
Deep Purple's performance was one of the first with their third line-up, which included the vocalist David Coverdale. Deep Purple was given the choice of when to go on stage, and chose to go on during sunset, thus pushing ELP to the last performance. Assuming that, as with all festivals, the show would run late anyway, they still waited when the festival was actually ahead of schedule.
At the end of their concert, guitarist Ritchie Blackmore threw a guitar, and a small speaker monitor out into the audience, and suddenly attacked one of ABC's video cameras (the camera had been getting between Blackmore and the audience) with a guitar.
the amp blows up around 3:30, and he tosses them off the stage at 4:40
Later on, a mishap with a pyrotechnic effect caused one of Blackmore's amplifiers to explode, which briefly set the stage on fire.
Deep Purple left the concert area by helicopter to avoid a possible confrontation with Ontario fire marshals and ABC-TV executives.
Deep Purple's California Jam performance, along with some of the performances by other bands, was broadcast on TV and radio nationwide in the US. It was at this festival that the footage of Keith Emerson playing a grand piano spinning end-over-end 50 feet above the ground was taken.
The Goodyear blimp hovering overhead was a first for a music festival.
Deep Purple arrived for the concert in their own chartered jet, the Starship, with their name painted on the plane's sides, the first time a major band arrived specifically for a music festival in their own plane.
Deep Purple's California Jam performance was the first full-length music concert film to be released and sold on video tape in the early 1980s.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/California_Jam
Why they had it at a racetrack... I can only guess, seating? Parking?
take a look around, that's a hell of a lot of people. And those platform boots are terrible, what's worse is that most of the Deep Purple guy were wearing them too. It's looks damn ridiculous
Why did I post about a concert? Well, did you look at the poster logo? Plus, it had the Goodyear blimp, which I've posted several times, and Deep Purple arrived in the airplane Starship https://justacarguy.blogspot.com/2018/04/led-zeppelin-had-fireplace-in-their.html
Gordon Gecko Presents: The Greed Never Sleeps Tour.
ReplyDeleteBack in the day, concerts were to boost the popularity of groups so they would sell more records which is where the money was. When the methods of easily copying music, and then the internet, cut profits from albums concerts and associated paraphernalia sales evolved to be where the money is.
ReplyDeletevery astute reasoning.. well said. I was thinking along those lines, that concerts cut out the record label, producer, etc, and it's a case of musicians and promoter raking in the dollars, small amount to rent a facility.
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