What To Make Of The Warehouse
By Jake Vigliotti
March 5, 2006
I bit my tongue for three years, but I can’t hold back anymore. This is a true story.
I still remember it clearly. It was almost a dark ages of concert going. The internet existed, but it was nothing like it is now. Lets put it this way: only the highest end computers had cd burners. So imagine what it was like to get information on the Dave Matthews Band.
It basically went like this: I’d be at work, surfing over the dmbml.com site (now defunct), looking for info about this band when I’d get what was essentially an inner-office AIM from a friend that would say something like, “I heard on the Radio that DMB tickets go on sale tomorrow.” Then about 20 or so employees of a certain east coast network television station in Connecticut would either get up at 8am after their 6p-3a shift or bribe someone to go down to the record store on Route 6 and buy DMB tickets. As many tickets as they could.
That was 1998. That’s how I got tickets to the 8.1.98 show at the Meadows. My friend Anna went down and bought 8 tickets. She got ‘in line’ around 6am – I think I was still working at that time - literally – and we got tix to the show. I ended up getting 2 tickets to the 7.31.98 show only after the Meadows ‘released’ 500 more tickets 2 days before that show. If I hadn’t been driving around when they announced it on the radio, I would have missed what I still consider one of the finest shows I’ve personally ever seen. That’s how tickets were obtained to see DMB. That wasn’t a Connecticut thing: That’s how everyone got tickets to DMB.
So ask me what I think of the The Warehouse? The Warehouse is the hot chick in “Can’t Buy Me Love” that falls for geeky Patrick Dempsey after he does all he can to show he really loves her. That was me. Waiting in line in Providence in a snow storm is akin to all the crap the dude on “Grey’s Anatomy” pulled off in that movie. All the arriving 5 hours before a show to wait on line, or find the drunkest scalper out there to get the tickets at as close to face as possible (like I had to do at Foxboro in ’98). The Warehouse eliminates all of that.
The Warehouse gives you a legitimate shot at getting in the door. It’s that simple.
I joined the Warehouse in December of 1998. With the first DMB tour after that, The Warehouse had already paid for itself (the Dave and Tim 99 tour did not offer tickets thru the Warehouse, F.Y.I.). My old Roommate Bob and I got pretty good seats for Giants Stadium show (not the infamous Cade McNown incident show, documented here and here for those of you following along in the adventures of Bob and I at DMB shows, this would be the Spatula incident – for a future story after the 7 year statute of limitations runs out) and me and the wife got pretty good seats for the Foxboro show that year. Except for the fact that the wife was on the end of the row and kept getting bumped into – so for that kid who thought he got punched in the arm my a girl, yep you did. You should not have elbowed her… but that’s yet another story waiting for the statute of limitations to lift to fully explore… I digress…
I’ve seen 9 shows in the Warehouse era, and applied for tix for shows and got them another 11 times (for friends, giveaways, etc.). I’ve only been shot down for the hardest to get shows (Roseland last year – the 03 D+T tour - about 8 times total). My seats have sometimes been great, and truthfully, sometimes been horrible. But they're tickets to the shows, something a few years earlier I had to fight and claw just to get. Without the Warehouse, I doubt I’d see a show. Seriously.
So what prompts this apparent booty-smooching-on-the-surface column? It’s simple: For the past three years all I’ve seen are people bash the Warehouse, and question whether or not it’s worth it to join. People, I assure you, I’ll never ever go back to the way it was. Who cares if your bonus disc is late, or you didn’t get a sticker? It’s the concert tickets you want, stupid (apologies to James Carville). Don’t bother me with ‘this group’s fan club does this’, and ‘that band’s fan club does that.’ They’re not DMB. No one sells tickets like DMB does. That’s why when people say to me, “Is the Warehouse worth it?” You damn right. It’s this simple: You’ll get tickets.
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