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November 17, 2007
149,999 Garth Brooks' Fans Probably Missed Fantastic.
By:
The Dude on the Right
Well my getting back to seeing concerts has gotten off to a shaky start. First
my going to see Jonathon Brandmeier was derailed by some bad tacos, then I lost
my ticket for seeing Garth Brooks on a movie screen, but at least seeing
Shaw/Blades last night went swimmingly great (other then the fiasco after the
show thanks to the valet parking people), but if all goes well my review of
Shaw/Blades should be posted tomorrow, along with an explanation of said fiasco.
Right now, though, as bummed as I was at missing Garth on the movie theater, this afternoon, after I got back home after seeing "No Country for Old Men," it’s probably better that I lost my ticket. Why? Because rather than just feeling that I set a lighter to a ten dollar bill, had I gone to the Garth Brooks’ movie show my concert review might have started something like "I used to be a huge fan of Garth Brooks, but now I’m just a pissed-off fan. Here’s why…"
"Why" would have been because from the news reports, and the message boards, during the final show in Kansas City that was broadcast at the theaters, after about an hour and a half Garth played "The Dance," the simulcast ended, and the folks in the movie theaters around the country were sent home, yet Garth Brooks was still playing songs in Kansas City, for what one news story said was about 45 minutes more, which, as a fan of music, a fan of concerts, and a fan of Garth, would actually have been the 45 minutes I would have wanted to see. He still did some songs we know, but it’s when he does non-Garth songs, and an impromptu "Happy Birthday," those are the things fans dream about seeing.
Looking back, on the memory of, oh, wait, I guess I got caught up in the moment of Garth, but there was nothing in the press release I read that said anything about "You will get to see most of the last Garth Brooks’ concert if you spend your ten bucks to see him on a movie screen, but if you want to see the entire show maybe you should make your way to Kansas City because there will probably be some scalpers selling tickets for the show." The only thing I can guess is the Garth Brooks’ machine was worried about people trying to bootleg the entire concert in the theaters, what with internet piracy and all, but if Garth puts out a DVD of the Kansas City shows, with everything he played (or at least some of the medleys), I would almost bet my townhouse that it will hit the internet before it’s actually released.
The press release also mentioned that more than 150,000 people would be seeing the show via the movie theater, and I don’t know if that number was accurate after the fact, nor how the $1.5 millionish gets divvied up, but the almost odd thing is that Garth fans have been so jonsen for anything live from Garth Brooks that they (the movie screen concert folks) don’t seem to care much that they missed the last 45ish minutes of the show (my calculation is that each person at the theater was gypped a little over three bucks), and they also missed what actually sounds like the coolest part of the concert. I only get this indifference from the message boards where I read postings from people who went to the movie theater shows being disappointed at not seeing the entire show, but they were just happy to see Garth live.
Me, I would have just been pissed. And yes, happy to see Garth live.
Luckily for Garth I can’t return my already opened CD/DVD set of "The Ultimate Hits," and I pretty much set a torch to my ticket (by losing it) without seeing him on the big screen, but it does make me sad that folks who went to the movie theater only really saw two-thirds of Garth.
I didn’t mean for this blog to get this long, but even though I didn’t make it to my movie theater because of my own boneheadedness, a whole lot of people did and missed Garth going from "stiff" to an ending that sounded fantastic. If the 150,000 count of movie people is accurate, at least 149,999 people missed fantastic.
That's it for this one! I'm The Dude on the Right!! L8R!!!
Posted by Rightdude at November 17, 2007 7:55 PM
