Hi Subscriber First Name,

Alright, I’m about to very seriously date myself: the first rock concert tickets I ever bought were for Supertramp, at Parc Jarry. I think they cost $7.99 each—and no, this wasn’t a lot of money back then. I was a teenager—14 maybe—and this was an important rite of passage.

Last week, Anaïs burst into my office, breathless, her eyes wider than I’d ever seen them: “Dad! LOUIS TOMLINSON is coming to Laval on May 29th!”. I could tell this was a Very Big Deal™. It would be her first concert, and the tickets were going on sale in 20 minutes.

So we loaded Ticketmaster.ca: no pricing info anywhere, but a countdown timer and a queue to join. I needed to create an account, so I did (reluctantly), and soon we were in, with 1100 people ahead of us. Not too bad for a 10, 000 seat venue. At 10 AM sharp the timer disappeared and the queue numbers started dropping in batches—1050, 986, 843, 676...120, 48...We were In!

“Sorry, this venue is sold out. Try again later.”

Whaaa? Try again later? But isn’t it...sold out????
Anyway that was that. I’d already prepared her for disappointment, she was fine.

Until 15 minutes later: “Dad! I’m on Ticketmaster: I’ve got two tickets!!”. She’d gone back to the same website, joined just 11 people in the queue this time, and now there were tickets available. I quadruple-checked to make sure this really was Ticketmaster: yup. 

And apparently, Tomlinson is adamant about keeping his ticket prices low for his fans, which I didn’t even think was possible in this day and age: $35 each, and not even up in the boondocks. Wow—Rockin' it like it's 1988 (almost).

So I’m not sure what happened, but she’s getting her rite of passage. Slightly delayed by a worldwide pandemic, but still just as sweet.

On to the links...