15 October 2009

Elvis Costello show

| Jammer1
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Attended the Elvis Costello show with my daughter, at the Royal Theatre last night. Amazing show – the man is such a talent – he played the whole show solo, just him and a range of his favourite guitars. The warm up act, Shelley Harland wowed the audiance also – a great future for this young lady. My only concern was that the Royal Theatre was only half full! What was the cause of this? I can only think to blame the promoters! We bought our tickets about 3 months ago when we saw the ad in the Crimes, but don’t recall seeing any further promotion since. Further to this, I read that his Sydney and Melbourne concerts are sold out and extra shows have been organized. If we want to attract big names to Canberra in future – we really need to fill our venues.

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Joe Canberran5:26 pm 17 Oct 09

Ahhhg! I wish I’d known this was on. Elvis Costello is one of my fav artists

Pommy bastard1:17 pm 17 Oct 09

Piss! I’d have gone to see him, hadn’t a clue he was on.

Thanks belco girl, now I don’t feel so bad about missing Jamiroquai 🙂

I agree with Canberra81 – I used to be an avid music fan, actually still am but just don’t have the funds. A lot of the prices are very steep. I certainly understand the OS acts charging that amount but when you get local acts charging that, well, lets just say I usually find better things to spend it on. All in all, I guess at those prices I am a lot more selective at who I go to see (whether from OS or Australia)….which usually means only once a year!! (I remember paying $50 around 1984 to see Elton John in Sydney which also included the bus down, my how times change!!)

To emd – not sure if Jamiroquai has played there more recently, but I saw them there in 2000!!! (or was it ’99?)

Trunking symbols12:06 pm 16 Oct 09

“She’s filing her nails while they’re dragging the lake”. Pure punk genius.

PM said :

I hadn’t heard it was on!

Same here 🙁 What a shame, I’d definitely have been interested in attending.

I only found out that Ry Cooder will be here next month (I think) when I saw a post in Jay Jays!

Nambucco Deliria8:59 am 16 Oct 09

Maybe if you read BMA or the Fly, Che, you’d have heard about the show. It’s not hard to keep track of what’s going on in Canberra.

Our tickets were $85.00 each – very reasonable we thought. 🙂

local abc had been giving away tix for a couple of weeks… lotsa plugs on aunty (but no-one listens any more, do they?)

I hadn’t heard about this either. How much were tickets? I’ve skipped a few big shows that I would have loved to have seen because the tickets were upwards of $130 for a 1-2 hour set. Tori Amos is coming to Canberra next month but I heard that tix are around $150, which I just can’t afford 🙁

I didn’t know Elvis Costello was doing a show here. I also hadn’t heard about Jamiroquai or Garbage coming to Canberra recently. But I knew about Pink and some of the other big names because they were all over the commercial radio stations here. There’s no shortage of more accessible places to promote shows in Canberra though, I wonder if some of the promoters just don’t know where to promote here? I know that in other types of businesses, the advertising forms that work well in Sydney and Melbourne fall flat in Canberra, maybe the same applies to the music business?

It’s not just Royal Theatre’s fault (I’m not across their promo efforts on this one), it’s largely the people of the ACT who are to blame. In recent years I’ve been in half empty Royal Theatres, AIS Arena, and ANU Bars/ Green Room for bands/artists like Placebo, Bernard Fanning, Garbage, Jamiroquai, INXS, Dappled Cities Fly and the list goes on, which would sell out in Sydney. Even the Presets couldn’t sell out AIS arena earlier this year.
However, Pink, Delta and Missy Higgins have sold out AIS arena over the years, so Canberra can do it when it wants to. Canberra used to get A Day On The Green but poor turn outs led to it being scrapped. I blame Canberra audiences being too boring and needing to be told what’s cool. Some of the above mentioned acts aren’t my cup of tea necessarily but they’re big names and don’t need to come to canberra. Many don’t bother the next time around.

A plug, but very true. I’m a fan of Elvis Costello and just the sort who would go to a concert of his, but I hadn’t heard of it. I read Riotact daily and certainly would have heard of it if it had been advertised here. And no, I don’t have any affiliation with Riotact, just an avid reader and occasional contributer.

I hadn’t heard it was on!

Agreed, the Royal Theatre website is hopeless at actually doing anything for their shows. And Ticketek isn’t much better. Had a huge problem trying to find how to buy tickets for Dylan Moran at the beginning of the year.

And its a shame about the low numbers. If only there was a local website they could have promoted it more effectively on.

[end blantant plug]

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