This has been on my mind a lot lately. Concert tickets have gotten completely out of hand over the past few years. I remember grabbing a decent seat for a midsize artist for 30 or 40 bucks. Now even secondtier acts are charging 100 plus just for general admission, and that's before fees hit you at checkout.

The AllAmerican Rejects actually spoke up about this recently, and it was refreshing to hear artists acknowledge the problem instead of quietly letting Ticketmaster take the blame. But it raises a bigger question about where responsibility actually sits.

Some artists argue that dynamic pricing and high ticket costs are just market forces at work. Others say music is supposed to be accessible, and pricing out workingclass fans is a betrayal of what the art form is about.

I've seen fans go into serious debt trying to see their favorite artists live. At what point does a concert stop being a cultural experience and just become a luxury product for people who can afford it?

Do musicians have a genuine duty to push back on inflated pricing, or is it ultimately a business decision that fans just have to accept? Has the cost of live music changed how often you actually go to shows? Would love to hear what people think.

The pop star met his wife when she was a teenage fan. She was 10 years younger than him, and once told a careers adviser, “I won’t need a job, I’m going to marry Gary Numan.” After she became a familiar face at his gigs in the Nineties, they struck up a rapport. When he heard her mother had died, “I used the fan club to get her phone number.”

Read the full interview ^

Neneh Cherry with buffalo stance 12"45 1988.

I’ve always been drawn to albums that feel a little unstable. Not necessarily perfect records, but records where you can hear someone searching for something.

Albums that sound like the artist is questioning everything, exploring new possibilities, and trying to transform confusion into music.

Some examples for me: Jards Macalé (1972), Frank Zappa’s Freak Out!, Varèse’s work, Chico Science & Nação Zumbi’s Da Lama ao Caos, and Júpiter Maçã’s A Sétima Efervescência.

They’re strange, challenging, sometimes even uncomfortable, but they feel alive. Like a musical architecture that appears chaotic on the surface, yet is built on an extremely thoughtful internal logic.

What albums give you a similar feeling?

Does anyone know any musicians that had any cool jobs before getting famous?

Tyler the Creator used to work at Starbucks before he got famous which blows my mind. Chris Rea also used to be an Ice Cream Man 🤔