Former Black Flag frontman and current spoken word guy Henry Rollins gets a lot of flak for his opinionated rants, but he tends to redeem himself often enough that it's hard to write him off completely. Take, for example, the way he handled complaints about high ticket prices for his recent spoken word appearance in Toronto on March 24.
Here's a clip from a recent Rollins blog post leading up to the event [archived by Buddyhead]:
A word to all the swell people in Toronto: I got a lot of letters from you, telling me about the high ticket price. I don't know if you know but I try very hard to keep ticket prices as low as possible. Life is painful enough. So, I got these letters about the price and we did some looking into the situation and found out that the promoter there, who I have been working with for a couple of hundred years, all on his own, added ten bucks to the ticket price. Isn't he something?! My wonderful and loyal Canadian audience, fear not. I am going to take care of all this in a manner you will find most memorable. Please accept my apologies.
The manner Rollins spoke of manifested itself in a giant stack of $10 bills. According to various reports, Rollins grabbed the wad of cash and personally handed out a $10 refund to each person in attendance.
Photos of this exchange are available from iheartmuseums starting here.
Maybe it's time we start writing crotchety letters about high ticket prices to all of our favourite performers.
Here's a clip from a recent Rollins blog post leading up to the event [archived by Buddyhead]:
A word to all the swell people in Toronto: I got a lot of letters from you, telling me about the high ticket price. I don't know if you know but I try very hard to keep ticket prices as low as possible. Life is painful enough. So, I got these letters about the price and we did some looking into the situation and found out that the promoter there, who I have been working with for a couple of hundred years, all on his own, added ten bucks to the ticket price. Isn't he something?! My wonderful and loyal Canadian audience, fear not. I am going to take care of all this in a manner you will find most memorable. Please accept my apologies.
The manner Rollins spoke of manifested itself in a giant stack of $10 bills. According to various reports, Rollins grabbed the wad of cash and personally handed out a $10 refund to each person in attendance.
Photos of this exchange are available from iheartmuseums starting here.
Maybe it's time we start writing crotchety letters about high ticket prices to all of our favourite performers.
