The Willow Glen Resident

Point of View

Deborah Taylor-Hollis

The music of rebellion--by the numbers

Jethro Tull was wrong. When Ian Anderson first warbled "Too old to rock & roll, and too young to die" almost 20 years ago, he was being rather facetious, considering that he was pushing 40, and we were all getting a few grey hairs.

Then the aging Grateful Dead recorded "Touch of Grey," complete with the lyrics "We will get by, we will survive." All of us baby boomers began to consider that we might not be so young anymore, but we could still rock with the best of them--we thought.

Most of this flew through my mind on March 22, as I stood out there in line at the Arena for concert tickets to one of the most awesome events in old-fogey rock history. Usually, I don't go to live concerts unless the ticket is free, or the event really important, like the wake for Bill Graham, hosted at the San Francisco polo field with a lineup including CCR, CSN, the Dead, Santana, et cetera.

Bill Graham was rock when I grew up. He brought us unbelievable gigs that are still talked about today. He gave musicians their starts, nurturing bands, something that has died out with most concerts, where I now feel like it's cattle-call time in a sound chamber from hell.

My sister, rock queen of Gen X, and I go to a few things. We lost our hearing together not once but twice over Alice Cooper. I can never remember to bring the earplugs to get me through the heavy-metal opening acts she craves. I try to show up late enough to miss the thrashing. She laughs at my ignorance of "great art." I make sure she always gets the tickets--she knows how to do it in the electronic age.

And then the dream concert arrived. I only had 24 hours' notice, but hearing that Joni Mitchell (Queen of Rock and notorious cancellation artist), Van Morrison and Dylan (the elder) were playing a one-nighter dissipated years of justified absence from rock & roll life. Frugality was tossed to the winds. This, for me, was the concert to die for.

I'd sworn there'd be no more camping out all night in the cold for iffy events, but I pulled out the plastic, knowing it would be some kind of hippie sacrilege to miss this. I remembered sleeping under ticket windows in my past, and how much better the seats were when you did.

Then along came BASS tickets, and you could phone in with a speed dialer for decent spots. Of course, this convenience had its price: surcharges had increased from zero to 50 percent of a ticket's face value. I was badly out of touch and had no idea what the current rules were for getting seats.

So I called my sister, metal queen, and got the lowdown. Any hot venue will have lines, and to thwart scalpers from buying up everything, they now have "the lottery." Everyone who gets in line early gets an arm band numbered from one to whatever, in order of their place in line.

You can go home until just before tickets go on sale. Then ticket sellers pull out a number from the hat, and that's the start of the line. Let's say 200 people show up for tickets early. They pass out numbers 1-200 in order.

Then just before tickets go on sale, they pull out number 105. The person with No. 105 is now No. 1 in line, with Nos. 106-200 directly behind him, in order. Then Nos. 1-104 get in line behind that. Poor number 104 has gone to last place. All people coming off the street after that are behind the early people with numbers. It means that scalpers can't stake out lines and get in front, but then neither can diehard fans. Everybody has an equal shot at being in the front or in the rear.

Who knew they'd get so democratic in 20 years? I was happy I could save some sleep, but my sister had even more advice. "Not every outlet is the same," she told me. "It they only have one ticket machine, it's gonna take you twice as long to get up to buy than a place with two machines."

Then she told me about the service charges and directed me to the event site at the Arena. With five or six ticket windows I'd go five times as fast, and at-site sales means no service charge. We figured out the cost for six seats and found out that alone would save me $50.

Finally, she told me to take a cell phone. In case I got a bad draw, I could immediately start dialing in for better seats through BASS before I got to the window.

Ironic, isn't it? I'm out there with a $10,000 limit on my credit card and a cell phone to hear the music of rebellion. Considering they sold out within 15 minutes, and I was holding great seats before they did, I couldn't have cared less. I was holding No. 172 when they called 150 as the start of the line. Dumb luck wins.

It wasn't the same as sleeping in a dirt field with a bunch of dollar bills to get space for Cal Jam, but the adage for scoring tickets still holds: If you snooze, you lose.

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