I published a “disgusted from Shaftesbury” blog this week comparing what I thought value for festivals with the money being demanded by BoomTown this week
I went to my first festival at Blackbush in 1978, hitched there and paid a few quid to watch to watch Dylan follow Clapton, both follow Armatrading .
I thought I’d got in cheap but I now have competition from Derek Scott, a few years older and not paying London prices
I hope you can read this – I just about can! Here is Derek, as furious as me
Not quite “free” but this one back in 1972, just after decimalisation, was thirty bob, and didn’t involve camping:
The Grangemouth Pop Festival, Grangemouth Stadium, 12 noon to 11pm, 23 August 1972.
Line up:
Beck Bogert Appice; Status Quo; Steeleye Span; Dundee’s Sleaz Band (as stand in for later no shows?); Lindisfarne; The Everly Brothers; Uriah Heep (no show); Beggars Opera; Average White Band; Sunshine; Billy Connolly; Electric Light Orchestra (no show); and The Chris McClure Section.MCs: Tom Ferrie and John Peel.
All for £1.75 on the day, or £1.50 in advance.
I don’t think that we were different as teenagers as teenagers are today. But I think the opportunities to do things for ourselves are diminished for today’s teenagers.
The property my parents bought when coming out of medical school cost £800 in the early 1950s , today it is an inheritance tax problem for the next generation.
To see the Dylans Claptons and Armatradings, the Steeleye Spans , the Everleybrothers and the Uriah Heeps of today means digging deep into digitised bank accounts.
We are in a world where the consumer is measured by their capacity to pay.
Prices have inflated but not the value of the experience. The two need to come back in balance with each other.
Derek was also at Blackbush and probably a little used to concerts than me
Not only do I still have my “match programme” from 1978, but I have the above book too.
Here’s the text in normal size
Derek, they want our money – they missed out in 1978!
I was social secretary of the University of York for four years in the 1960s – my biggest ticket price dilemma was: could I sell tickets for the 1969 June Ball at 17s 6d – could as it turned out. Event ran from 8.00 in the evening until 7.30 in the morning – I took a break at around 10.30, fell asleep (was that knackered) and woke just as the steel band was kicking off at 6.30.
Hello Henry,
Some ten years earlier the Rolling Stones had given a free Saturday afternoon concert in Hyde Park down by the Serpentine lake. I didn’t go because I had thought the rest of London would (but apparently not) be attending. The previous summer there had been three such free concerts given there by the ‘prog rock’ bands. The difference between the presentations was that (then) all that groups had was their ‘road’ kits and spectators/fans were satisfied with that. Nowdays the arena installations and light-shows are a fortune in themselves and obviously have to be paid for. Similarly church-hall ‘discos’ were (then) little more than a ‘Dansette’ record-player and whatever the girls brought in the way of records. Not the multi-deck DJ systems etc that are boasted of nowadays in clubs etc.
Rock on..!
Tim Simpson
You forget supply and demand sets prices, not value.
What we need is more supply or less demand.
Clearly a lot of people still have more money than sense. I wonder if they’re ‘working people’, or another cohort with ample disposable income?