So last night we went to go see Fountains of Wayne at the Tarrytown Music Hall, probably the first live concert I’ve gone to in the past year. So why did it take me moving to the suburbs to go see live music. I have two theories.
First, less competition for tickets. If you try to go to a concert in the city, you pretty much have to be on top of the announcement if you want to get tickets. You can’t wait a few weeks after tickets come on sale and then pop onto ticketmaster or whatever to pick them up. I tried to see FoW at Joe’s Pub a few months ago when I saw an announcement on Facebook, and they were all sold out. Probably sold out the day they were put on sale. Just so many people in the city competing for scarce tickets. In contrast, I found out about the FoW concert about two weeks before it happened, went onto the Tarrytown Music Hall website, and got pretty good seats that day. There were still seats available the night of the show.
Second, and this is more psychological, is the overwhelming aspect of Manhattan — there’s always so much to do, so many places to go, that sometimes you shut down. A few years ago, I basically gave up on trying to stay on top of the restaurant/club/lounge scene, since it was becoming a full time job. And with all the various places to go see live music, it’s impossible to keep track of everything that’s happening to the point that you just stop trying. So there was a little of that.
In contrast, there’s not, ummm, quite so much to do out in the Hudson Valley, so it’s (a) easier to keep track of, and (b) easier to lock the relatively few events as appointments — sort of like “must see TV”.
Anyway, the concert was great. One observation — a very different crowd from the one you’d see at Joe’s Pub. Lots of people in their 50s, and lots of teenagers. I don’t know if that’s subscription based (i.e., people who live in the area might get subscriptions to see all the shows at the Music Hall), since the crowd seemed to know the band. We’ll see if that holds up on other shows.
