Show up early. Put your finger in the air. Socialize with good intentions. Get a ticket. That’s the formula for getting into a sold-out show.
Unless you’re trying to catch Geese on their current Getting Killed tour. In which case, sorry, but there’s no fucking way.
The band stopped by Asheville for a show at The Grey Eagle, which had been sold out for months. And that was before the release of Getting Killed¹, an album making a strong argument for best rock album of the year.
6:10 p.m.
Almost a full hour before doors, there was a line snaking around the parking lot and another smaller line directly at the front of the VFW-sized venue. Two lines. One for the common man, and one for those who paid an extra $60 to be considered VIPs, earning a tote bag with what may or may not still be referred to as swag, and most sacred of all: early entrance.
There was a third, even smaller group who’d gathered in hopes of finding an extra ticket. There was polite conversation about who would be the one to get whatever hypothetical ticket, as if the exchange would be so neatly negotiated.
The band has teamed up with CashorTrade in a well-intended, but ultimately failed, attempt to keep the secondary market from selling tickets for ten times their face value.
“There’s a guy selling his for $300!?”
Staff powwowed around the side of the building just before doors opened. Could they offer some kind of last-minute golden ticket?
“We’re not even allowed to come to the show unless we’re working.”
Fuck.
The laws of supply and demand had apparently negated the greatest employee benefit of working at a music venue.
7:00 p.m.
It seemed like the entire crowd was queued up as doors opened. Not only was this a show you had to be at, apparently, you also had to be there very early to ensure you weren’t watching from outside the bathroom doors.
Ticket hopefuls were strategic with their positioning—a couple waiting by an adjacent parking lot, another at the end of the line asking literally every person if they had an extra—but with universal disappointment. Or at least one would think.
The vibe among the ticket-deprived was strangely energetic for a bunch of strangers standing around in the near-freezing cold with little hope of catching a glimpse of one of the hottest ascending stars in contemporary club-level rock. The conversation among the have-nots seemed to focus on two very understandable topics: the music of Geese and acquiring tickets to see the music of Geese.
8:12 p.m.
The line had withered, all who had tickets seemed to be inside. But could every ticket available for less than $300 already be accounted for?
It was the ass-end of the first freezing weekend of the year. Surely a few folks stayed home, technically allowing enough room for fire code in the event a very kind ticket taker would recognize as a chance to—”All tickets are accounted for,” the announcement broke in on my stream of rationalizations. “Every single one.”
And the dream is declared dead. Time of death, 8:45 p.m.
Unless you’re part of the ticketless crew, down to four after losing several defectors, who at that point seemed content hearing the show’s muffled reverberations through the outter wall.
There are sacred live moments that remind everyone just how beautiful gathering in a room for live music can be. And there were probably many of those moments Sunday night.
Geese played. The crowd went wild. Killer set. Encored with “Trinidad”. Crowd dead.²
But for the handful of fans braving frigid temps for a shot at tickets —or just a few muffled decibels through the walls—it was a harsh lesson in what it means to love a band with a meteoric trajectory.
With a band as hot as Geese, it’s inevitable that some will get left out in the cold.
The sold-out Geese tour winds down later this month. Best wishes procuring a ticket if you don’t already have one.
[Editor’s Note: While tickets for some Geese have ballooned to hundreds on the secondary market, other tour stops at larger venues have been wildly overspeculated. Tickets for the band’s recent sold-out show at Houston’s White Oak Music Hall were going for less than $10 on StubHub the week of the show. Live For Live Music is tracking below-face-value tickets in real time in our new updating Ticket Deal Tracker. Check it out here to save money, beat scalpers, and stop Getting Killed.]
¹The tour used the album promo picture of a Geese band member turned away from the camera with a revolver hiding behind his back, finger on the trigger. So without the initial context of the album announcement, the show seemed to carry a threat of the band murdering their audience.
2 In all honesty, that is probably about as much of a review I would have had the capacity to write.