This is not your standard “Old Man Shakes Fist At Sky” rant.

This is about the death of live music for most of the population.

When I went to my first Rush show in 1980, I got great seats in the Red section of Maple Leaf Gardens for the whopping sum of 15 bucks each.  Even back in the day, that was a totally doable amount.

The equivalent seats for this newest Rush tour are between 750 and a grand.  Each.

Live Nation and Ticketmaster have really outdone themselves when it comes to corporate greed.  They are at the top of the list when you discuss what can happen when capitalism is monopolized and unfettered.  They control it all.

The funniest part is that all their marketing – ALL OF IT – is around how much music means to them and how important it is to get this entertainment out there to the masses.  That is – the 1% of the masses who are privileged enough to afford a 1k ticket.  The rest of them can apparently go fuck themselves.

When I was 13 music was everything.  I scraped together the 15 bucks and went, and it changed my life completely.  It gave me purpose.  It gave me direction.  It completed my life.

It probably saved me from myself a thousand times.

The only 13-year-olds that can buy this level of concert ticket now are the ones with parents privileged enough to be able to provide them with the money.

The other 99% – who need this WAY more – remain without inspiration, without mentorship, without hope.  These are the same kids who have watched the school boards rip apart the music and theatre programs, or destroy them entirely.

George Bernard Shaw famously said “Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.”  And here we are, raising a generation who have to almost injure themselves in order to participate in any kind of artistic creativity.  No wonder they have no hope for the future.

There will be a price to pay for this.  And it won’t be paid by the corporations we have allowed to control our artistic output. It will come at the expense of future generations whose access to art we have surrounded by unmitigated greed.