Sunday 24 September 3023.

Saturday 23 September 2023. While huge current artists like Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Harry Styles etc can sell out stadiums worldwide in a blink of an eye, there are other big names who sometimes struggle to sell tickets. This report comes in from across the pond.... Beatles legend RINGO STARR performed in Ontario California’s Toyota Arena recently. While normally, the venue holds up to a capacity of 11,000 attendees, far fewer came out to see Starr’s performance.....That number? A mere 2,000 tickets were sold. David Allen over at the Daily Bulletin recounted his experience at the show, noting that things looked pretty bad upon arrival.”The upper decks were curtained off. The lower decks were half full,” Allen wrote. Tickets for the event were not cheap either. According to Allen, tickets cost a base price of $80 each, plus $32.60 for a service fee. Parking, of course, was an additional $30.25 ontop of an already expensive ticket. All of this meaning, the barrier to entry to see a rock legend was pretty high, and clearly meant a lot of people weren’t willing to shell out that much money. For what it’s worth, it didn’t seem to vex Starr, and he put on a pretty solid performance. His setlist consisted of a ton of covers, and eight of the eleven Beatles songs he sang on. Since it was a Ringo Starr and His All Starr Band performance, he had members of Men at Work, Toto and Average White Band playing alongside him, who all had their turns performing music from their own catalogs. Ringo seems to like touring North America often these days, but avoids playing in the UK. ----------------------------------- ----------------------------------- Friday 22 September 2023. THE ROLLING STONES STORY live at The Theatre Royal, Windsor. The Rolling Stones played their first ever gig with Bill Wyman in Windsor on 14 Dec 1962. The Stones played in the Windsor area over 40 times early on in their career. ---------- Always nice to be back at this cosy all seated venue. This was part of their week long stint of tribute acts. Always interested in Rolling Stones related gigs since seeing the real Stones at four of their six Earls Court Arena shoes in 1976. Have seen other Stones tribute bands but this is the first time seeing this lot. A two hour show over two sets of 55 mins and 65 mins...the first set had Brian Jones then Mick Taylor and the second set was Ronnie Wood. The Mick Jagger was totally spot on. A big screen showing images and Stones info. A great female backing singer and keyboard player. All the classics played and a couple of rarities too. The overall sound was just perfect. The last song of the main set and the two song encore had everyone up and dancing. Brown Sugar Satisfaction Jumping Jack Flash Maybe just a tribute show, but it was really great.

Posted 23rd September 2023