Clamorous Birds (Black Crowes At The Fillmore Part 1)

"Hey, what do you think about seeing the Black Crowes up at the Fillmore in August?", I asked my wife as she passed the doorway of my study. She twisted her mouth a bit and slightly cocked her head to the left. I took this as a negative signal. It was a Wednesday in June and I'd just gotten an email notification from Bill Graham Presents announcing the show. Right away, my mind searched it's internal calendar and realized that we had nothing going on at the time of the show.


"Babe, August is filling up pretty fast", she said. "Remember, you've got Ozzfest, the Angels-Red Sox game, your camping trip, and who knows what else. Do you really think we can swing all that and another shot out of town?"

Without hesitation I said, "Well, sure". I wasn't about to tell her that even I thought that sounded like a loaded month. She asked what the date of the show was and I explained to her that the Black Crowes were playing a five night run at the Fillmore in San Francisco. The dates crossed over a weekend and I suggested we get tickets to the Saturday night performance and make a weekend out of it. She sighed and admitted that it sounded pretty special. The Fillmore is one of our favorite venues and we always stay at a great hotel just around the corner from the auditorium in the Japantown district. I routinely try to find a hotel within stumbling distance of any concert venue and it just happens that this one is actually a nice place and not some fleabag hotel.

The tickets would go on sale in a couple of days on Saturday morning. At the time, I had weekends off, so I could get online and order some right as they became available. It's pretty normal for me to get tickets early for any concert, but with the multiple night run in a rather small venue, I figured that demand would be very high and I'd better clear my Saturday morning so as not to miss out. Soon after the wife agreed to go, my mind had locked in on Black Crowes music and imagery. For the couple of days before tickets would go on sale, I obsessed over the band, playing CDs and reliving memories of the two previous times I'd seen them.

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The first time I caught the Crowes live was on a cold Sunday night in December of '98 at the Rainbow Ballroom in Fresno. It was a great show in a relatively small place, but it was easily the loudest fucking concert out of the hundreds I've seen. Unlike my younger days where the volume at a concert only became apparent the next morning when my ears would ring like a fax tone, the Black Crowes were actually making my ears hurt that night. The multiple brews numbed the pain a bit, but I was still kicking myself for leaving my earplugs in the drink holder in the truck. At work the next day, I set the modern-day record for saying the word "Huh?".

My wife was with me the second time I saw them. They were opening for Lenny Kravitz on some Bay Area radio station's anniversary concert up at the Shoreline amphitheater. Also on the bill was a surprisingly entertaining Everlast and the little known, but adored by me, Cree Summer. We had left our lawn seats to catch Cree Summer perform on the second stage. After her performance, we spoke to her for a moment and then got in the beer line. Then, the unmistakable sound of a huge crowd acknowledging an artist coming onstage was followed by the boom and crash of amplified music. It was muffled a bit by the walls separating idiots like us on the concourse and fans like I used to be--in their seats when the damn band you want to see comes on.

We got our drinks fairly quickly thanks to those who bailed out of line upon hearing the first notes of

the Crowes set. I gritted my teeth in frustration on our way back to the lawn section. We had missed three full songs. We settled in with the rest of the fans who looked at us with a "where were you?" expression. We shrugged it off and cursed the people who put together the impossible schedule if you wanted to catch all of the acts that day.

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Saturday came and as I put the creamer back in the fridge that morning, I spied the note I'd written to myself to buy Crowes tickets at 10am. It was about 8:30, so I had some time. I finished my coffee while reading the paper and generally puttered around the house. At about 9:50, I sat down at my computer--or The Mistress, as my wife puts it--and logged onto the Ticketmaster website. I went to the page where the Saturday night tickets would be sold and clicked the info link just to keep checking for the moment they'd open up. I wasn't so worried about getting tickets at all, I just wanted to get it done and move on with my day.

The little clock in the corner of my screen read 10:00AM and I clicked the link again. Not on sale yet. Hmmm, my clock must be a little fast. I tried again and the same message came up. I went to the info page to double check the date. It was correct. I tried again and a search for my tickets came up. A bar fills up left to right as Ticketmaster searches for your request. Normally, the wait time is about a minute or less. I waited a moment expecting to see the page where I enter a scrambled password and verify the number of tickets I want. Instead, the message I saw made my heart skip a beat.

THERE ARE NO TICKETS AVAILABLE FOR THIS EVENT.

"Aaaugh! You gotta be shitting me!", I yelled at my screen. My wife came running from the kitchen thinking I'd fallen and couldn't get up. "What's wrong?", she asked, almost annoyed that I was alive and well.

I was trying to get back to the previous page. "I think they're fucking sold out", I said quickly. I looked at the computer's clock again. 10:01. No way, I thought. One minute? Twelve-hundred tickets in one minute? I got to the request page, typed in the infernal scrambled code word and held my breath. Now my wife was leaning in over my shoulder. At last, the search page came up. Your wait time is less than one minute, the message read as the bar started to fill up. I exhaled. It would be all over soon.

"Let me know what the total charges are and I'll put it in the checkbook", my wife said as she walked out of the room. I watched the little bar intently. It wasn't moving. I bent closer to the screen. What now? You can't hit the back button from here or you'll lose your place in the cue. But then, the page blinked to refresh itself and I thought, Ah here we go. I prepared to click the buttons approving my sale on the upcoming page and I saw another bar. An empty bar.

Your wait time is less than two minutes.

"What?!"

Refresh.

Your wait time is less than four minutes.

"Hey. Hey, what the fuck?!"

Refresh.

Your wait time is less than twelve minutes.

"Nooo! You motherfuckers!"

My wife came in again. "Now what?"

"Look", I said, pointing to the screen.

"What the hell?", she asked. "What's taking so long?"

I sighed, "I don't know, but this is getting scary". I leaned back in my chair, helpless to do anything but wait for the page to refresh again, hopeful that this time it would be to the verification page. I sat looking at the bar sit idle. It was hypnotizing me. I was frozen in time, a slave to this machine and it's teasing dance. I must have blinked because I almost didn't realize that the page had changed to the verification stage. I recoiled like a snake was striking at me and almost knocked over my water bottle. I calmly went to verify my Ticketmaster account info when I noticed another message:

Due to the high volume of ticket requests, you have one minute to make your choice. I sputtered some kind of curse and quickly hit the buttons to approve the sale. Normally you have about 3-5 minutes to accept or decline the sale of tickets at this stage. One minute goes by pretty quickly when you're filling in personal info like address, credit card numbers and the like. As the confirmation page came up, I clicked print and congratulated myself for setting up an existing account long ago.

I rocked back in my chair and let out a long breath. I looked back at my wife and she raised her eyebrows. "You ever seen that before?", she asked.

"No, never", I replied. "Even when I've declined seats searching for others, the wait time is always a minute or less. That was crazy."

A little later in the day, I logged back onto the Ticketmaster site and every ticket for all five shows were gone. I then surfed over to a Black Crowes forum to see if there was any online discussion about these shows. There was plenty, most of it consisting of the lament of not getting tickets. One message from someone that seemed trustworthy read that Ticketmaster told him that the Saturday night show had sold out in eleven minutes. That's over 100 tickets per minute. I looked over at my printer to see the receipt for my two tickets. I felt like I had a Golden Ticket from a Wonka Bar.

Next: Part Two