But I kind of hate VIP packages

Incidentally, there were more developments in the Polaroid feud. I don't even know that there was that much from the leaders - I only know if someone re-tweets it and I see it - but there were fans getting involved in mocking both sides, which has been very stressful for those who are fans of both Sleeping With Sirens and Bring Me The Horizon. I hope everybody chills out and grows up and all that.

I do still find the notorious Polaroid package to be reasonably priced when you look at everything included. Also, it feels like this type of personal experience should be something I support.

Yes, production and distribution of music can be done quite cheaply, but it is fairly difficult to get people to pay for it. It tends to be easier to get people to purchase tickets, but there is overhead with the venue and crew and transportation. You can do a lot of those things pretty cheaply, but there are limits.

With VIP packages and meet and greets, there tends to be low overhead. Maybe you are including a photo and a poster, but primarily you are spending time, and yes, it helps support the band, and it is clearly something a lot of fans want. Sorry, I still hate it. I have tried to find a logical reason for this, and it is a bunch of things working together. 

First of all, I have had some great musician encounters over the past year. Meeting Lindsey Way changed my life; that is not an exaggeration. Meeting the other members of MSI was also cool, and they were all out there. If you hung around and waited, you could meet everyone in the band, but that was a free gift from the band.

I had mentioned that Lindsey hugged me (twice, actually), but I haven't written about the hug I got earlier that evening, from Trash McSweeney of The Red Paintings (they opened for MSI). He was hanging out over by the merch table, and I had been moved by their show. I went up and complimented him, because I do that. If you have something nice to say, I firmly believe in saying it. And yes, sometimes I compliment people who could not care less, but sometimes it really does matter.

Anyway, we talked for just a moment, and then he hugged me. It was a little, spontaneous thing and I'm sure he doesn't remember it, but in that moment we were connected, and it warmed my heart. It was real.

There have been so many little things that sprung up from unpredictable moments: realizing one moment too late that Cy Curnin thought I had been Maria, finding every single Gin Blossom around the hotel and talking to two of them, rounding a corner and finding Mike Kennerty after being too shy to talk to him earlier. There is randomness here, and unpredictability. I have no selfies proving these things happened, but they were all special to me, and they cannot be bought.

And, you can't have that with every band. There are bands for whom it would be neither safe nor practical to come out into the throng. The VIP experience can resolve some of the difficulty there, but that gives you different problems.

One is that it becomes such a perfunctory thing. Sign, snap, shake hands, move on. The experience has become a commodity, and is thus cheapened, no matter how expensive it gets. The kids still make a big deal out of finally meeting their idols, but then they expect to meet them next time too, and there are many other issues here, with positive and negative effects from the level of a young person's identification with a band, and fandoms, and when it results in a perverted sense of ownership and hostility, but I'm not ready to go there yet.

What I will say is that I hate the economics in other ways, because what about the kids who can't afford it, or the parents who can't afford it, then it seems like it could result in a stratification of the fans, and division into haves and have-nots. And if that seems to be over thinking it, remember that the economic difficulties that we have occurring now are issues for bands too. If we had single-payer health care, would that take some stress off of musicians? If the regular job market was good, would that help some aspiring musicians, and some fans? Everything is interconnected.

If I sound like a cranky old person shaking my cane at the kids on the lawn, well, I do feel like one more and more all the time. 

References:
http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/05/concert-review-mindless-self-indulgence.html

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/07/a-daily-hat.html 

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/05/concert-review-red-paintings.html 

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2012/12/in-concert-all-american-rejects.html

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2013/01/concert-review-gin-blossoms.html

http://sporkful.blogspot.com/2012/10/the-fixx-live-at-music-millennium.html