Pre-booking to Maritimes area cancelled!

[AndreTheGiant]

Well, there go my hopes of getting seats to the Fredericton show. Sure, I'll try to either stand in line or book online on Thrusday, but so will everyone else in town and everyone looking to make a buck off tickets to what is sure to be a sold out show. Good luck, everyone.

[upsofloating]

There's no point even trying to stand in line because, at the playhouse at least, since any order made online automatically holds the tickets for ten minutes, so unless you're first, you might as well hope to get them online.

[mirka]

Mirka, Leonard has nothing to do with the routine ticket sales. He is rehearsing the songs with the band. The tour itself is organized by AEG Live and a lot of other professional companies who are doing their part in this huge project.

Jarkko, it's obvious Leonard is neither personally involved in selling tickets, nor in milion of other mundane activities required to make a huge tour happen.

However -- when logging in (first time in many years ), I found in the "Advance ticket booking for Files/Forum members" thread this announcement:

There will be a special advance ticket booking open only to the members of The Leonard Cohen Files and Forum, thanks to Leonard and his management.

We have a limited block of excellent seats to selected venues, available only to our members during a short period before the official ticket sale begins. The number of tickets each member can buy will also be limited, and the tickets will be non-transferable.

For a while I took this promise seriously and hoped that after all this years of waiting his fans will be given a special treatment.
My enthusiasm started to vanish when trying to get tickets for Manchester show, after logging in at 10:00 AM, I was given as "best available" seats high up in the gallery (I gave them up).
Since my traveling schedule this summer is in direct oposition to the World Tour, my only remaing choice were Maritime cities. With them practically closed for non-locals I will have to give up seeing Leonard in concert, or wait for the tour to come to California (I don't have a good feeling about it to happen) or Warsaw (better chances but additional transatlantic travel required).

Funny -- I wrote my posting not knowing that Maritimes area was cancelled, just reading the box office stories on Forum, and observing developments made me realize that fans chances of getting tickets are in fact no better than anybody's else.
Somebody had good intentions and made promises, following up on them is another story, unfortunately.

Anyway -- thanks a lot for your effort in keeping this website up, I'm really amazed that you are able to do it all those years.

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[antiandrea]

guys, NL =/= to maritimes, the maritimes are only NS, NB, and PEI

[jarkko]

Thanks for the rose, Mirka! It's incredible that our little meetup in San Francisco was nine years ago!

The advance booking succeeded very well to both Montreal and Toronto. This special arrangement was launched by Leonard, and it is his gesture of good will to his loyal fans. However, there are hundreds of people now involved in this tour, located in several countries. AEG Live is the world-wide tour operator. Leonard and his own management have nothing to do with the ticket booking, logistics etc. now when the project is at full fling. They have to concentrate on rehearsing the band and the songs!

Unfortunately it turned out that technical problems made it impossible to arrange the Maritimes pre-sale according to the plans, and it had to be cancelled. Some of these venues are really small - only some hundred seats! The problem is that every venue in The Maritimes sells the tickets in its own way. Some seem to have local groups that have right to first refusal. It is possible that some of these very small venues are in fact almost sold out when the public sale begins.
Advance booking to the big European concerts also was almost impossible to arrange at short notice - there are so many parties involved in every country, and the venues wanted to start with the public booking right away. However, it is still possible that something will be arranged for the Europeans (for the next concerts).

[jarkko]

Nil_by_mouth wrote:

I wonder whether the fact that shows aren't selling out as quickly as one might have thought may be a factor

I'm afraid you are totally wrong. The demand has exceeded all the expectations! Most UK shows have already sold out (Manchester, Edinburgh) and 02 London may have only some rooftop seats left - and its capacity is 20.000! All shows in Montreal sold out immediately, Toronto may have some single tickets or tickets that have not been collected. The small venues in other Canadian cities will probably sell all tickets in minutes. Getting a ticket is easier here in Europe because we will have so many open air festivals with huge capacity (up to 50.000). Another thing is that a concert cannot be very intimate in such a big crowd.

[Tri-me]

The record here in Fredericton is 12 min, I expect that will be beaten. Tim Yerxa gave a good explanation on the CBC this morning they have been repeating the story all morning. I live 15 min away from the Play House it would be cruel to be so close and so far away. Wish me luck!!!!
Jarrko, we are so lucky to have him here for the first show. I am not sure if you can communicate with him. Bliss Carmen lived here in Fredericton. A friend of mine lived in the house he lived in when he was here. Bliss signed a stairway in the house, maybe Leonard would like to see that. No, I am not trying to get a hook up on the day he is here I will be in a class all day (the hours count so I cannot get out of it) of course I would like to meet him but who wouldn't.

Bliss William Carman was born in Fredricton, New Brunswick, in 1861 and died in 1929. He was, at the time, Canada's best known poet. Descended from American Loyalists, he attended the University of New Brunswick, Edinburgh and Harvard. He later moved to New York and was influential as an editor and writer for the Independent, the Cosmopolitan, the Atlantic Monthly, the Chap Book and other literary journals. He is also well known for his anthology and editing work on The World's Best Poetry (10 vol.'s; 1904) and The Oxford book of American verse (1927). In 1928 he was awarded the Lorne Pierce Gold Medal by the Royal Society of Canada.

Also, the Lieutenant-Governor of New Brunswick Herménégilde Chiasson is a poet. He wrote the libreto for an opera by Ludmila Knezkova-Hussey.
Dr. Chiasson has participated in over 100 exhibitions and is the author of many books including Claude Roussel Sculpteur/Sculptor (1985) and Climat (1996). He wrote some twenty plays such as L'exil d'Alexa (1993) and Aliénor (1997). He has also published numerous magazines, works, collectives and anthologies of poems. He was awarded the prix France-Acadie in 1986 and 1992, the prestigious Chevalier de l'Ordre français des Arts et Lettres in 1990, l'Ordre des francophones d'Amérique in 1993, the Grand Prix de la francophonie canadienne in 1999, an honorary doctorate in literature from the University of Moncton in 1999 and, most recently, the Prix quinquennal Antonine-Maillet-Acadie Vie in 2003.

[k-e-t]

Tri-me, what were they saying about getting tickets in Fredericton? I live in Moncton but am unable to go to the Moncton show, so am hoping to score some to F'ton... do you have to be there in person or will phone/online suffice?

This is giving me butterflies... I don't know what I'll do if I'm not one of the lucky ones!

[Tri-me]

I would get on the phone and internet people are gointg to start lining up in the wee hours. I will walk by in the morning to see what the line up is like. I would get in line but I injured my leg on Sunday and am in a lot of pain.
Best of luck the competiotion will be thick.

[jarkko]

http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2008/03/18 ... cohen.html

Members of Leonard Cohen's online fan club will have to wait in line along with everyone else when tickets for his May 11 concert go on sale Thursday.

Cohen's website had promised some tickets would be made available to members of the fan club before they would be sold to the general public.

That was the practice at the recent sale of tickets for his upcoming concerts in Toronto and Montreal. But it won't be happening in Fredericton, because, at the last minute, the pre-sale offer was cancelled.

The change was made for technical reasons, according to the executive director of the Fredericton Playhouse where Cohen will perform.

"In Atlantic Canada, we all operate on independent box offices, because our theatres are much smaller, and not everyone has a system to allow them to put in a promotion code or a special code in their ticketing system online, to allow the fans to have access to the seats earlier than the general public," Tim Yerxa said.

A local member of the online fan club, Diane Terry, said her obsession with Cohen started in 1982, when she was a young woman learning to play the guitar.

"The teacher brought in [the album] Songs from a Room, and [on it] he played The Story of Isaac, and I loved the way he was picking. It was classical guitar he was playing, and that was it."

Terry wants to see that song performed live, so still hopes to be front and centre at the Fredericton concert.

She will have to be quick. Organizers expect the show could break the current sellout-time record of 12 minutes.

[Hlstone84]

I appreciated that noone could answer my question regarding where I can actually buy tickets to the St. John's show. I think its ridiculous that this wasn't posted on the tour schedule, and I am not sure how I am supposed to know what "sold locally" means. If they are only being sold locally, that isn't fair to people who wish to go to the show but arn't living in the city. I finally found out where they were being sold and a bit pissed to see three shows and no tickets available at this point.

I am quite disappointed in the lack of information regarding this, escpecially on the Cohen's own site. Sad sad day.