You know what? Sometimes getting a ticket to see your favourite artist live in concert can be a harrowing experience – especially on your wallet. Just ask James Barnard who had to shell out over £700 for pair of tickets recently to see his beloved pop idol Phil Collins take to the stage in an epic and rare live comeback at London’s Royal Albert Hall next June – a week’s set of shows that sold in 15 seconds flat. What the heck!
This then led me to the question – why isn’t Phil Collins going out on the road to see his fans? Well, perhaps these days he’s taking a leaf from the millennial motto book proclaiming, “staying in is the new going out” – and really, can you blame the guy?
Touring on a global scale is gruelling work, especially when you’re an older artist with a family and a discography of smash hits. It’s no wonder that some legendary artists and massive EDM DJs are now choosing to do residencies in the current hotbed of locales – sin city, Las Vegas. Why go on the road when you can stay kaput in a glamorous city and instead, have the fans come to you. Sounds like a much better deal to me.
It’s most likely the residency concept is the reason why Britney, Celine Dion and Jennifer Lopez choose to stay kaput and perform Vegas residences, rather than go on the road. In fact, Cher is doing the same thing soon and will be the first artist ever to play at the The Park Theatre at Monte Carlo, which is currently being built with her, as it’s christening artist.
So this residency thing sounds like a much more efficient way of doing live shows if you ask me. More shows in one location reduces the price of concert tickets overall and we might as well just make a holiday out of the live concert experience now if we are already willing to shell out thousands of dollars to get up-close to Madonna on her latest tour or see Depeche Mode on a last minute whim. I’d really like to see the travel and tourism industry make residencies a more widespread option –perhaps then the stigma of performing in Vegas will be a thing of the past and we can all start using our passports a little bit more and create holidays that evolve around music experiences and discovering a little more culture – beyond an all-you-can-eat shrimp buffet.