Sung Tongs

I spent all day today in a ballroom at the headquarters of the electrical utility Georgia Power Company for the fourth annual conference of the Georgia Brownfields Association.

That was nice, but I really don't have much to say about it.  That's not the reason for this post.  

The reason I bring it up is that around 10:30 a.m, while at the conference, I received an email announcing that the Baltimore band Animal Collective were bringing their Sung Tongs tour to Atlanta's Symphony Hall (Sung Tongs is a 2004 AC LP that the band has recently been performing live in its entirety).  This was exciting news to me - Sung Tongs is one of my favorite albums by one of my favorite bands.  Alert readers of WDW, even those not familiar with the Sung Tongs album, might recognize the first track, Leaf House, as I posted it here almost a year ago and then again earlier this year.  Until 10:30 this morning, it appeared that the AC ST tour was going to miss Atlanta entirely.

Pre-sale tickets, according to the email, went on sale at 10:00 a.m. this morning.

WHAT?  Usually a presale is announced a day or two in advanced, and usually I wouldn't much care whether or not I was among the first to buy a ticket as most rock shows are General Admission and from where you observe the show is usually dependant on what time you arrive at the venue, not when you buy your ticket.  But Symphony Hall is a seated venue and to get a good ticket, you need to buy early, and I had already missed the first half-hour of the sale.

But no worries. The speaker at the podium was droning on and on about some such matter or another, so I discreetly used my iPhone to access the box office's web site, entered the secret pre-sale password ("Baltimore"), and selected a choice pair of tickets in the bullpit right in front of the stage.  Score!

Then the troubles began.  The wireless connection in the ballroom was not the greatest, and in the time it took to validate my credit card number, my connection timed out and the box office told me I had to try again.

Determinedly, I did.  But this time, there were no more pit seats left, and the closest I could get to the stage was Row E in the Orchestra, which are still great seats, only five rows back from the pit, but still seemed like the lesser of two goods in comparison to the seats I could have gotten if my original purchase hadn't timed out.  But no worries, I went to purchase the tickets anyway, but this time, instead of timing out, the box office said that my credit card had "insufficient funds" to purchase $66 worth of tickets.

That was ridiculous.  I knew that my card was valid and paid up, and that I had a credit line of several thousands of dollars, so I tried again a third time.  I was still being discreet with the phone, holding it low near my lap beneath the surface of the table and careful to not appear rude to the conference's speaker, as I was sitting at the front table closest of the podium.  But this time there were no more Row E seats left, and the best I could do was Row M, which is now quite a bit further back than where I had started, and all because of the awkward timing of the announcement and the poor reception in the ballroom in which I was stuck.

I got the same "insufficient funds" message for Row M as well, and on the fourth attempt I brought the phone up off my lap and above the table where anyone and everyone could see because I thought that maybe the table might have been interfering with the signal.  But no, this time the box office just said that my credit card had been refused, and then the next time after that, the transaction just timed out like earlier.  As it did again the time after that.

I finally realized my actual problem - Chase Bank recently sent me a new card to replace the old one with a 5/18 expiration date, but the old expiration date was still on my Ticketmaster account.  So I updated the account info and selected the best tickets left, but it was now after 11:00 a.m. and we were over an hour into the pre-sale and the "best tickets" were now all the way back in Row U. However, I was finally able to complete the purchase without an error message or the transaction timing out, even though I was now 21 full rows back from where I had started, and although the acoustics and the sight lines at Symphony Hall are great, and even though Animal Collective aren't necessarily the most visually compelling of musicians to watch perform, I still felt like I had somehow been cheated out of my rightful due because of circumstances beyond my control (slow connection and misleading error messages).  If the box office told me the first time that the expiration date was incorrect and not that I had "insufficient funds," I'd have been in Row E.  If the first attempt hadn't timed out and I had gotten the right error message, I would have been all the way up in the bullpit.

The good news - Animal Collective will be performing Sung Tongs live in Atlanta and I've got tickets!  The bad news - the tickets aren't as close as they might have been (not that it really matters) if not for a series of unfortunate circumstances.

Why is it that the mind fixates on the half-empty part of the glass of water, and can't appreciate the half cup of cold, refreshing water?