"Are Radiohead fans the most obsessive in the world?"

Note: We're talking about Radiohead, not Beatles, but this is cute. 

Credited to Broken Spines.

To answer a girl who posted this on the Chugg Entertainment Facebook Page, YES. Hell yes. I have never seen anything as crazy as what I witnessed online today.

This morning I woke up at 5:00am, set up my laptop with Mastercard at the ready, and counted down the minutes until 6. The Melbourne and Sydney Radiohead concerts were due to go on sale, and from my attempt at buying a presale ticket on Monday, I knew this would be a matter of win or fail as determined by mere SECONDS. I even had a nightmare about missing out! (Note: Also present in this nightmare were savage mini sharks who could flop around houses and bite ankles). So I could relate well to posts such as: "TERRIFIED. :\" which came up on the page prior to the sales commencing.

Following other people's tips, I had my Ticketek page set up and signed in, and I watched the clock, clicking over to a particular concert date JUST after 6am. I filled in a form with shaky hands, and clicked Next. To my dismay, it said the tickets I wanted had sold out already! Insane. I immediately let go of my desperate desire to be in the moshpit and clicked "best available tickets" for a second try. This worked, offering me two seats in the very back, but seats nonetheless. Phew. I hadn't made it this far on Monday. I filled out the bank details form, still shaking, and it was good to go! I thought....

Unfortunately, "Ticketek prefers Visa". And I never interpreted that to mean "Don't try and use Mastercard, you'll epically fail and end up losing your tickets", but it sure happened. I was sent back to the starting page (aaghh!), and went through the process again only to find it wouldn't work. "Mummmm!" I called out, as we all do in a tricky situation. A good sport, she arose out of bed and brought me her Visa card to borrow, just in case I should manage to get another chance at tickets by refreshing the page over and over again. Thankfully this chance occurred and I WAS IN. At this point I didn't care in the slightest where I might be seated, I just took those ticks and paid and almost had tears of joy when it was confirmed. I forget what time it had reached by then, maybe 6:09am... I know the concerts, both Sydney x2 and Melbourne x2, all together sold out in sixteen minutes flat. 50, 000 tickets.

An absolute bloodbath.

The Brisbane sale an hour later was no different. I was attempting to get tickets for two friends {big fans of Radiohead} I knew who had missed out, but there was no luck. Well... actually, I have to admit I did something silly here. I pondered the seat choice too long and wanted something better. You might call me an "asshole princess" like one woman titled herself this morning when expressing her own regret at trying to find better seats and then missing out. Haha. Oh well.

Have a guess how long the Brisbane sale lasted for. Sixteen minutes? Ten?
I learnt it from people posting on Chugg:

Kahlie Jackson

Did Brisbane actually just sell out in 4 minutes?

Stephan Portoff 

i think in 2! aaaaargh        

           




Belinda Robert No it sold out in 2.


Two minutes. How upset would you be?

To be honest, we can all say that buying Radiohead tickets isn't like buying your last breath of oxygen, but really... there's no way of making your mind acknowledge that when you have been waiting eight years and there is this much hype going on all over the place. 'Scalpers' suddenly become adjacent to the likes of murderers, lowlife scum who steal relentlessly from true lovers of the band. "How could anyone buy a ticket and NOT want to go themselves?" Nobody understands their selfishness. And every little thing that goes wrong is another crack to your skull - Ticketek ending your session just as you're almost done, a computer glitch that doesn't let you tick the Terms and Conditions box, endless amounts of CAPTCHA codes that you just can't read. Oh yes it is a stressful task.

It's painful to now read posts from people who haven't made the boat, along with the sad and negative analyses of it all...

Peter Steven

Anyone with half a brain should have prepared themselves for disappointment when they saw that the shows were (well at least in Sydney) at what could be considered a smaller venue for an act as popular as Radiohead. Blaming scalpers entirely on the fact that you missed out on tickets is ridiculously simple minded, even if they did not exist there would still be a hell of a lot of ticketless fans regardless. Do the goddamn math.

Derani Zealand

At the last moment I decided not to join in on the frenzied, anguished scramble for tickets. Where's the joyous, easy vibe that the opportunity to hear music you love, live, brings? Hopefully somehow, someway I get to find honest tickets.

...but I'm really glad to have found Chugg's page to use as a massive support group in this concert crisis. There are obviously more Radiohead fans out there than I ever imagined, and it's been exciting and amusing to share all of their experiences, frustration and wit. We could probably band together and run an awesome government where scalpers - who have literally been seen on eBay already selling multitudes of tickets for three times the price! - will be given harsh consequences, and good music will be in abundance everywhere! These fans laugh at artists such as Taylor Swift and I like that.

The name that organised and promoted its little heart out to get Radiohead cranking

So that's my excitement for the day, done and dusted.
I'm now settled, my heart rate normal, I have two tickets to Melbourne... seated way up the back, to the right of the stage, on a Saturday. It could be a lot worse.

Radiohead

Oh, and did I mention that the concert isn't until November?
Craaaazy event.

xZ