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Legendary 2000s pop punk band fights the ticket monopoly with throwback 'house party' tour

The "dirty little secret" is that young people don't remember when buying concert tickets didn't suck.

Canva Photos & By Arisara from U.S.A. - AARUploaded by Cptnono, CC BY 2.0,

The All-American Rejects are ditching stadiums and playing house parties again.

I don't know if it's just because the memories are hazy or because times really were simpler, but I remember an era where you could discover that your favorite artist was touring near you, go buy tickets, and attend the concert. It was that simple to have a great time. Tickets were never that cheap, but could be affordable if you were willing to sit in general admission, lawn, or nosebleed seats. And as long as you didn't wait until the last last last minute, you could usually get seats to most shows.

If you've seen a live concert any time in the last few years, you know that experience is a relic of the past. Instead, even for artists with mid-level popularity, you'll be prompted to join an online "Pre-sale" that starts at a specific time, get thrust into a "Waiting Room" with thousands of other people, and spend hours watching the page to discover that all the tickets have long since sold out. Your only choice, then, is to buy them on re-sale where, surprise surprise, they cost three to five times their face value...or more.

The average concert ticket has gone from $91.86 in 2019 to $135.92 in just a few years. In the 90s, the average ticket cost $25.81, or the equivalent of about $51 adjusting for inflation. That's a staggering increase. And while there were always scalpers, large-scale bots and software help scam resellers scoop up tickets at an absurd volume, making the experience miserable for everyone else. And then there are the fees and service charges, which often add on another 50% to the ticket price.

One of your favorite pop punks bands from the 2000s has had enough, so they're going old-school for the latest tour.

Remember the All-American Rejects? They were huge in the early 2000s with mega hits like "Swing, Swing," "Move Along," "Dirty Little Secret," and more.

You probably haven't heard too much about them for the last decade or so, but they've been plenty busy playing the hits and working on new material. In fact, pop punk has been experiencing something of a renaissance the last few years. Bands like Yellowcard are suddenly more popular than ever.

The All-American Rejects aren't about to let all this genre-momentum go to waste, but instead of trying to sell out the biggest venues possible, they're going back to their roots with a "house party tour."

@freshest.avacado

The All American Rejects at girlhouse in Nashville, TN. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU #allamericanrejects

With a simple online form, fans can request that the band come to their area, or to their party!

From there, all the shows are secret "pop up" concerts—where the location isn't announced in advance, only texted to fans who've signed up with little warning.

The results are pretty epic. Clips of the secret shows are popping up all over social media and they're overflowing with energy and passion and a shared love of live music. No processing fees necessary. As an old-head myself, it's also pretty awesome to see a younger generation getting introduced to the angst-ridden beauty of pop punk. In my opinion, kids today have way too many songs about love and sex and not nearly enough about not fitting in and feeling like a loser. That is a crucial feeling in a young person's development!

@allamericanrejects_clips

Can you imagine being THIS close to The All American Rejects at a pop-up show?! @All-American Rejects #aar #theallamericanrejects #punkmusic #popupconcert #livemusic #fyp

Rejects front man Tyson Ritter says the band wanted to push back against the modern shell-game of filling concert venues.

In an interview with Vulture, he explains that not-only is ticket scalping and the massive reseller market a big problem, but even big-name artists are filling arenas with less-than-legit sales:

"The first 25 percent of the arena gets sold from people buying $300 tickets, and they don’t even know that the local promoter is getting hundreds of free tickets to fill the rest of the venue. I can’t believe that’s not something people don’t put a class-action suit against, because it seems to be robbery. If I sold you a sandwich for $100 so I could give away my last sandwich to a guy on the street, then why did I pay $100 for that sandwich, man? Just give me a $5 sandwich and let’s all eat together."

He says the idea for a house party tour came from the band wanting to rediscover their love for the music as they hit middle-age, and wanting to go back to what captured their hearts in the beginning.

@christianrlocke

The energy was insane at @All-American Rejects house party #theallamericanrejects

"The spirit of where we started was we were four kids that weren’t cool and got to play at a high-school party. And that night [at our first pop up show], we felt cool. Kind of like when kids would pass a tip jar around for us to be able to pay for gas to get there and back. So after that night, we all put our heads together to see what would be possible."

It's not the first time artists have been fed up with the "ticket monopoly."

Pearl Jam famously demand that venues keep charges to under $20 for their 1994 tour. When venues turned them down, Pearl Jam made a complaint with the justice department. In the 2000s, The String Cheese Incident tried lots of creative methods to sell direct-to-fan tickets. But most artists who have rebelled against the monopoly have run into the stark fact that Ticketmaster and Live Nation have unprecedented control over what music venues can and can't do.

But you know what ticketing companies can't control? A backyard, a keg of beer, and a couple dozen rowdy young people. That's the spirit of early punk rock and pop punk. It only makes sense that one of the genre's iconic bands would be leading yet another charge against The Man.

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The wonderful reason nurses have been sharing their love for George Michael.

'Thank you for everything you do — some people appreciate it.'

In the wake of George Michael's untimely passing on Christmas 2016, many people have come forward to show their appreciation and recount his numerous philanthropic acts.

Photo by Danny E. Martindale/Getty Images.

His consistent support of the nursing community, however, deserves a special spotlight.

He even gave nurses, like those for the U.K's National Health Service, tickets to concerts he wasn't even playing.

Retired nurse Sally Lyons' experience at one particular concert speaks volumes about Michael's overwhelming generosity.

He played a free concert exclusively for nurses at the Roundhouse in Camden, North London, on Dec. 20, 2006. She was lucky enough to score one of six tickets that were reserved for the hospice center where she worked.

She and her colleagues had been on their feet all day and weren't exactly thrilled about standing for another few hours. Then George Michael took the stage, and they burst with excitement.

Photo by Paul Kane/Getty Images.

"[He] told us he’d played in front of crowds all over the world but was anxious because he’d never performed in front of so many heroes before," wrote Lyons for Roundhouse.

Michael went on to play what Lyons describes as an "amazing set" that she and her colleagues would never forget. And they weren't the only ones.

"He made all of us feel special. People do say thank you, but for George to say it publicly feels good," nurse Susan Steadman told the BBC.

Photo by Adrian Dennis/Getty Images.

It's likely Michael's initial appreciation for nurses began when his mother, Lesley, was diagnosed with cancer and passed away in 1997 at only 60 years old.

The statement he made when he announced the free concert for NHS nurses in 2006 said it all:

"The nurses that helped my family at that time were incredible people and I realized just how undervalued they are."

Despite how much nurses do for their patients, the profession doesn’t often receive the accolades it deserves. Having a music legend like George Michael always advocate for nurses, however, made a difference.

Photo by Valerie Hache/Getty Images.

Michael gave back wherever he could and usually tried to keep his philanthropy  anonymous. He donated royalties from some of his most famous songs to HIV-related charities like the Terrence Higgins Trust and The Cara Trust's London Lighthouse project on HIV and AIDS hospice. He even tipped a bar server £5,000 ($6,128) to help her pay off her student nurse debt. 

In a way, his passing on Christmas was fitting because his acts of generosity now serve as a timely reminder for all of us to show our appreciation, especially toward unsung heroes like nurses.

He made it quite clear at his thank you concert for NHS nurses 10 years ago: "Society calls what you do a vocation, and that means you don't get paid properly. Thank you for everything you do — some people appreciate it."

"George has had ups and downs but as we were heroes to him, he will always be a hero to all of the nurses at the Roundhouse that night," recounted Lyons.  

Nurses are invaluable for what they do everyday on the job. Hopefully the appreciation Michael showed nurses in his lifetime will continue to shine a light on them for years to come.

Photo by Samuel Kubani/Getty Images.

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Gord Downie is dying. All of Canada came out to say goodbye.

Confronting death with music, determination, and grace, too.

It’s hard to think of a band that embodies Canada more than The Tragically Hip.

They write about our small towns, about our strange little histories, about love and politics and nature and culture and everything in between. There are even two guys named Gordon — anecdotally agreed to be the most Canadian name — in the band.

They’ve played together for 33 years, released 16 albums, won more than a dozen awards and sold out stadiums in Canada year after year after year.

Outside of their home country, most people don’t know they exist.

The Tragically Hip, or as you might know them "Who?" Image via George Pimentel/Canada for Haiti via Getty Images.

There’s a popular theory that at least part of the reason for this is that whenever The Hip played shows in America, expat Canadians would buy up all the tickets. Maybe that’s true. Canadians share a lot of stuff with our southern neighbors — some of it we’re intermittently sorry about — but The Hip is ours.

So when Gord Downie — The Tragically Hip’s lead singer and Canada’s unofficial poet laureate — was diagnosed with terminal brain cancer, Canadians were crushed.

But Downie knew exactly what he wanted to do with the time he had left.

For four weeks, he and his band toured across Canada. They played 15 shows, one every two days, traveling across the country from British Columbia to their hometown of Kingston, Ontario. It’s a place where, as Downie joked during the concert, they played their first three shows ever for audiences of 14, 28, and six people, respectively.

On Aug. 20, 2016, The Hip played their final show live for a stadium audience of 6,700 people — including Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Image via Arthur Mola/Invision/AP.

Thousands filled the Kingston Town Square and other public viewing places across the country. Around laptops and TVs, Canadians gathered together to watch our national band play one last show — decades before we expected they ever would.

To give you a sense of how important this band is to Canada: An estimated 11.7 million people watched the concert on TV or via web live-stream. That's one-third of Canada's population.

So if you only know three people from Canada, one of them was watching The Tragically Hip on Aug. 20 — and the other two probably spent the next few days fielding questions about why they weren't.

Fans in Halifax, Canada, watch The Tragically Hip's final concert in a public square. Image via Darren Calabrese/The Canadian Press via AP.

The Tragically Hip's final show was nearly three hours long. They did three encores, something Downie acknowledged as a first for the band. "We’re in uncharted waters," he quipped, taking the stage for the fourth and final time. They played "Ahead by a Century," one of their most famous songs, one last time. Downie thanked Canada, then left the stage. Maybe forever.

As much as this concert was about the music, it was also about saying goodbye and the grief that comes with it.

In a year where music fans have said goodbye to the once-in-a-generation talents of David Bowie and Prince, it's hard to comprehend the loss of yet another important musician.

Like Gord Downie, David Bowie knew his end was coming. Bowie chose to die in private. His final album, "Blackstar," is a thoughtful goodbye albeit one that arrived only days before he passed. By the time fans started to comprehend its meaning, he was already gone.

Downie is doing the opposite, dying in full view of the millions of fans who love him. We are grieving this loss in real time, together, with all the rawness that comes with it.

How you choose to end your life — should you get that chance — is deeply personal.

Canada cannot keep Gord Downie forever. No matter how hard crowds clap for one more encore, the band cannot always play on.

But we can gather and sing and celebrate music that’s become part of our national story, and we can thank the man who made it and honor the contribution he and his music have made to the soundtrack of our lives.

So on that Saturday night, that’s what we did. Thank you, Gord, for everything.

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