My problem with Aiken Promotions shows

[j3r0me]

OK I have had an itch for a couple of weeks now. No, some years. No, a few decades.
It's to do with big concert promoters, and particularly in Ireland, Aiken Promotions.

I was with 3 friends at the Steely Dan concert recently in 3Arena, promoted by Aiken Promotions.

€140 per ticket with all charges, so you should expect perfection. The modern, sophisticated fan is willing to pay for quality, right?
I could see as well as anyone that the band were fantastic, well-drilled, excellent jazz and rock musicians, and that Donald Fagen was in good form.
However, he was taken aback by the attendance. I suspect that was in part by the sheer size of it for such an intimate-style offering, and in part by the boisterous nature of the audience. This was a big night out for a lot of people, spending an incredible amount of money for the top quality music experience.
The Doobie Brothers opened the show, and their sound failed completely, 3 times. The audience could see and hear plainly that they were energetic and musically intact, and they played the hits. Each time the failures happened, the audience confusion increased, but they responded by cheering all the louder for a band that were plainly delivering their side of the bargain.
Where we were, in Block G, to the right of the stage as you face it and 50 metres approximately from the stage, the sound quality was woeful. Muffled and rough. I spoke to people in the corresponding block to the left, and their experience was the same.
Overall, unless you were standing in front of the Steely Dan show, it was obvious that the show did not rise to the size of the venue.

As far back as 1985, the Springsteen concert at Slane, Aiken's first major one, was beset by crowd size and sound issues, not to mention Bruce's well-documented worries regarding safety.
I saw Tom Waits' small-venue Glitter and Doom show in 2008 at the Cinéma Grand Rex in Paris on a Saturday night with c. 900 other people. It was the joy everyone expected it to be.
The following Wednesday the same show was put on by Aiken Promotions in "The Rat Cellar" in the Phoenix Park, Dublin. That was a misnomer, suggesting the small venue it should have been, but it was a 4,000-seat, poorly-planned and ill-structured marquee setting. We had front-row seats (lucky, right?), too far to the right of the stage, too close to the speakers, in a badly-managed audience situation. we could not see or hear properly, and were overrun by the rush to the stage in the final 6 or so numbers. The ill-mannered and clearly unprepared security people didn't have a clue how to help anyone, so it was "crowd control" as so many awful times in the past, before Aiken started charging top dollar and removing quality in favour of ticket sales.
At the RDS in 2012, sound was once more the issue for the majority of the Springsteen audience.
In Croke Park in 2016, the Springsteen audience was again the victim of sound problems. Coulsn't hear his voice in the stands!

Put simply, Aiken Promotions is the key ingredient in all of these issues, and I will not be attending any show under their name in the future. The disappointing part of that is that I was looking forward to seeing The National at Donnybrook Stadium next June, but I already know it will be too big for them, and that Aiken will squeeze every drop out of the event, sacrificing audience value and quality along the way.

[gavin35]

I could be wrong but I'd say that would be an issue with the 3 Arena rather than the promotions company. I was at Ricky Gervais there a couple of months ago and was up pretty high towards the back and there was a very noticeable echo against the wall on the right, to the point where I had to stick a finger in my right ear so I didnt hear it, very frustrating.