Grammys 2011: If local promoters FYF Fest and Team Arcade Fire ran the Grammys
This article was originally on a blog post platform and may be missing photos, graphics or links. See About archive blog posts.
Everyone loves a good mystery. The members of Arcade Fire have long been practitioners of secrecy, and this week was no different. News has gradually trickled out via numerous Twitter accounts -- the band, the band’s manager and promoter FYF Fest -- that the band would be playing an intimate venue Friday night.
As champions of the independents, the Arcade Fire promised to ‘avoid people sleeping outside’ by staggering the info, performing at an all-ages venue and keeping tickets cheap. All fine and dandy, except ticket locations were revealed last night via some far from cryptic images that ensured, essentially, that people would have to sleep outside to have a shot at getting in to this exclusive concert. Here’s hoping the band’s younger fans were able to ditch school to hang all night and buy tickets at noon.
To be sure, measures to keep scalpers away were inspired. Those buying tickets would have to give the name of their guest at the point of purchase, and then names would be checked at the door (in a super fast moving line, no doubt).
Yet whether it worked remains to be seen. Throughout the night, silent auctions have been popping up via Craigslist, as those in line at Fingerprints, the El Rey or Origami have been asking fans to e-mail their best offer to get their names on the list for their second ticket. Thankfully, the Craigslist community has been adamant in flagging the posts.
Yet was unleashing the ticket info early Thursday night via Twitter the most fan-friendly approach? Or should the band have done something a bit more open, ‘given back’ in a manner similar to Vampire Weekend who performed in a Boyle Heights park? Or maybe, perhaps, everyone should follow FYF Fest’s lead and turn all promotion into something of a scavenger hunt?
To wit, Pop & Hiss presents how Sunday’s Grammy Awards, airing on CBS at 8 p.m., would have looked if FYF Fest handled the promos:
WANT TO KNOW WHO’S PERFORMING AT THE GRAMMY AWARDS? LOOK NO FURTHER!! CLUES HERE:
1.
2.
3.
BUT WHAT TIME? HERE’S SOME INFO TO HELP YOU FIGURE IT OUT:
1.
2.
3. AND FINALLY! HERE’S A SUPER HUGE CLUE!!!!! SUPER DUPER HUGE!!!
-- Todd Martens
Images, from top: Screenshot from the Arcade Fire’s Twitter account announcing the location of a ticket venue, in this case the El Rey, which translates to ‘The King’ in Spanish; A shot of the beginnings of suburban Lakewood (File photo/Unknown photographer); Infamous Grammy crasher Michael Portnoy (Associated Press); London’s Big Ben (Reuters); ‘Back to the Future’ (Universal Pictures); Walt Disney Studios’ 1931 cartoon ‘The Clock Store.’
