Sticks Nix Dixie Chicks
Well, not really the sticks, just places in the heartland. It seems the Chicks' tour is not at all selling well in a lot of places with some arena venues reporting 5,000 to 6,000 seats sold. Which is very poor indeed.
"I think before it's said and done the entire tour will be, at the very least, reorganized," Ray Waddell, senior editor of touring for Billboard magazine, said Friday.
Shows in cities including St. Louis, Houston, Indianapolis, Oklahoma City and Memphis, Tenn., are up in the air, according to Waddell.
The group said on its Web site that reports of cancellations are false.
I have a theory about why the record sales are fairly high, but still lower than their last effort by about 30% or so. I suspect that a lot of non-fans bought the record because they wanted to support the darlings of the left. (This is pure speculation on my part, by the way, but there is some anecdotal evidence that this may be the case). But that theory would explain the poor ticket sales. People might be willing to shell out the cost of a CD to show their support, but a concert ticket is a big investment. Not many non-fans would be willing to spend that much. Ticket sales are not just slow, they are disastrous compared to the last tour.
Not all markets are soft. Sales were reportedly brisk in Chicago, Philadelphia and Minneapolis. In Toronto, a first and second show sold out.
But the overall picture is far different from the Chicks' last tour in 2003, in which almost 900,000 tickets moved in the first weekend and second shows were added in several markets. The group ended up with the top-grossing country tour that year at $62 million.
While ticket sales have been off, album sales remain strong. The Chicks' new album "Taking the Long Way" sold 526,000 units its first week and 271,000 the second — enough to keep it at No. 1 on the country and overall album charts for two straight weeks.
Notice also the sharp drop in record sales. The music business is a funny one. Losing core fans is usually a really bad thing for any act. It remains to be seen if the Dixie Chicks can pick up enough of a following to replace the fans they appear to have lost.
By Black Jack, Saturday, 10 June , 2006 @ 2:22 pm
The Ditsy Twits took a pretty good hit when they initially trashed GWB, but apparently the tone deaf trio didn’t learn a thing from the experience. Their disgraceful repeat performance on Larry King Live last week just might have indelibly marked them as outcasts among country music fans.
I haven’t seen such a strong negative reaction since Jerry Lee Lewis married his 13 year old cousin over 40 years ago. He was one of the pioneers of rock and roll, but the marriage cost him his career, and the Twits might have to pay a similar price now. Stupid is as stupid does.