My favourite band, Faith No More, are coming back to Australia! And I got a ticket to the Brisbane show. But my god, what a shitshow it was to buy a ticket. Announced officially on Monday, the SOAD website said to register to receive the code word for presale. Did that, no code word received. Thankfully, it was posted everywhere online, as expected.
Tuesday, the day the tickets go on sale, I get called into work early. Ticket sales start the moment I’d normally walk out the door, so I leave even earlier so I can pull over to buy them right on 11. 10:59am, I pull over, log onto Ticketek and it says join the Waiting Room. I read it as Waiting List, and refreshed the page in a panic. Again, Waiting Room. Click it. There are 8000 people ahead of me in the queue. So I continue on my way to work, tapping my screen every moment it goes dark.
Get to a car park near work, 1000 people to go. Finally get to the front at 11:20am, choose my seat (GA had already been sold out) and go to pay. Do I want insurance? No. Page error. Refresh. Do I want insurance. NO!! Page error. Refresh. You get the idea.
Open Firefox, which had also been running in the background, get to the front of the queue. You have tickets in your cart, proceed to payment. Do I want insurance? No. Ok, complete payment details. ERROR! Your post code is incorrect, needs to be less than 12 digits. WTF?! It’s 4 digits. Try again. ERROR! Your post code is incorrect, needs to be less than 12 digits. Try again, sorry, time out. You need to select seats again.
At this time, I’m starting to get late for work, so I go to the office, defeated.
Log onto Ticketek on the work computer, find a seat that wasn’t the best, click no, enter payment details, submit…. nothing. PAY!! Nothing… Refresh, complete again. Nothing. AARRGGHHHH!!! Fine, I’ll wait for the PayPal presale the next day.
Later that night… I try again, in the Ticketek app, do I want insurance? No. Page error. Refresh. Do I want insurance? No. Page error. Refresh. Back in Safari, I try private mode, all extensions disabled, select a seat thats up bush. Do I want insurance? No. Page error. Refresh. Do I want insurance. Fine! Yes. Ok, that’s $63. NO!
No glitch. Make payment……. SUCCESS!!
Finally, after 10 hours of stress, I get my ticket to Faith No More and System of a Down. The whole Ticketek system is bullshit. I tried a computer, a phone, 3 browsers and the Ticketek app, and had I clicked Yes before clicking No I’d have been able to get great seats right in front, but now I’ll be looking at ants (and maybe a bunch of 50 year olds with sore backs moshing). I guess the only bonus is I may be undercover should there be rain (and you know there will be), and also I’ll be able to get to the exit quicker once it’s all over.
While this was an absolute joke, I can now look to the future and get to experience FNM again. I missed them at Soundwave in 2015 as I was sure they’d tour again for the Sol Invictus album – they didn’t – and in 2020, before COVID shut them down, we’d have been in Japan had the world been normal.
What would my ideal setlist be? I’m hearing they’re only going to play for an hour, so in that hour (or maybe 75 mins, if they’re generous) I’d love to hear:
- Everything’s Ruined
- Ricochet
- Helpless
- The Crab Song
- The Perfect Crime/Sweet Emotion.
- A Small Victory
- The Big Kahuna
- Jizzlobber
- The Last To Know
- Crack Hitler
- The Cowboy Song
- She Loves Me Not
- As The Worm Turns
- Mark Bowen
- Pristina
I know this is an absolute dream set list and almost all of it won’t be played, but I can only wish.