Just Go See New Found Glory
Just Go See New Found Glory
Imagine paying $500+ for a show. Couldn't be me!
You might have heard that Blink-182 is getting back together.
Yes, the most iconic trio in pop-punk history is back after Tom DeLonge ended his second years-long hiatus from the band. They announced the reunion, upcoming album and world tour in a way that only they could:
This is good news. These three have been through some shit. Mark had cancer. Travis survived a grisly plane crash. Tom chased a dream of being an alien/UFO researched and has been widely mocked for it despite being seemingly pretty legit at it?
It makes me happy knowing they’re back in the same room together, making dick jokes and writing music. Blink’s reunion has, however, been upstaged by the mess the tour’s ticket prices have been.
Thanks to something called a “dynamic pricing algorithm,” general admission tickets to see Blink on tour next year have been clocked as high as $900. Ticketmaster and its ilk claim that dynamic pricing is designed to deter scalpers, but it honestly strikes me as them pre-scalping their own tickets, but what do I know.
It’s been so bad that Mark Hoppus couldn’t even get tickets to his own show. Want to skip the tour and catch Blink at next year’s When We Were Young festival? Too bad, those tickets sold out in two hours and are being resold for north of $400.
I don’t have the energy to figure out exactly who’s to blame for these prices. It seems it’s a mix of Ticketmaster/Live Nation, algorithms, a lack of anti-monopoly regulations and even the band itself. I just know it sucks, and the only way to win is to not play.
Which is why I encourage you to just go see New Found Glory.
NFG did not rise to the mainstream heights Blink did, but I assure you they have done nothing but kick ass since 1997. If you turn on My Friends Over You in a room full of millennials, they’ll all be belting out “YOUUUUU WERE EVERYTHING I WANTED” by the second chorus.
They have yet to put out a bad album, something pretty much no other 20+ year old pop-punk band can say, and they simply cannot stop touring.
Anecdotally, I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve seen NFG. They seem to roll through Richmond at least once every two years, and they almost alway bringing killer openers like Jetty Bones, Hot Mulligan and Free Throw along.
In a quest to figure out just how often NFG tours, I found ConcertArchives.org, which while not completely exhaustive going back decades, looks to be a pretty good database of which bands have played where in the modern era.
Per ConcertArchives, NFG has played more hundreds more shows than any of their peers. They’ve taken the stage more than Good Charlotte, Green Day, Sum 41, Fall Out Boy and yes, Blink. I couldn’t find any pop-punk band from the late-90s that’s clocked more shows than NFG.
NFG’s output is unrivaled in the genre, and it’s also worth noting how incomprehensibly well Jordan Pundik’s vocals have held up over time. Dude sings in a register higher than most and he still sounds incredible live.
Perhaps the best part of the NFG experience is that they play primarily at mid-size theaters, ballrooms, music halls and other dens of sin that better lend themselves to the energy of a pop-punk show.
I adore Blink and would love to see them live on their upcoming tour, but I won’t log onto Ticketmaster and sip from that poisoned chalice. No, I will wait and I will spend $40 to see NFG when they inevitably come back around.
Because New Found Glory is the Little Caesars Hot-N-Ready pizza of pop-punk. They are available. They are affordable. They are damn good, especially when you check your pretense at the door. They are reliably great, and we are lucky to have them.