The Pretenders, Cat Power & Juliette Lewis announce MN Zoo show
Facts is facts: the show sounds amazing. The lineup for this year’s Music in the Zoo series at the MN Zoo’s Weesner Amphitheater doesn’t stray too far from the norm in terms of the range of performers compared to years gone by, but yesterday’s announcement that a show featuring the Pretenders, Cat Power and Juliette Lewis (no longer performing as Juliette and the Licks) shakes things up for a few different reasons. The first being that the show has, without a doubt, the strongest lineup of any at the Zoo this year (including PJ Harvey & John Parish’s non-Music in the Zoo performance). The second is that the price tag is somewhat questionable: $68 (plus fees if you feel like going the Ticketmaster route).
Forget recession-friendly pricing: even when taking into consideration the fact that shows at the zoo are typically more expensive than the same show would be at a traditional venue, $68 is still fairly outrageous. Chances are the bands won’t be performing sets as long as they typically would as straight-headliners, so why charge the same as if they were playing two hour long sets? The Pretenders’ last show at First Avenue was priced at $35, and Cat Power’s was somewhere in the mid-$20s (correct me if I’m wrong)… toss in an hour-long set from Lewis and I suppose the $68 would make sense (though the show would likely be over five hours long in doing so). Forgive me for saying this but despite how amazing the show sounds and how pleasant the aesthetics of the outdoor amphitheater are, it still seems like there’s a bit of gouging going on. The Pretenders, Cat Power and Juliette Lewis will be performing at the Weesner Amphitheater on August 19, tickets go on sale June 13.
The Pretenders: Official | MySpace | Wikipedia
Cat Power: Official | MySpace | Wikipedia
Cat Power “Metal Heart” (mp3)
Juliette Lewis: Official | MySpace | Wikipedia
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Word on the street is that the Zoo date is dead in the water, though there might be a change of venue in the works… Gimme Noise reports, “The Pretenders concert, which is also slated to feature openers Cat Power and Juliette Lewis, is being moved to another venue after frontwoman Chrissie Hynde wrote a critical letter to zoo officials. Hynde was upset over the way the zoo handles its Family Farm exhibit.”
Update #2 from MPR: “The Pretenders will now play Aug. 19 at the Orpheum Theatre in Minneapolis.”
No idea if those $68 ticket prices stand though.
Update #3 from the Star Tribune: If there is any positive fallout from the Pretenders moving from the Minnesota Zoo to the Orpheum on Aug. 19, it’s the ticket prices. At the zoo, all tickets were going to be $68, a record for that venue. Now they will be scaled from $31.50 to $61.50.
I was just listening to this new song by Juliette Lewis at http://www.billboard.com/features/song-debut-juliette-lewis-s-romeo-1003999335.story#/features/song-debut-juliette-lewis-s-romeo-1003999335.story. You have to go check out her single “Romeo” before the album drops on September 1st!