It’s simple….we are a medium sized market with average at best venues. KC has a brand new arena….Chicago is….Chicago.

This is truly confusing. From smaller scale hard rock and metal tours (Gigantour, Dethklok) on up to the big arena and stadium tours(Madonna, Tina Turner) St. louis is often passed over in favor of Chicago, Minneapolis, KANSAS CITY(?), etc. We are still a top 20 market right? Why does a city this large get overlooked so often? Do they only look at the city population and ignore the drastically larger metro area? Is it a problem of a lack of available venues? True, Mississippi nights is gone and American Theater no longer hosts rock shows but this area has three 10,000+ seat arenas!!! Not much of an excuse for the arena tours. Or maybe Tina is just trying to avoid Ike(He’s no longer with us! Come do a show!)

Maybe KC is cheaper on union labor.

Living in Kansas City, I can tell you that the town has had quite a few great shows recently, and it’s all because of the new Sprint Center. Give it a few years, everything will be back to normal before long. Does St. Louis have a venue that is handled by AEG Entertainment? The Sprint Center goes through AEG, and that has been a source of several great shows here.

Well at least we can say that we get the Dave Matthews Band at Busch Stadium this year. WHICH WILL BE AWESOME!!!!!The band is skipping Kansas City this time around!!!

Hmmmm, maybe because we only have one venue, The Pageant, that is even worth seeing a show at besides Riverport/Washington/Verizon…whatever center. St. Louis needs a lot of help people. Your city politicians have done nothing in the last twenty years to do anything to help promote any sort of economic growth in town. Something needs to change and it should start with the freaking earnings tax downtown!!!!! “We’d love to have your business in St. Louis, but we won’t give you any tax breaks and in addition, we’ll go ahead and slap on an extra bogus tax on top of you just because we don’t have any better economic sense to try to find a different solution to a desperation tax from 1947….”

I have also noticed that this frequently happens. The fact of the matter is that we do not have a good venue of a large size. The Scott Trade, The Dome, The Pavillion, and The Pagent are not good venues to host a show. The best venue in town is The Fox and it does not hold a Modonna size crowd.

Bret is right. This is a medium (at best) sized market. That alone hurts us. The large number of festivals we host are still a good source of shows. However some of those festivals are dying (County Fair, Strassen Fest, Fair Saint Louis) because of the increased cost of everything. Talent for these shows is not cheap.

That still doesn’t explain why smaller acts do not schedule here. The union labor cost can’t possibly be the only reason. I think we should ask ourselves if we are an apprecitative crowd. Or perhaps our attendance numbers down causing promoters to pass us for more profitable cities?

Lets hope that things improve. I’d like to see an increase in talent.

Its simple….St. Louis has horrible venues and terrible taste in music. When Sammy Haggar is the town’s favorite performer, you know you have problems. Dave Mathews is terrible. The indie crowd (the ones with good musical taste) has been hurting for years. Sometimes the Bluebird and Pageant get decent shows, but for the most part we have to travel. St. Louis also has no medium sized venue that is not powered by Clear Channel, which hurts. We all need the Roberts Orpheum theatre to get their act together and book decent shows and now worry so much about making tons of money. The citizens of this city are tired of crap and being a joke to other cities. KC is on its way up…sadly Stl has been moving down for 40 years.

Have any one been to a St. Louis show lately. The place may be full, but yet the crowd never seems to get into it. At HoosierPort, you see people sitting in the seat during the main act. Anyone outside of St. Louis thinks that we are a city of big hoosiers, and most of the time we live up to that expectation. Plus who cares where you went to highschool? At age 33, I still am asked repeatedly “where did you go to highschool?” Does it really matter. Walk into a St. Louis bar and try to talk to someone, the look at you like your from outer space or something. I can walk into a Chi Town bar and strike up a conversation with just about anyone, and the respond with somethine other than “where did you go to highschool”

Stl has horrible music taste!!!!

example…jimmy buffet sold out in 20 minutes and radiohead tickets are stil availble. Un freaking believable.