Blog TO reports that you can get yourself some Taylor Swift tickets for next year in Toronto for just $20,000 a pop at a re-sellers site. WT(actual)F? To be clear this rant isn’t about Taylor Swift in particular. There are no musicians I can think of I would pay 1/20th of that amount to see. The way we experience music has become so desperately, desperately, horribly, irrevocably broken.

I recall back in my high school days when, along with a bunch of other kids, I camped out at Yonge & Bloor to get tickets for a Bob Dylan show. We were irate because the best tickets we could get were 3/4 back on the floors. In the fullness of time, it seems we did OK. Tickets were at least affordable for a kid without a lot of budget. Today, an entire distribution system has evolved that supports scalping ahem….. I mean “surge pricing”.

At that time we used to have a venue in Toronto’s Ontario Place called the Forum. There was a revolving stage and you could sit in the seats or on the hill, where you could spread out a blanket and enjoy a picnic while you watched the show. There was a modest admission to Ontario Place but no special charges for watching the show. Imagine that – it was great!

I remember heading over to Ontario Place very early one day in a effort to get great seats to see Pete Seeger perform with Arlo Guthrie and Shenandoah. I had no idea what a treat I was in for. Pete and Arlo did a long soundcheck that was like an alternative concert. Where in the show they did Mr. Tambourine Man, for instance, in the “soundcheck” they did Eight Miles High. Arlo talked about how he used to like to take his 12-string into stairwells with plenty of echo and pretend he was the Byrds. While Arlo was singing one song, Pete walked way up to the hill to make sure everyone up there could hear well. I’ll never forget that.

As with so many aspects of our society, the business of music increasingly funnels wealth to a small group of people, and it is become increasing difficult for people who are not the designated “hitmakers” to scrape out a living making music. Some performers have figured out ways to pivet, using YouTube, live streaming, Patreon, and teaching to get by. I have a ton of respect for musicians who continue to plug away outside of the “star-maker machinery behind the popular song”, to quote Joni Mitchell.

I think this situation is one of reasons I found traditional music an attractive alternative along the way. I’ve enjoyed some of the best performances I’ve ever heard, sitting in a circle under an “Easy-up” portable shelter playing tunes we own together. That is, after all, what folk music is all about isn’t it? We own the tunes together. They change along the way. Lyrics get added. Regional approaches can develop. Some tunes have several names. A few people manage to record some music. Others post material on YouTube so more people can learn the tunes. Occasionally someone accidentally becomes popular.

Here’s the late great U. Utah Phillips, the Golden Voice of the Great Southwest, on making a living, not a killing.