Grateful Dead

congratulations on your mom's health.nuthin else to say...the rest of your post is true and sad.

After a crashed computer and missing some important weeks of info about these shows, my Mom had heart surgery and I had to fly back east from Los Angeles and I missed another week of info (Mom pulled through and all appear OK!), only to get back home and see yet another Deadhead unfriendly presale taking place (you need to have an Amex card). So we go from football season ticket holders scalping our tickets to Amex card holders getting them. WTF!!! If all seats are available to the presale, they will not need to have the public onsale (were all seats available, anyone know?). Not being an Amex card holder, I took a look at TM for the Los Angeles Forum New Year's shows, the 31st was already practically sold out on 8/26, and then checked the Bill Graham in San Francisco and saw that both shows could not locate even a single ticket, apparently sold out before the public onsale. Even better, it seems that your local box office will not have tickets available until the day after the public onsale, so much for helping locals get a chance at tickets by standing in line. Really!!! To sum up what I see (after a very stressful month)... It looks like you must purchase tickets online, no going to your local box office (which would eliminate those TM fees and help locals get local venue tickets), you must have an American Express card to make that ticket purchase, and most Deadheads should probably just start checking out the secondary markets, since the 8/28 onsale will probably be like the Fare Thee Well fiascos, we will likely be shutout by secondary market scalpers once again. I don't like to sound negative, but when a local can't go stand in line at the local venue box office (maybe the presale should be about going to the box office and making sure locals get a shot at local venue tickets first, not last like this ticket sale is doing) and you need a specific credit card to have a chance at tickets, someone is letting someone else screw most of us Deadheads over, AGAIN! See you all at Stubhub, where TM is probably releasing most of the tickets anyway. Tom Carr Los Angeles, CA

my son and GF got AmEx DC presale at 10:01 Congrats on Albany