(I didn't know if to put this topic in the 'gig' section, I guessed here was better?)

Well the title is pretty self-explanatory, have you ever bought a ticket for a show and HAD to miss it? Like, for some serious reason it was simply impossible to go? I bring this up 'cause last week Municipal Waste did a show here and I couldn't go because I was in the hospital. It was just awful to see pictures of the show later popping all over Facebook. I couldn't even sell the ticket, I just kept it or something because I don't feel like throwing it away.

Well, any experiences you guys would like to share?

Yeah, Nasum a few months back. I woke up and felt like I had acute chronic fatigue or something. Just didn't have it in me to get to the venue. I'd paid for the tix, my mate was already at the venue, and I had to pull the plug. Was not a happy chappy.

I lost both my tickets for Boltfest in April. I spent three hours searching for them on the day and just never ever found them. Didn't even find them when I moved out.

Was really pissed off. Bolt thrower, autopsy, benediction and discharge.

The title of this thread is exactly why I never buy tickets in advance.. There's always that one guy in some local band that just HAS to hustle 5 tickets outta everybody they know, I think those guys all know not to bother me with that shit anymore. Sure they're usually $5 off or whatever but it means nothing if your car doesn't wanna work that friday night.

Worse. I won tickets to see Carcass on the Heartwork tour, and ended up not being able to go

I don't think I regret missing any other show more...

Last year had a ticket for absu at the reverb it was their only east coast gig fir that tour. I waited like ten years to see these guys. Anyway, i had a favor to do for a friend that afternoon and aftrrwards he wanted to buy me a few beers, i said cool but i cant get fucked up because i was going to a show later on....bout five hours four bars and about 15 beers later i went home and passed out, the next day i wss pissed off!

Done the opposite, traveled to a gig to only find out that its sold out! Electric Wizard in Nottingham a few years ago. Was a bit gutted.

I chose kendo over metal last year. It was for a band I had already seen, though, so I didn't care much, so I just sold my ticket to a friend.

I go to a ton of shows, mostly local shows these days, and I never buy tickets in advance. I think the last show I bought in advance was for Iron Maiden, but that's an exception. 99% of the shows I got to don't need to be bought in advance. I just plan to go a few days before hand and buy at the door.

Regarding the OP: I'll be missing Municipal Waste on purpose to see Loss/Mitochondrion/Haggatha/Dire Omen shortly.


God damn, what a line up. Shitty.

yep, I'm still pissed off about it now. I sulked for about a week.

I don't remember if I had bought a ticket yet, but I was forced to miss Blind Guardian and Symphony X in 2002. That was basically my dream tour, and I moved right before it came to Dallas. I'm still rather sad about that to this very day, though I've seen both bands multiple times since. That must have been two killer setlists. =[

I was going to see Kvelertak, Skeletonwitch, Tombs, and Psychic Limb and I literally missed the boat. The show was on a boat, and I left my house late and I got to the pier to see the boat they were playing on (Rocks Off Cruise) sailing away. Totally my fault.

Also, I missed the Death to All tour because I was on vacation at the time.

I've missed a few other shows I've had tickets for as well (Nile, I was really sick the night of the show), but those were the most recent ones.

Well, that'd be your fault, man, haha.

I usually never buy tickets in advanced but missed shows that came along. Missed a Revenge gig, proclamation gig, doom gig, nasum,. And I was close to missing Steve Ignorant's Crass The Last Supper tour.

No, never happened to me, somehow. Shows are painfully high on my priority list, I even stayed to the last day of Metalfest Germany last year when I had to do my oral math final the next day... totally blew it, but no regrets. I've got my Abitur.

A friend of mine missed the first day of Party.San Open Air 2012 because of a "last chance" test at the uni. Missed Sodom, Bolt Thrower, Necros Christos, Nifelheim... sucked to be him.

I had to miss out on that as well; after paying rent off for the month I was flat broke. I tried spanging outside but tickets were like $30.

I bought my tickets 10 mins after they went on sale, good thing I did too, wish I would have gone to the second night when Holokaust played though.

Never. Nowadays, I only buy at the door, so if I've gotten that far, I'm obviously not gonna miss it. Sadly, however, I have missed concerts I planned to go to, like every single fucking time Anthrax has come through.

Back in 1985ish I had tickets to see Anvil at, I think, The Electric Banana, in Pittsburgh. A couple days before I went back home (Rochester, NY) and broke my foot in a tragic frisbee accident. Doc said I had to stay off it (the foot) for one day later than the Anvil gig. I was really disappointed because at that place and time Anvil was one of the biggest metal bands (for me) to be able to see.
For those Rochestarians I also remeber going to The House Of Guitars pre-cast-on-foot and seeing Pat Travers at an in-house promotion kinda deal limping like a leper.
I also still remember taking that cast off myself a few weeks later with pliers and wire cutters.
Ah, the good old daze!

I remembered buying a ticket for an Exodus show when I was in high school without realizing it was a 21+ gig. I was a dumb teenager sometimes.

Three times: Once because of illness, and once because some dickfaced little shit had smashed my car windshield and I had no other ride. The third time was the worst: I spent 31 dollars for Monsters of Rock at Candlestick Park in San Francisco,1998. The gates opened at 2, I got up there at 3 but spent the next 3 hours in my car stuck in the parking lot circling the stadium, because all the lots were full. By the time I exited the parking lots, I had already missed 3 of the 5 bands, including Metallica, who I had wanted to see more than the other 4 by far. There wasn't one spot in the entire stadium lot, nor was there any parking in that entire section of the city because the stadium lots werent designed to accomodate that many people. The stadium seats like 75,000, but they sold over 100,000 tickets, thinking that the extra people would stand on the field. Bottom line was, I had to turn around and come home, because there was no parking.

You mean 1988? I remembered this post of yours: viewtopic.php?f=1&t=90307&p=2072082&hilit=Candlestick+Park#p2072082

Didn't buy the tickets (won them in a Facebook contest), but I had to sit out the recent Katatonia show at the Palladium because I had to work that night. I (sort of) compensated by blasting Last Fair Deal Gone Down all night while on deliveries, as I work at a pizza restaurant.

that's exactly what happened to me with primus, the guy in the shop sold us the tickets and said we'd get in, we turned up and got denied at the door, bummer [it was my first concert too and we had to beg my parents for a lift there from way out in the country] we sat outside for an hour or so listening, we even saw the guy from the shop who sold us the tickets! fucker
i still have the ticket receipt but not the ticket, my mate and i flogged them off outside.

^^yeah, that was the '88 event. (Sorry, I meant 1988, not '98.) STILL pissed off about that. I've been leery of big stadium shows ever since, although I have been to some good arena/stadium shows in the intervening years. Shoreline is usually a decent venue, for instance- if they had held Monsters of Rock there I doubt I would have had this problem. I think a good lesson a lot of people learned is to get tickets at the door if possible, but with an event that is likely to sell out, you can't always get away with that.

I missed Danzig Legacy because my socks were wet.

Very nearly. When Cathedral played that "Forest of Equilibrium" anniversary show, the UK was hit by the worst winter weather for years, virtually the whole transport network was down. I, however, was not going to miss the only opportunity to see my alltime favourite metal album performed live by the lineup that recorded it. Captain Scott would have been impressed by my epic battling with the elements.

A friend of mine had tickets to see Nirvana in 94. Need I say more?

Just a few weeks ago I missed Obituary, though not because I "had" to (per se). It was in San Francisco, and I had seen Swallow the Sun, Accept, and Kreator the previous evening. That would not have been a problem if Accept hadn't have played. Hands down the loudest band I've ever seen. Realizing my inner ears were about to burst, on my way outside to the closest gas station I stopped by the merch stand, which conveniently sold earplugs, and I made the necessary purchase. But the fifteen or so minutes I sustained of Accept's set did enough damage. The next day my ears were still muffled and still fuzzy, so I decided to skip Obituary. I figured fifteen years down the line I'd rather say I have my hearing than say I'd seen Obituary live. Plus, I think I only lost $15 or so dollars on the ticket.

Around March of 2011 I had a ticket for the Godspeed You Black Emperor "reunion" tour's stop at Terminal 5 (I believe) in NYC. I was having severe money problems at the time and was barely scraping by working as a temp from when I bought the ticket (circa October 2010) through and beyond the date of the show.

At that time, the ticket's 40 or so dollars (after all ludicrous and egregious "service" fees) price tag was financially crippling, but I buckled down for it because this was "can't miss" in my mind.

As the date of the show drew near, I realized with dread that I would not be able to attend because I could simply not afford to go. For one, for me to get from northwestern NJ to NYC requires considerable expense-extra gas, tolls, parking, public transit, etc.-which I simply did not have in my budget.

And, because the show was on like a Tuesday or Wednesday night, I would've had to have taken off from work the next day (a show ending at 11-11:30pm in NYC puts me home in and around 1-1:30am, and I get up for work at 4:30am), which I simply could not afford to do (as a temp, I was entitled to no paid time off; I would've had to eat a full day's pay).

So I was miserable about this because I hated that job with an immense passion, but needed it to get by and keep myself afloat. I wanted see GYBE for a long fucking time, and by all accounts online afterwards, the show was fantastic. I tried to hold onto hope until the 11th hour, and ultimately made the decision to not to the show the night before. In doing so, it severely limited my opportunities to resell the ticket (which I was unfortunately unable to do).

Thankfully, I'm out of the temping situation and am now making a decent salary with PTO, which affords me more opportunities to see shows.

Saxon / Iced Earth in 2009 because of school.

Back in the early 2000s I had bought a ticket to go see Ozzfest that year with a few friends, but the day of the show I was really sick so I stayed home. I don't regret it too much because the lineup wasn't all that good that year anyway. I even got back most of the money I spent on the ticket because my friend sold it to someone in the parking lot.

I bought a ticket to Behemoth way in advance and it turned out everyone else was going to a Municipal Waste/Toxic Holocaust/Mutant gig on that night so I went to that instead. It was good, but I'd seen MW before and this time there weren't even any inflatables for crowd surfing.

Manowar did a sell-out show in Birmingham last year, and it was their first UK tour in however many years, and the tickets were stupidly expensive. Well anyway, I had my ticket and the plan was for me to drive to Wolverhampton and get the train from there to Birmingham, as there were no trains going from my town to B'Ham on a Sunday. So I drove to Wolvo, no problems, but when I got into the city centre, there were roadworks and diversions everywhere - I had no satnav, no road-map, just written directions to the station. By the time I found the station I assumed the support acts would be on, so I just had to accept that I'd miss them - not the end of the world.

Naturally, the multistory car parks in the station were so full that there was a massive queue of traffic for people just waiting to get in them (I doubt these people were trying to get to the same gig), and it was something like one car every five minutes was LEAVING the car park. It was a joke. I sat for at least 3/4 of an hour before I got anywhere near the car park entrance, and by that time it was probably past 8PM. If I did get to the venue I would've been lucky to have even caught the last song the way things were, so I gave up and turned round.

Obviously I should have planned in advance; read up on traffic reports, left hours earlier etc., or found a different car park but I didn't think like that and I didn't know my way around Wolvo. I was pissed off for about a week, and I still haven't seen Manowar.

Yes, but I just can't remember why I couldn't go, or even who it was. I am pretty sure it was in the late 1990s or early 2000s. I do remember feeling bad about it, and the ticket being on my refrigerator for a while. I eventually threw it away because it made me feel sad I didn't go. I guess very bad memories get blocked (it really doesn't happen to me often).

I had bought a ticket for a Nasum gig three months in advance but my friend suddenly changed his mind about going there and I didn't feel like going there
alone. Aaand the trip would have pretty much taken all my money.

I missed the Mare + One Tail, One Head gig last year when they played at a local venue (de baroeg). Unfortunately I had to prepare for an important exam the next day. I passed though

That's painful. If there's one thing about gigs that makes me antsy, it's that nasty little circumstance where you're not yet at the venue and you know that things are going to start at literally any second.

I can totally agree to this. Remember being semi-pissed off because I missed the opening band (local band that I had never heard of, but still) that was opening for Iron Maiden about a year and a half ago. Even though the seats were assigned (it was a coliseum-style event). It's kind of like an OCD thing, I have to get at a venue at least 1 or 2 hours before the show starts...

Had a ticket for Opeth in Portland and it just so happened I had a choice to leave my Wife's side in the hospital who was threatening to go into pre-term labor or go to Opeth. The Doctor said I should probably sell my ticket. I listened and called up a buddy of mine and offered him the ticket (free, of course) and he came to the hospital and picked it up. My Wife gave birth to our baby girl, Madison, within the next hour and a half of my decision to stay. It's almost a year to the day today (Oct 16th of last year). As a bonus, a good friend of mine who I was supposed go with brought me an Opeth shirt from the show (free, of course). It's good to know I can stay married (though in truth I wouldn't have missed it for the world) and also: what comes around goes around. So yeah, this was a show I HAD to miss.

That is about how my Monsters of Rock misadventures went. Beyond frustrating, and the thing is even if I HAD managed to park and get inside, I would have already missed most of the show anyway, in my case I might have caught half of Van Hagar's set, so what would have been the point? One thing I've learned from all this is in logistical situations like this, to plan ahead or scout the trip before hand, especially if it's at a bigger venue. Maybe there was some other attraction at Woverhamption that night- a soccer match, or something like that (Didnt they have a premier-league team for a while?) that tied up all the parking.