I bought tickets for 30 Seconds to Mars because I knew Jack would absolutely die of awesome if he got to be in the same room as Jared Leto. And also because I really like them. But it was sort of between Blue October and 30 Seconds. Normally, I think I would have gone to Blue, but for Jack…

Anyway, I started off really annoyed. I always buy a t-shirt when I go to shows, but 30 StM was charging $35. I only had $20. I’m not that into MuteMath, but I noticed they were charging the same.

Neon Trees hit the stage. I’d never heard them before, but they were awesome! I decided pretty quickly that I needed to go hit their merch table. The had no prices listed, so I asked the pretty merch girl that mans every artist’s table while they’re on stage. She told me, a little sadly, “Thirty-five dollars.”

I didn’t mean to, but I think I said, “Holy shit.”

She nodded at me and apologized. “We don’t normally charge that much, but we have to match Thirty Seconds to Mars’s prices.”

I was pretty floored at that. It seems so fucking ridiculous. It’s like 30 StM know they’re charging too much money, so they force the other bands to do the same to keep people from just buying the cheaper shirt. On top of that, once the lesser-known band is charging so much, the odds of anyone buying a shirt goes way down. Fuck that noise.

I had the rest of Neon Trees and MuteMath’s set to get good and riled up about the whole thing. I mean, I’m fucking buying a t-shirt that advertises for you. I’M PAYING MONEY TO ADVERTISE FOR YOU! This is after I bought all three of your CD’s and dropped $75 for tickets to show (gave up my food money for two weeks). You’re not only going to rape on your stupid prices but you’re going to take your support bands down with you? That’s pompous and asinine.

But then they hit the stage and they were honestly really good. Jared knows how to play the crowd and he seems truly nice. He came out into the crowd and played right in the middle of everyone. He talked to people. He remembered names of people he’d met around town earlier. He took pictures. It was an incredible show.

But every time a roadie came out to hand Jared a guitar that he easily could have picked up himself, I thought about the damn t-shirts.