Wednesday, May 08, 2013

Venue Cymru introduces pop quiz to gain entry

Strange times at Venue Cymru, as Andy Bellis turns up, hands his tickets in, and... doesn't get to see the band.

Here's what happened to him, from his Facebook status:

We go to a Vaccines gig in Llandudno tonight, queue up for a good half hour and give our tickets at the door. Yes it seems pretty normal that, no? So we're pulled aside to get searched and all that and the security guy asks if I know the lead singer and could I name their 2 albums and some songs. I couldn't think off the top of my head so the cunts kicked us out, took the tickets off us and said we couldn't watch the band because we didn't know enough information about them..
This wasn't some sort of new hipster-test, but apparently the security at Venue Cymru using some sort of precognition to decide that Andy might be wrong 'un. Again, from Andy's timeline:
Venue Cymru was made aware that pickpockets may attempt to operate in the arena during the Vaccines gig. In order to ensure the safety and security of our customers we carried out random checks of those in the queue. As a result 6 people were refused admission and a further two people were ejected from the building. Security were working closely with the police and licensing officers throughout the evening.
Ah, how very astute, Venue Cymru - for why would anyone want to go to see a band unless they knew dozens of facts about them? Unless they'd just heard from friends they were good, or were going with someone else, or were in town and wanted to see a gig and this was the only one on, or hadn't been paying much attention to music recently but got the free Vaccines CD with this week's NME and decided they'd like to see them live before buying the album, the only possible reason would be they were pickpockets.

To be fair, I have wished sometimes that venues would only allow in people who could plausibly claim to have been following the band on stage since their first rehearsal, but that's because I'm bad at sharing.

I never thought I'd see a venue demanding completion of the NME crossword before they'd let you in, though.


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