Counting Crows Presale Disaster

Adam Duritz & Dave Bryson, Jones Beach, 8/1/08 playing "Anna Begins"
moments before I bash myself in the face with a frying pan

On Wednesday I received an email during the afternoon casually notifying me that the Counting Crows were performing THREE INTIMATE SHOWS IN MONTCLAIR, NJ IN OCTOBER, and that presale tickets would be available to "Legacy" fan club members and to American Express holders beginning this Saturday at 10am. As I have mentioned before, Counting Crows is my favorite band, I have a religious experience every time I see them, I line up starting a minimum of 4 hours before a show in order to be front row, and every single song they have ever made is the greatest music ever produced. As a result when they sent this email, I immediately launched into a 30 alarm panic, because they were supposed to be sending me a secret presale code due to my $45 per year Platinum Captain's Circle Legacy status, but after refreshing my browser about 12093849384 times I still hadn't received the code.

The main problem here is that Counting Crows recently did away with their paying fan club, so now there is no way to log in to the Counting Crows site and see if you're currently a Legacy member. This resulted in basically piles of fans panicking that they would not be receiving the presale code, might not get tickets and would then have to proceed to the nearest cliff and jump off. So I logged into the Counting Crows community chat board under my two different screennames and and started posting frantic messages, such as "Did anybody get the presale code yet?" and "How can I confirm that I'm a legacy member?" and "Is it general standing room or assigned seating at the theatre - their website doesn't say - HELP!!" and when I still hadn't gotten the code by like 8pm, I resorted to calling the merchandise store in the completely reasonable belief that the people who sell scarves that say "Counting Crows" on it could help me resolve this issue.

At this point you may be wondering why I didn't just use my AmEx to get the presale code, and the reason for that is that I don't have one because what's the point of a credit card if you have to pay it off every month. In addition, I am also scared to apply for one for fear I might be rejected, which happened to a good friend of mine when she ONCE applied for a credit increase, got rejected and then became depressed for two days. In any event, after emailing the comment board moderators I did confirm that I was IN FACT an Ambassador Gold Level Legacy member and they emailed me my presale code, which eliminated the heart attack this THIS time around but apparently for all future shows I will have to email them and get the presale codes because god has been trying to destroy me for a while now and has been purposefully blocking key emails from arriving in my account.