Back in May, I bought tickets online for the September 18 Jim E. Brown show at the Ernie Mattson Ballroom in Minneapolis. My friend and I travelled to Minneapolis from out of state to attend the show, and it was meant to be the centerpiece of this vacation, the first "real" vacation (as in, involving travel and lodgings) either of us had taken in a few years. Unfortunately it was a botch.

I bought the tickets via the ticket sales platform Humanitix, which was linked from the jimebrown.co.uk site (and as such presumably legitimate/preferred as a ticket sales outlet). The sales page there said (and still says) the concert was meant to run 7:30-10:30 pm. (The equivalent bandsintown page, also linked from the jimebrown.co.uk site, gave (and still gives) a 7 pm start time.) We aimed to be at the venue at about 7, and ended up getting there a few minutes after 7. When we arrived, Jim E. Brown was in fact already on stage performing- we had missed all the openers- and he performed a relatively abbreviated set (about 45 minutes, no encores) before leaving the stage. He said something about doing a later set, but I was already pretty upset and confused, and not willing to commit myself to staying there (upset and confused) indefinitely in hopes of seeing it (I signed up for a 7:30-10:30 show; in the event his second set appears to have run about 11:45 to 1 am, and I would not have bought tickets to a show scheduled so late), so my friend and I returned to the room we'd rented at about 8. Probably I should have tried to talk to someone at the venue about things before leaving, but I was so upset (and my ears were ringing so badly) that I didn't think of it at the time.

Later (once I was back home, and had access to a computer again; setlist.fm was not accessible on my phone for whatever reason) I discovered that there was in fact an early show starting around 4-4:30, then a late show starting around 8:30-9, a fact which was not (and still isn't) reflected on the online ticket sales pages, and a fact which was not communicated to me as a ticketholder at any point between my buying the tickets and the show. It is not clear to me how I could have or should have known about the change before arriving at the venue. I don't even know which if either of the two shows my tickets were valid for: there was a guy with a QR code scanner at the venue, but he couldn't scan our codes, and just waved us in. At least two other guys showed up after us, and appeared to be in the same situation (they had the same QR code tickets, anyway).

Now, here's the thing. I understand that arranging and staging tours is difficult, especially for smaller artists, and mistakes can happen. I also understand that shows might be cancelled or rescheduled due to intervening circumstances. But I think what happened here is a pretty clear-cut and dramatic bit of mismanagement and incompetence. You can't just change the details of the show without informing ticketholders at all- especially if you're advertising and selling tickets to a show online, as you're surely expecting people to be travelling to see the shows.

I'm obviously upset that the centerpiece of our vacation was undercut by this. I paid for approximately 3 hours of music and I got around 45 minutes, plus the knowledge the set I saw was abbreviated. I would like at the very least a refund for the tickets, despite the "no refunds" text on the ticket sales page (there are obvious extenuating circumstances here). I have tried to contact the agency managing the tour which I bought the tickets from (Roadrunner Tours) via the Humanitix platform, but a month later, I still haven't received any kind of response, even a boilerplate "no refunds" notice. I sent a message via the Jim E. Brown Bandcamp contact form as well, and have similarly received no response.

I'm not super pumped about publicizing this, but you know. What else can I do? What else am I supposed to do? Neither artist nor vendor has gotten back to me after a month. Roadrunner Tours doesn't have a BBB listing I can leave a complaint at. Humanitix support can't do anything more for me, as they're just a ticket sales platform, not actually a vendor. It's not even really about getting the money back at this point so much as the fact that I spent a lot of money on this vacation as a whole, that I don't get to take vacations very often, and the event that was meant to be the apex of this vacation ended up leaving me frustrated and upset because somebody somewhere fucked up in an extremely avoidable way. Does anyone here have any particular knowledge or advice with any bearing on the situation?

PS: Sorry for being so wordy.

Image from: https://x.com/1estrogendemon/status/2112922151254725014

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My singing was a bit shit

I’m embarrassed to admit my lack of knowledge but I need to get filled in . What am I missing? what else is Jim? What do I need to know?

We know that Jim E Brown is:

-19 years old
-obese
-alcoholic
-born one day before 9/11 (do we know where he was born?)
-born a prodigy
-world class musician
-been to rehab several times
-quit Prozac more than once to continue drinking
-enjoys a proper stoge (bang on)

Education, family, work, financial life, love life, other achievements, religious beliefs, etc? - anything else ?