Foo Fighters fans rush to buy tickets for surprise Dublin gig
The tickets could only be purchased, in person, from a location in the city centre.
There was a frantic scramble to Dublin city centre for Foo Fighters fans on Sunday after the band announced tickets to an intimate gig the following day.
A press release issued at 10am said tickets would go on sale at noon but would only be possible for purchase from a box office on Dame Street in the Irish capital.
Monday-night’s gig will be held at The Academy on Middle Abbey Street, whose main room only has a capacity of 850.
Lifelong fan Colm Scott-Byrne said he was just “so happy” to secure his tickets, adding “I literally can’t even put it into words, I’m just so excited”.
He thinks Monday night will be the “25th or 26th” time seeing the band play live.
His wife saw the announcement on Instagram “one minute” after it was posted and he ordered a taxi from his home in Perrystown “straight away”.
The tickets did not officially go on sale until noon, but the first few hundred people to arrive at the box office located in the 3Olympia Theatre were ushered inside the venue, before access was closed at around 11.15.
Amy Malloy said: “We didn’t know what’s going on ’till about 10 minutes before they started selling the tickets and they told us we were all guaranteed ones.”
At that point, she said, the crowd started to high-five each other.
The 99 euro tickets could only be bought by using a physical card and by those with physical ID on them.
Ms Malloy said she “got in and then I realised I brought the wrong bank card” before her boyfriend’s father was able to come to the rescue and deliver her purse.
A fan of the US rock band since the age of eight, Michael Parker said he “never experienced something like this”.
“I thought this was only in the States, where they announce a gig at the very last second, and charge only pennies for it.”
He said he did not believe the announcement when he first heard it
“I was very much expecting it to be a tribute band,” he said.
“I’ve been telling everybody I was expecting the Food Fighters, not the Foo Fighters.”
But there was deep disappointment for others, including Andrea Felix, who was in tears after arriving shortly after the queue was closed having run to the theatre.
A dedicated fan with the band’s logo tattooed on her neck, she had hoped to secure tickets for her birthday which is on Monday.
She was comforted by others waiting outside the venue.
