I saw MADONNA last Thursday, as I may have mentioned. A fearless show that fell somewhere between pop concert, Broadway revue and performance art, consisting mostly of new material, heavy on politics, about a quarter of it dedicated to a re-creation of a fado club in Lisbon, the star upstaged at one point by her 22-year-old daughter (on video) and at another by the Portuguese percussion-and-vocal troupe ORQUESTRA BATUKADEIRAS (in the flesh). And then there was the moment where, after some bargaining, she traded a Polaroid selfie to a fan in the super-expensive seats for $1,000 cash. This is not a BLACK KEYS show. If you go, plan to arrive late, like Madonna does. And as, thankfully, did I, only to be taken aback for a moment when the woman at the door of the BROOKLYN ACADEMY OF MUSIC said the tickets in my APPLE WALLET, delivered four months ago by TICKETMASTER, were no good. We need a bar code, she said. Isn't this a barcode?, I asked, trying not to panic. No, it turns out. Not that square thing. They needed a rectangular thing. Which, phew, could be found in my account in the Ticketmaster app that I didn't remember I had, and which the woman at the door helpfully navigated for me. These are Ticketmaster's SAFETIX, introduced right around the time the Madonna tour went on sale and which weren't yet compatible with the Apple Wallet. Tech takes time. They feature barcodes that continually refresh so resellers can't take screenshots and sell those. These are tickets that give the artist and promoter more control. And these are the tickets that caused panic, mayhem and sadness at a Black Keys show in Los Angeles the same night. The band, launching its first tour in four years at the 1,850-capacity WILTERN, charged $25 for tickets, sold them as SafeTix and made them nontransferable (an option, but not a requirement, for this type of ticket). No scalpers, no STUBHUB, no anyone who wasn't in on that initial run of ducats. Which is fine, admirable even. But neither the Black Keys nor their partners did a very good job of telling everyone who needed to know. Including the band's fans, some of whom, despite the band's terms and conditions, got tickets secondhand via StubHub, SEATGEEK and VIVID SEATS. Whatever you think of those particular companies, they're longtime members of the legitimate ticket-selling chain (occasionally they *are* the legit ticket-selling chain). They're an obvious place for a ticket-seeking fan to go. Fans like BEATRIZ ZARAGOZA, who bought heavily marked up tickets at StubHub for herself and her two children, arrived at the door only to be told the tickets were no good. Several hundred were initially turned away, according to the LOS ANGELES TIMES. There was video. There were tweets. The club, to its credit, eventually let most of them in—the band reportedly played to a 97% full house—but some had already left and the damage was done. Beatriz Zaragoza had no more way than I did of knowing her barcode—presumably a screenshot by one of the countless brokers who use StubHub as a platform—was illegitimate. StubHub may well not have known either. That's on the band and its team (and that anonymous broker). The intent was good. The technology is good. The messaging needs to be better. By all means, slay the bots and beat the brokers. But keep the big platforms on your side—you're going to need them—and think of your fans as customers, too, which means they're right. Almost always. Anticipate what's going to go wrong and fix it before it does... Is TEKASHI 6IX9INE "the biggest rapper ever to say there is no difference between his life and his art"? And is he headed for the federal witness protection program even though "it is unlikely the United States Marshals Service would pay for the removal of [his] signature face tattoos"?... Will the members of BTS get to serve side-by-side in the Korean army?... Have appellate judges in the "STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN" plagiarism case already tipped their robes in LED ZEPPELIN's favor?... Teardrops on the city, BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN is 70 years old. The NEW YORK TIMES' A.O. SCOTT sees him as something like the BARACK OBAMA of rock (give or take 12 years of earthly experience). To singer-songwriter LUCY DACUS, recent coverer of "DANCING IN THE DARK," he was a revelation of a different, unexpected kind of masculinity. He's proof, to singer/songwriter/novelist JOHN WESLEY HARDING, that rock and roll still matters. To the people of my beloved Asbury Park, he's a man of many stories and many ways to tell them. And he's just released "one of the most delightfully shocking albums" of his career, says ROLLING STONE's resident Bruce chronicler, BRIAN HIATT... BERRY GORDY retires... RIP HAROLD MABERN and LARRY WALLIS.