So says their wiki. I honestly don’t know anything about these guys — I can hardly spell their name (Trans-Siberian, Trans Siberian, trans Siberean…) but they are apparently popular enough to schedule an upcoming gid a Glendale Arena (now Jobing.com Arena)anf that place hold 17,000+ people. And two shows at that! I guess they must not suck.

Here are the price ranges I’ve seen for tickets at a few top ticket vendors:

We Have Seats does indeed have lots of seats ranging from $95-199
StubHub has fewer seats to this one. Their prices range from $85-130
TicketsNow inventory ranges from $125-225

More on the orchestra:

Trans-Siberian Orchestra was founded in 1996 in New York City by composers Paul O’Neill and Robert Kinkel, and Savatage lead singer Jon Oliva.

O’Neill had managed and produced rock bands including Aerosmith, Humble Pie and Scorpions, later writing for and producing Savatage, where he began working with Kinkel and Oliva. The concept for a band playing Christmas carols in a rock opera style was not received warmly by the industry, but quickly proved a success with adults as well as young people.

In the recording studio, Trans-Siberian Orchestra uses a full 60-piece orchestra and a choir. As of 2004, their touring band included 14 vocalists, 14 musicians, and 2 narrators.

Trans-Siberian Orchestra released their debut album Christmas Eve and Other Stories in 1996, and it remains their best-selling album. Their 1998 release The Christmas Attic was similarly a concept album with a Christmas theme. In 2000, they released their first (and to date only) non-Christmas album, Beethoven’s Last Night, a concept album about Ludwig van Beethoven’s last night on earth, during which he meets Fate, her son Twist, and Mephistopheles.

After several years of touring, they returned to the studio with another full-length album, Lost Christmas Eve, and the accompanying DVD/3-CD release The Christmas Trilogy, which contained all three of their Christmas albums to date.

The band is, as of early 2005, working on a new non-Christmas album, Night Castle. It is projected to be released sometime in 2007 and is expected to feature the band’s rendition of Carmina Burana, performed as a preview by the band during their 2004 and 2005 tours.

Their 2005 tour was number 21 on the list of the most successful concert tours of the year, earning just over US$21 million.[1]. The schedule for their 2006 winter tour has been released on their website.

Here is some info from the U.S. Dancing with the Stars wiki:

Dancing with the Stars is a reality show airing on ABC in the United States. The show is based on the British BBC TV series Strictly Come Dancing and is part of the international Dancing with the Stars franchise.

The concept of the show is to pair a celebrity with a professional dancer in an attempt to win a high score from a panel of three judges and then a high number of votes from the viewers, who can call in and vote online. The person who receives the lowest score is eliminated, but they are allowed to dance one last dance at the end of the show.

The current co-hosts are Tom Bergeron and Samantha Harris. In season 1, Bergeron’s co-host was Lisa Canning. The panel of judges is Len Goodman (head judge), Carrie Ann Inaba, and Bruno Tonioli. Harold Wheeler is the musical director. The announcements for the show’s titles and dance introductions were recorded in the United Kingdom by Alan Dedicoat.

….

Season three (premiered September 12, 2006) expanded from ten couples to eleven. Celebrity participants for season three of the USA edition of Dancing with the Stars are:

* Tucker Carlson, political pundit/MSNBC news anchor – partner Elena Grinenko (eliminated first)
* Monique Coleman, actress – partner Louis van Amstel
* Sara Evans, singer – partner Tony Dovolani (withdrew during sixth week)
* Willa Ford, singer – partner Maksim Chmerkovskiy (eliminated fifth)
* Vivica A. Fox, actress – partner Nick Kosovich (eliminated fourth)
* Harry Hamlin, actor – partner Ashly DelGrosso (eliminated third)
* Joey Lawrence, actor – partner Edyta Sliwinska
* Mario Lopez, actor/TV host – partner Karina Smirnoff
* Shanna Moakler, beauty queen/reality television star – partner Jesse DeSoto (eliminated second)
* Emmitt Smith, NFL running back – partner Cheryl Burke
* Jerry Springer, talk show host/former politician – partner Kym Johnson (former champion of Australian version of Dancing with the Stars) (eliminated sixth)

* As part of Slim Fast Dance Challenge: Tysonia Sichinga and Christian Perry

Panic! at the Disco is an alternative rock band from Las Vegas, Nevada.

The band has created a fusion sound that combines elements of pop punk, emo, electronica, dance, and indie rock.

Their 2005 debut album A Fever You Can’t Sweat Out charted the Billboard 200 reaching #13, and has sold over one million copies since its September 2005 release.

Anyway, Panic! is coming to Phoenix on December 7 at Glendale Arena (Jobing.com Arena) and here are the best places to get tickets to premiere seats:

Stubhub has seats ranging from $60-167 and they’ll let you sell your extra tickets too.
We Have Seats has seats ranging from $54-150.
TicketsNow might be worth checking too…

And of course Bloc Party will be opening this show. [Update: Bloc Party had to back out of the tour due to the drummer getting sick or something.] Some of you may be more interested in seeing this up and coming band anyway. Here is some info on Bloc Party:

Bloc Party is an English post-punk revival band. The band has been around in various guises since 2002, with names such as Superheroes of BMX, The Angel Range, Diet, and Union, before settling on Bloc Party in September 2003. The name is a play on block party, a name for an informal neighborhood festival, which might hire a local band as entertainment. The band has said that the name was not intended to be an allusion to the Soviet Bloc or the Canadian political party Bloc Québécois; the absence of a ‘k’ is purely for aesthetics.

However, the band’s bassist, Gordon Moakes, said on the group’s official internet forum that it was more a merging of the eastern “blocs” and the western “parties”, in the political sense. Moakes notes that the name was not driven by politics, but rather it “looked, sounded, seemed fine so we [the band] went with it.”

Band members Kele Okereke and Russell Lissack have formed the fulcrum of these various incarnations, and were subsequently joined by bassist Gordon Moakes, and most recently drummer Matt Tong. Lissack and singer/guitarist Kele Okereke met in 1998 in Essex, where Lissack had grown up and Okereke attended school. Lissack attended Bancroft’s School and Okereke attended Trinity for sixth form. They bumped into each other again in 1999 at the Reading Festival and soon after formed the band Union.

The band is currently managed by Coalition, and represented by Simon White, formerly of Britpop band Menswe@r.

It may seem Bloc Party’s own variation of spiky guitar rock draws on influences such as The Cure, Sonic Youth, Pixies, Joy Division, Gang of Four and XTC, but they say that some of these bands are just comparisons. Russell had never heard of Gang Of Four before they came out with Silent Alarm.

Anyway, Glendale Arena (alright, Jobing.com Arena) is home to all sorts of sporting events here in Phoenix and also hosts a few large concerts and other events from time to time. It is big enough to not sell out all the time (it seats more than 17,000 people) but if you are ever looking for tickets to a popular event then here are the best places to look for aftermarket tickets:

We Have Seats usually has the best prices
TicketsNow has a good selection too
StubHub will let you buy or sell tickets and often gets some seats the other guys don’t have

Here is some info about Jobing.com Arena from its wiki:

Location - 9400 West Maryland Avenue, Glendale, Arizona 85305
Broke ground - 2002
Opened – 2003
Owner - City of Glendale
Operator - City of Glendale
Construction cost - $180 million

Tenants
Phoenix Coyotes (NHL) (2003-present)
Arizona Sting (NLL) (2003-present)

Seats
17,653

Jobing.com Arena (formerly Glendale Arena) is an arena located in Glendale, Arizona, a suburb of Phoenix, Arizona. It is home to the Phoenix Coyotes of the NHL and the Arizona Sting of the NLL. Completed in 2003, the arena cost $180 million. It seats 17,500 for hockey and lacrosse. Glendale Arena sits across the street from University of Phoenix Stadium.

The Coyotes moved into the arena in late 2003. The team had spent its first several seasons since relocating from Winnipeg in 1996 in the America West Arena (now the US Airways Center) in downtown Phoenix. The AWA was not an old arena (it had made its debut as the new home of the NBA’s Phoenix Suns only three years earlier, in 1993) but it was primarily designed for NBA basketball. It was quickly retrofitted for hockey. However, unlike most modern arenas, the arena floor was not designed with a hockey rink in mind, and several seats had badly obstructed views. As a result, before the team’s second season in Phoenix, it had to be cut down from over 18,000 seats to just over 16,000–the second-smallest capacity in the NHL at the time, until the Colorado Avalanche moved into the Pepsi Center in 1999; after that point, America West Arena was the smallest NHL venue. Even then, it was obvious that America West Arena was a terrible place to watch a hockey game. A small section of seats on one end of the arena actually hung over the boards, obstructing the views from 3,000 seats. Some fans actually reported seeing locations where the original concrete was sheared off to create retractable seating for hockey. In addition, an unfavorable lease put the Coyotes on shaky financial ground.

…

The arena is part of the larger Westgate development, which is going to be an entertainment and retail hub located around the arena; a 320-room Renaissance Hotel and Conference Center is planned for Westgate.

On Wednesday, October 25, 2006, local online company Jobing.com signed a 10-year, $30 million naming rights deal.