I.B. on Azoff/Forum

FABULOUSNESS: MSG Azoff Entertainment’s Fabulous Forum is getting rave reviews as a dedicated concert venue (meaning no interruptions for basketball or hockey), while also enabling the acts that perform there to walk away with more money than they’d pull in from playing AEG’s more expensive Staples Center. So notes our own I.B. Bad, whose latest column can be found here. Little wonder U2 has booked the arena for multiple nights, assuming the industry rumors are true. Nonetheless, some younger artists prefer the glitz of Staples over the cash of the Forum. But those acts who’ve headlined the Forum since its January reopening, including Justin Timberlake, are said to love playing there, while artists who have attended shows say they’d love to play there themselves. The crowds have been similarly enthusiastic, the only oft-heard complaint having to do with traffic congestion getting in and out of the parking lots. It appears, then, that MSG Azoff’s ambition to make the Forum the place to play in L.A. is off to a good start—not that the two arenas can’t both do healthy business. While Brooklyn’s Barclays Center is packing them in, it hasn’t cannibalized Madison Square Garden’s business, as some had feared. (2/28p)