Keef on ticket prices, MP3s

DON’T START HIM UP: Since the start of the Rolling Stones’ 50 & Counting tour, Keith Richards has been weighing in on a variety of subjects, not the least of them the widely criticized high ticket prices the band and AEG Live are charging. "From my point of view, it's like this: We say we want to put a Stones tour together and people come to us with proposals," Richards explained in Rolling Stone. "And these proposals are all basically the same. We actually did push down the prices a little bit. We took the lower offer, in other words. But, um, it's the price of the market. I don't really know. I don't have much to do with it other than I would like people to get in, to be able to afford to get in, without sort of starving their babies and all. And that's about it." He also criticized the sound quality of MP3s, which he says is leaving conumers "short-changed." "I don't have an iPod, " he told the bible. "I still use CDs or records actually. Sometimes cassettes. It has much better sound; a much better sound than digital… My old lady's got one. My kids have got them. I say, 'Look me up this.' Or, 'Oh I like that. Check me that... I know what these things can do. I'm not totally anti-them." (5/17a)