Scalpers, or scalper style sites (there are several out there, not remembering the names right now, except for "StubHub") are in it to make a buck.... as much as I hate it, unless the venues/artists institute some common sense ticket selling rules, the situation will never get better.
Heck, even at $42 and $52 face, by the time you add the Ticketmaster charges, taxes, and other stupid fees, the prices are near $62 and $72 anyway. Add in a small profit for the scalper and the prices hit the levels you have posted.
Personally, I'm like several of the other folks above. I'll take a heckuva lot less money and spend it to buy some concert DVDs, several CDs or other such things I can use to enjoy the music/performances without paying the big money.
I've paid what seemed like big money along the way to see Springsteen (at least twice, once during the Born in the USA stadium tour which did truly rock!, and back when he got the E Street band back together with him as a sort of reunion tour in 1999). For Springsteen 1999 I paid about $100 for my ticket, and went with my boss from my employer at the time. She paid for her own ticket also. Not great seats, but not that bad either. MCI center in D.C. If you've been there (noting that you're from Maryland area, so you may have been there), you know that the upper deck seats are up there pretty good. Even front row seats up at that level are fairly high up.
I also paid top dollar (at the time) for tickets for U2, the Rolling Stones (actually I was much more interested in their opening act, Counting Crows who were just getting to be big at the time), Pink Floyd (went with a bunch of guys I worked with, great show, for the money it was probably worth it).
There's a batch of other shows I've seen, but really most of them never quite seemed to be "worth it". The tickets were relatively expensive each time, or at least most times. The best deals I ever got were from HFStival tickets just before they started doing them at the stadiums all the time. Back then they had at least a dozen different bands put on the show at the P.G. Equestrian center. The tickets were almost dirt cheap. Worth paying at least twice as much for one of the bands, much less seeing 12 or more bands in a day for the price.
My musical tastes have changed over time though (very much so really), and lately I've been more into "Today's Country" music and there I've had a few bargains come up for me. Sara Evans at the Maryland State Fair last year. Great show, free once you paid for the admission to the fair. I'd have paid a helluva lot for a concert by her, so I was thrilled to get to see her for free.
I've seen some shows done at Six Flags America near D.C. Trace Adkins was there and did a nice set for free, once you paid admission to the park. If you paid for a season pass in the discount period, you'd have full use of the park any time you wanted during the season, and getting to see the concert for free once there was cool.
Back in 1999 I was able to take my daughter to see Brittany Spears when she was still primarily bubble gum poppy, rather than slutty trashy. Again, she was doing a Six Flags show. As it turned out, she did the show at Six Flags over Texas (Dallas) when I was there doing a lot of Y2K roll-out work for a client of a former employer. We got tickets for that show dirt cheap (if you got the tickets in advance you were guaranteed to get into the show and didn't have to fight to get tickets once admitted into the park).
Anyway, as I've grown older, I've mellowed much about concerts. Sporting events seem to be a much better deal to me, so I've been wasting my money there, rather than on concerts. I've also gotten to be pretty cheap about buying CDs and music in general. I pay for satellite radio (mostly to get sports programming on it), and listen to a lot of music that way. If there's something by an artist I really like, then I might buy it, but most of the time I pass knowing that I'll be bored to death with the music soon enough anyway (since all radio stations over-play the crap outta stuff).
JoeUser Forums
Seriously though, you can set Ticketmaster to email you updates of certain bands so that you will know when their tickets are on sale.