In some cases you can get your tickets at the venue box office, and avoid service fees, at least for a limited time. The local big outdoor venue here in STL routinely offers no service fee tickets at the box office for the first week of sales. I also like to support local talent at a nearby concert nightclub, they even regularly draw national touring acts (going to see Testament w/ Exodus and Shattered Sun for $22 on Friday), and do not charge service fees if you buy at the venue. They only use something like TM for online sales (they actually use an outfit called TicketWeb). Their box office is usually closed until a few hours before a show, but you can sidle up to the bar any time, and have a beer while they are processing your ticket order. They can only squeeze in about 1,000 people, so you wont see Kansas performing there, but I would not be surprised to see someone with more limited appeal, like Steven Wilson, play there. They have very few actual seats, but I am not the kind of concert goer who typically sits down through a performance anyway.
That's not to say I don't ever go to concerts that are serviced by TicketScammer. I probably catch 2 or 3 shows a year where I have to auction off a body part to get tickets from those assholes, but I see that as a necessary evil every once in a while, and I try to only do so for the big summer festivals where I am going to see enough bands to get my money's worth. Rush is coming through in May, however, and I haven't missed a Rush concert in over a decade. Fortunately I have a perfectly good kidney that should net me enough money to pay TM, once I get through procrastinating on buying the tickets.