Entertainment For Lively Minds
The best rock concert rider ever...
Posted by davidgrahammd on 25 November 2009 - 7:59pm.
thesmokinggun.com has an entire section devoted to showing concert riders and the sometimes ridiculous demands made. They now have the entire document for Iggy Pop and the Stooges and it is one of the more entertaining reads I have had in a while (present magazine excluded, of course). It is 18 pages but is worth looking through all of them.
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only 2 pages in
but already enjoying
Thankee!
The complete index of riders is at
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/backstagetour/index.html
I see the Stones provide their own full-sized snooker table, that must save the promoter a headache.
I think it was
Marc Almond who once asked for a goldfish bowl full of smarties with the red ones taken out.
But there is a good reason why some of these bizarre requests exist on riders, they are there purely as a checking system. If the TM walks into the dressing room and sees the venue / promoter have gone to the trouble of fulfilling the silly requests (like the smarties above) they don't bother checking the rest of the rider because, well if you've gone to that trouble, the rest of the rider will in all probability be ok
reasoning is true...
but it was Van Halen and Brown M&Ms, according to snopes...
http://www.snopes.com/music/artists/vanhalen.asp
and the actual contract rider is reproduced at
http://www.thesmokinggun.com/backstagetour/1982vanhalen/1982vanhalen1.ht...
Along with the brown M&Ms, the document also stipulated that promoters provide the group with "herring in sour cream," and "One (1) large tube KY Jelly."
All forks MUST have four prongs as well.
Its Nothing Original
When I said it was Marc Almond I was 98% sure it was because the gig was one I worked on, I'm also sure there were other bands with equally silly requests for exactly the same reason
Once, several years ago,
Once, several years ago, when working in a bookshop, I had a harrassed-looking man come in who'd been sent out to buy various items on a rider for a band who were playing in town that night. They were presumably successful enough to make a few demands, but not successful enough that I'd ever heard of them, or for them to make too many extravagant demands. They had asked for one popular paperback book, though.
Which made me wonder - if there were four or five people in the band, who got the book? If you were playing up and down the country, you could amass a nice little library on your tour bus.
Thats 'kin brilliant
Chuckling out loud in work ............