It takes a certain kind of person to collect tour dates for that Limp Bizkit / Cypress Hill co-headline. You need more than just brawn and brain. You need a certain kind of diet.

That’s why all of us at Pollstar.com start each and every day with a generous helping from the concert industry’s two major food groups. That’s right, salt and chocolate.

In fact, we have a basic rule that’s probably the reason that we’ve been able to go the last 10 years without having a single employee absent because of sickness or injury. For every two dates one enters, whether it be for Cracker, Tracy Chapman or Earth, Wind & Fire, the person is required to lick the communal salt block that’s kept in every department, washed down by one cup of liquid chocolate.

We tried other diets, including raw vegetables, fruit and even vitamin supplements, but there’s nothing like the rush one feels after downing four or five ounces of salt and a quart of chocolate while entering dates for Thin Lizzy and Melissa Manchester.

As you may have guessed, we’ve learned to live with the side effects, things like greasy hair, expanded waistlines, blood pressure higher than an excited hummingbird and pimples the size of Mt. Kilamanjaro. Plus there’s that tendency to sweat anytime the temperature rises above 50 degrees Fahrenheit. But that comes with the territory, for through our diligent efforts we’re giving the world new dates for acts like Dixie Dregs and Gloria Gaynor. We’re tour date men and women and we’re proud of it.

Yes, chocolate, salt and dates for Matthew Ryan and Ingrid Lucia & The Flying Neutrinos. We’re the few, the proud.

We’re Pollstar.com