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Tours de Farce: Don’t’ Bogart That Roach, My Friend
It all started the night I was brushing my teeth while looking at the Widespread Panic itinerary on Pollstar.com. That was when the cockroach crawled across the screen.
I was just about to squish it with my toothbrush when I noticed it was walking along the “W” in Widespread. You can imagine my amazement as I watched the little fellow spell out the name of the band – W I D S P R D.
That’s when I knew my life had changed. I also knew that I would to have to work on his spelling.
I needed more cockroaches. The next day I put down a trail of sugar and cancelled Diana Ross & The Supremes tour dates from the back door to my computer. By nightfall about 5,000 of the crunchy little critters appeared. They were crawling all over my computer as I logged onto Pollstar.com and called up the schedules for Jim Brickman, Slipknot and Fear. They looked at the monitor and proceeded to spell out each artist’s name on the floor. But they missed the “k” in Slipknot. The next day I hired a tutor.
By the end of the week I had them spelling The Pilfers, Dennis DeYoung and Misfits. It was when they tried to tackle Tim Conway / Harvey Korman “Together Again”, that I realized that I needed more cockroaches.
“That’s when I bought 5,000 more on eBay.
Thus the biggest, baddest synchronized cockroach team in the world was born. From AC/DC to Zuckerbaby, they covered them all. On the next day we signed with an agent from the Insect Creative Management talent agency.
He put us on the corporate circuit. All summer long we spelled out Britney Spears, Jimmy Page / The Black Crowes and
Yeah, those were the good times. But a little success wasn’t enough. I pushed our agent for more gigs. Xerox, NBC, and CBS, they all shelled out big bucks to see my cockroaches spell band names like ‘N Sync and The Moody Blues. That’s when I should have quit. I should have retired the act while we were at the top. But greed is a demanding master. If I knew then what I know now, I would never have done it, and to this day I regret the decision I made not so long ago.
The decision to play that Raid convention.