Features
Tours de Farce: You Are What You Eat
We just posted dates for Van Morrison and Bob Dylan, and while our Web site is updating, I thought I would spend the time cleaning out the Pollstar.com staff refrigerator.
It’s not easy collecting tour dates for bands like Eve 6 and Outkast. We’re a rough bunch. We work hard and we eat hard, and sometimes we don’t have time to clean up the mess we leave behind.
So every Saturday we rotate kitchen crew duty and today I’m the one stuck with scraping the mold and fungus from the fridge. I can see by the way you’re pinching your nose that you’ve noticed the smell. You’ll get used to it after a while. Heck, you’re probably better off holding your breath and looking at the schedule for Bryan Adams while I spray this special Napalm derivative on that pulsating purple lump of flesh on the lower shelf. There, that’s better. You can exhale now.
Of course, one of the reasons this fridge stinks so bad is because we keep raw tour data in it. That’s one thing people don’t expect when they get a job in the concert date industry. Raw tour data, like the core material that will eventually become the schedules for A Flock Of Seagulls and Everlast, can be very toxic stuff. In fact, we never touch it without first donning our heavy-duty rubber gloves. We learned our lesson after our sales manager once brushed his hand against the dates for Marilyn Manson. That’s his ring finger stuck on the inner wall of the freezer, right next to the icemaker.
Well, that should just about do it. Right after I finish this job, I’ll update the schedules for 12 Rods, Brian Howe and… Oh, look, it’s the boss’ lunch. We’re not supposed to touch anyone else’s food, but I don’t think he’ll find out. We’ll just take a little peak and see what the Pollstar.com execs are eating these days.
Hmmm. Have you ever heard of a snack food named Soylent Green?