We wanted to start off the week with new listings for Bjorn Again and Simple Minds, but we can’t show them to you. In fact, we can’t even look at the dates ourselves. You see, we had all the schedules, including Williams & Ree, Styx and Lisa Loeb, proofed and ready for viewing, but we ran into a little problem. Sure, we could blame it on technical problems or our Webmaster going back into rehab, but that would be lying. So we thought we’d come clean and tell you the truth.

It’s the ducks.

They head this way every fall, for the Pollstar.com campus is smack dab in the middle of their migratory route. They come all the way from British Columbia to winter in Southern California and catch those San Diego shows like Tori Amos and Neil Diamond. What? You’d like to see those dates? No can do. The ducks got them too.

Everyone knows that ducks love concert dates, and you can imagine what happened when they took a gander at our itinerary holding tanks filled with the latest dates for Kings X, Dave Navarro and Charlatans UK. They swooped down upon us and scarfed all the schedules, including Christopher Cross and Blueground Undergrass. And here it is Monday and we have nothing new to give you. Guess we’ll have to wing it.

Now we have all these fat ducks waddling around, their little tummies filled with dates for band like Supertramp and Slipknot. Of course, not wanting to feel down in the mouth, we called a veterinarian. A guy who claimed that he was an expert on ducks. Unfortunately, he turned out to be a quack.

So here we sit, trying to make the ducks regurgitate our tour dates. We’ve tried everything, including force feeding them Chris Gaines greatest hits and making them sit through repeated showings of Glitter, but no results. It looks like we really laid an egg this time.

And to top it off, the ducks ate all of our Neil Sedaka dates. We had a slew of shows for the man behind such great songs as “Calendar Girl” “Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen” and “Oh! Carol,” but the ducks swallowed every single playdate. And it’s no fun sticking our fingers down their throats in a vain attempt to make them upduck. No, sir.

Damn ducks. We may never see those Sedaka dates again. Sigh… Guess when it comes to ducks and Sedaka, that old saying is really true. That quacking up is hard to do.