Features
Tours de Farce: A Few Of Our Favorite Things
That’s because, when one thinks of Pollstar.com, one naturally thinks of tour dates first, and expects the typical Pollstar.com worker to spend every waking moment, 24/7, dealing with itineraries for The North Mississippi Allstars and Hem, and not apply a single minute, nor a spare second, to any endeavor that might improve life as we know it, like helping senior citizens when it comes to understanding TiVo, or listing all the different ways Congress might restructure Social Security so that the system won’t collapse when the first crop of Moody Blues fans hit 65 years of age.
Yes, most people think that we think about nothing but thinking about touring schedules, like the ones for Judas Priest and Lisa Loeb, and most observers are completely oblivious to the fact that we have other responsibilities as well, such as advising our users on how to pay down service charge debt, how many times one must change the oil on a ’74 Pinto, or how many times one must wipe in order to be considered “socially acceptable” in the brave new world that is the 21st century, otherwise known as the third millennium, or, as some cultures prefer, the Twenty Hundreds.
In fact, we have a multitude of responsibilities in addition to our concert schedule duties; innumerable jobs and tasks aside from updating routings for Drive-By Truckers and Richard Thompson or processing new schedules for Rene Marie, Magic Slim & The Teardrops and Felix Cavaliere’s Rascals, such as compiling statistical studies in relation to the percentage of the population that might not be aware of the new Motley Crue dates, or how many different ways certain political factions might amend the U.S. Constitution so that we may one day be a land united under a President Arnold as the mighty actor leads us into a future filled with prosperity, security, and perfect muscular pectorals.
Sure, we love tour dates, but a new schedule for James McMurtry or an update for Aaron Lewis of Staind isn’t the only thing we live for as we spend day in and day out advising new mothers on proper diapering methods, counseling chocolate junkies on ways to kick the Hershey addiction, or, for that matter, encouraging pro baseball players to pass on artificial muscle-enhancing drugs so that they may once again dedicate their lives to the pure joy of participating in America’s greatest pastime and never, ever, leave fans awash in their own doubts whenever a long fly ball is “Going! Going! Gone!,” because, even though we love tour dates, there are other things, other endeavors, that we are equally enamored of.
For instance, second only to managing tour dates, we really, really love writing long rambling incoherent sentences.