Time for the annual Concert Industry Awards in Los Angeles, that yearly event when we pack all 9,871 Pollstar.com employees onto a bus bound for LaLa Land, where, upon arriving, we will wine, dine and kiss the behinds of the industry’s heavy hitters so that they will continue to send us fresh tour dates like John Prine playing in Boston on April 23.

Of course, the logistics of such an event are bound to cause more than a few problems. After all, when you send people who spend each day processing schedules for Simple Plan, Fall Out Boy and Gavin DeGraw to Southern California with a $500 per diem, things are bound to get a little out of hand.

The first sign of trouble usually happens when our Director of Type Faces whips out her flask filled with home-distilled Fresno raisin whisky and passes it around. You know, just to “break the ice.” However, all that ice-breaking usually leads to more than a few workers complaining about the sudden rise in body temperatures, which, in turn, results in loose clothing, loose talk and even looser morals. And if that wasn’t a recipe for disaster, there’s always that sweet burning smell that seems to follow our box office editor wherever he goes. Of course, he says it’s perfectly okay, mainly because he has a note from his doctor, and, after all, this is California.

However, this year our bosses say it’s going to be different. Our employers have laid down the law and have ordered us to act like “civilized tour-date gatherers.” Translated, that means no drinking, no groping, no lusting and no looting. They’ve told us to keep the clothes on, the bottles capped, the guns holstered and the hormones on hold. Then they reminded us that we’re going to Los Angeles for a purpose – to gather as many tour dates as possible for bands like British Sea Power and artists like Andrew Bird and Tinsley Ellis. Not for some kind of massive game of strip Twister. In other words, NO FUNNY BUSINESS. At least, not on this trip.

And if we can’t keep things under control, they told us that we should at least wait until the bus arrives at its destination. Man, oh, man, it’s gonna be a long ride to L.A.