As the price of concert date production continues to increase, many Americans are looking northward in their quest for cheaper tour schedules. But how reliable are these Canadian Web sites? Already, there are reports of misinformation caused by erroneous language translations and calendar conversion errors, along with rumors of donut crumb-infested schedules for Umphrey’s McGee and Bruce Springsteen, leading many experts to question, not only the authenticity of these Web sites, but the safety of the tour dates provided as well.

“For over a hundred years, American-manufactured tour dates by U.S. corporations like Ticketmaster and Clear Channel were considered the best in the world,” says noted concert historian, Dr. Hector Peabody of the WayBack Foundation, whose 1998 book, It’s June, Not Joon, blew the lid off of the burgeoning Canadian tour-date industry with its reports of Yukonese children forced to crank out schedules for Adema and Brooks & Dunn while toiling away in concert itinerary sweatshops in Toronto, Montreal and Vancouver. “However, Americans are always looking for a bargain, and the lure of Canadian Web sites offering a 50 percent reduction in prices for schedules for such acts as Judas Priest and Stereophonics, is hard to resist.”

But resist is what the U.S. Food, Drug and Concert Administration is promoting to an itinerary-hungry nation. According to the FDCA, Canadian concert Web sites represent a Canadian agenda bent on worldwide domination, and if Americans continue to rely on these Web sites to deliver concert routings for their favorite artists, such as The Doobie Brothers or Jimmy Buffett, it is the FDCA’s opinion that it won’t be long before Americans are wearing flannel shirts, watching televised curling matches and replacing their children’s traditional after-school snack of cookies and milk with non-filtered cigarettes and mugs of Molson.

However, many consumer advocate groups are quick to denounce the FDCA’s actions as propaganda, claiming that Canadian tour date standards are just as rigid, if not more so, than similar U.S. safeguards. Furthermore, these same advocates point to the similarities in language, customs and alphabet as proof positive that Canadian tour-date Web sites offer the same info for Bryan Adams and Avril Lavigne as do their American counterparts, only cheaper.

Are Canadian Web sites safe? Or will information such as Deep Purple playing in Toronto on June 18 cause confusion and bewilderment for Americans who are totally clueless when it comes to Canadian language idioms such as Beauty, Eh? and Take Off, Hosehead!? Although most Canadian concert Web sites seem safe, reports of various injuries, illnesses and dismemberments may cause many Americans to question whether a lower price for a schedule for Bob Dylan or Keith Urban is really the proverbial pot of back bacon at the end of the rainbow.

Coming up later this week: Would outsourcing service charge calculations to India’s workforce reduce ticket prices for Green Day and the Eagles? And if so, how would that affect parking fees at shows by Elvis Costello, Velvet Revolver and Cher? Stay tuned.