We don’t blame you. Hardly a day goes by when we’re not checking out a concert industry Web site like NakedBookingAgents.com while sipping our morning Starbucks, and our monitors explode with multiple windows promising us cheap mortgages, blind dates and all the Viagra we can eat. Heck, it’s enough to make us choke on our triple lattes.

But what to do? Of course, many of you probably don’t need a degree from a non-accredited university, or have a desire to correspond with young Fresno women looking for husbands. That’s why there’s Pollstar Premium, a pop-up-less expanse of Internet where you can browse the latest dates for Robert Bradley’s Blackwater Surprise and Jurassic 5 while you sip your Starbucks decaf.

But what about the poor, financially-strapped Pollstar.com user that can’t come up with the ten bucks to be pop-up free?

We don’t mind telling you that we’ve put a lot of thought into the subject. We’ve had endless meetings over steaming hot cups of Starbucks’ house blend, and we’ve had many late-night bull sessions over cups of Starbucks’ best Mocha Valencias in our continuing effort to maximize the date, city, state, venue experience. In fact, it was during a mid-morning flash meeting down at our corner Starbucks when we thought we had a solution to the entire pop-up fiasco.

Barter.

Simply put, we felt, that if we bartered for various services in exchange for mentions on this Web site, we could minimize the daily cash expenses that we incur while presenting new dates for bands like 28 Days and artists like Bernie Leadon and Rick Derringer. In fact, our boss was so taken by the idea that he sprung for an extra round of Starbucks’ Expresso con Pannas. You know, just to get the creative juices flowing.

But alas, Lexus wasn’t interested in trading a few of their finest automobiles in exchange for a plug in this space, nor did Chris-Craft want to send us a few of their top-of-the-line speedboats. And Rolex? Heck, they didn’t even return our phone calls, even though we sent their CEO a brand new $25 Starbucks gift certificate.

But we’ll keep looking. We’ll keep searching for a forward-looking, out-of-the-box-thinking corporation willing to trade a few of their products so that we can continue to bring you the latest on Reverend Horton Heat, the new routings for Agent Orange and Lucky Dube, and the final word on The Hives. BMW, Guinness, Gulfstream – they all refused to accept our offers of exchanging products for free plugs on Pollstar.com, but sales is a numbers game and we’ll keep on keeping on. We’ll sip our Starbucks’ vanilla lattes, our cappuccinos and our Expresso Macchiatos while we call one company after another in our shameless efforts to barter products for free, slightly subliminal referrals. Surely, one of the companies on this list will be interested.

Hmmm… It looks as if we’re going to need another flash meeting to coordinate our plans. Lessee… Whose turn is it to drive to Starbucks today?