Features
Tours de Farce: The Truth Shall Set You Free
If you’re like most people, you’re probably wondering; “If the Russkies can turn one of J. Edgar’s finest into a treacherous turncoat, what about the people who collect, correlate and disseminate tour data for Coldplay, The Robert Cray Band and Eagles?”
Good question.
It goes without saying that one could hardly trust the schedules for Ian Hunter and Bill Bruford’s Earthworks if there’s even the slightest possibility the itineraries were prepped by someone secretly sucking at Moscow’s teat.
You can bet this raised some concern in the Pollstar.com processing pits. Sure, our employees look happy enough while they update the schedules for Jim White and Phunk Junkeez. The ear-to-ear grins and empty stares as they focus their eyes on the monitors to enter dates for The Nadas would seem to be more than enough proof that they’re 100 percent U.S.A. But we needed hard-core evidence.
This lead to the polygraph tests.
Headed up by Pollstar.com’s chief of I.T., Mr. Ivan, whose half-human/half-Vulcan parentage prohibits him from even thinking about telling a lie, the tests were administered yesterday. Each and every one of us had to hook the electrodes to our heads and stick our feet in the ice water as Mr. Ivan administered the questions and electric shocks that would extract nothing but the truth from all employees.
The results were amazing.
For example: We found that the members of our tour-processing department are actually part of a secret anarchist underground who secretly encode their instructions for world-wide mayhem within the very dates for The Urge and Toadies.
We also discovered that our sales department was actively involved with the movement to turn over parts of North Dakota, Minnesota and Michigan to the Canadian government in exchange for free tickets to Bryan Adams. Equally amazing was the revelation that our box office editor is a direct descendent of Charlie Manson, which would explain his ranting about “piggies” and “helter skelter” every time he listens to Rush Limbaugh.
But, despite these startling discoveries, what’s important to remember is that the polygraph testing failed to prove that even one member of the Pollstar.com staff responsible for the listings of bands like Guided By Voices or Sponge is, in reality, a Russian spy.
Which means we have nothing to worry about.