Features
Tours de Farce: Weekend Soldiers, Mainstage Warriors
They’re the National Guard, Concert Division.
Meet Roger, a major Midwestern promoter. During the week he’s haggling over performance fees for Bon Jovi and Paul Weller, but come the weekend you’ll find him teaching a class of raw recruits how to assemble the trigger mechanisms for nuclear missiles. Why does he do it? “It’s my way of giving something back to this great land,” says Roger. “Besides, who knows more about bombs than a promoter?”
Who indeed? For over 100 years this country has relied on concert industry professionals, drawing on their show biz experiences from handling Stone Temple Pilots and Tom Tom Club, not only to defend this nation, but to pass their unique skills on to the next generation of fighting men and women.
On any given Saturday, you may see road managers for Wheatus and UFO teaching recruits how to storm an amphitheatre and secure the box office receipts. In the fields, tour bus drivers for Placebo, Deftones and Creed are demonstrating tactical tank warfare while back at the barracks, booking agents for acts like Pantera and Orgy are instructing recruits on the 83 different ways one can silently stab an adversary from behind with a bayonet.
They’re the unsung heroes of the new millennium. They spend the week bringing you fine entertainment like Bad Religion and Tristeza, but when the weekend comes they’re lean, mean concert machines, fresh from the mainstage battlefields of Motorhead and Fenix TX. Our best defense from anarchy and subterfuge.
America’s Concert Division. When freedom calls, they have your ticket.