Print

Email story

Comment

Email editor

A creative mind with too much time

By EMILY NIPPS
Published November 6, 2006

Van Halen wanted all brown M&M's removed from the candy dish. Pink Floyd wanted a miniature golf putting green. Aerosmith wanted a whole cooked turkey. It seems that unusual concert rider requests practically have become the norm.

But Iggy Pop's band, Iggy and the Stooges, took the detailed concert rider to a new level of absurdity when it let roadie Jos Grain compose 18 pages of requests, musings on life and whatever else popped in his head. It's a concert rider that may be more entertaining than the concert itself.

Here are some choice excerpts from Grain's rider, which can be viewed in its entirety at www.thesmokinggun.com.

2 large industrial fans to be provided by promoter, one on stage and one in the dressing room for use by the drummer. He's practicing that scarf thing that they used to do in Bon Jovi and Heart videos.

We will require the exclusive use of two dressing rooms for the entire day of our performance. Did I mention the two dressing rooms before? I think I did. They should have the ability to be temperature regulated by the occupants with both heat and air-conditioning and have 120-volt electrical service in each. Which normally means a really iffy-looking wall socket that's already got three things plugged into it, one of which is the entire stage lighting rig. But let's hope this time is different . . .

(The dressing room) should contain:

Some fresh ginger, honey, lemons, and a sharp knife. So we can make ginger, honey, and lemon tea. God knows why. And some Chinese gunpowder tea. So we can attempt to blow up the dressing room. That's a joke by the way. Good job this isn't an airport . . .

Somebody dressed as Bob Hope. Doing fantastic Bob Hope impersonations and telling all those hilarious Bob Hope jokes about golf and Hollywood and Bing Crosby. Oh God, I wish I'd been alive in those days so Bob Hope could have come and entertained me before I went off and got shot. What joy they must have experienced . . .

3 cases x 12 oz bottles of still mineral water. Good quality. Doesn't have to be French, though.

6 large bottles of good quality sparkling mineral water. Again, un-French is good. Unless we are in France, in which case - What a marvellous country.

1 x case of big bottles of good, premium beer. You decide. But remember, I might ask you to taste a bottle, so buy something nice!! Here's a clue - it probably won't start with a letter "B" and end with "udweiser."

6 bottles of alcohol free beer. The saxophonist likes to mix it with his whiskey. And vodka. And other beer, probably. Is that classed as having a bit of a drink problem, having to pretend to be drinking, even when you aren't?

Word for Word is an occasional feature excerpting passages of interest from books, magazines, Web sites and other sources. The text may be edited for space but the original spelling, grammar and punctuation are unchanged.

[Last modified November 6, 2006, 01:34:18]