Mmmmmmm

[pat]

I was poking around Snopes, which is a fun thing to do in your spare time, when I ran across the "Van Halen required a bowl of M&Ms with all the brown ones removed" rumor. Turns out, it was true... sort of.

Apparently, the provision was placed in the contracts as a canary in a coal mine: it was stuck in the middle of nowhere, and the purpose was to check and see that the people staging the things had actually read the technical specs for the show. If they got back and there were no brown M&Ms, it indicated that the people had actually read and complied with the contract.

(And yes, David Lee Roth did throw a hissy fit at the University of Colorado and trashed the backstage area, but the real damage to the arena was caused when the staging sunk through the new basketball floor because the promoters hadn't bothered to check about the weight requirements.)

Comments

[patgreene.livejournal.com]

They seem to make fun of NIN's requirment for china and silver food service, but I don't find it at all outrageous. If that proviso was in the contract for a Broadway actor, I bet they wouldn't sneer at it. There's no reason rockers shouldn't have refined taste.

[calebbullen.livejournal.com]

Johnny Cash required the same thing, I didn't see them making fun of it. In fact, I don't remember seeing any editorial content at all. They just put the stuff up there and let the reader take what they want from it.

Some of the stuff seems perfectly reasonable and some of it doesn't. What's reasonable to one person might seem absurd to another. Doesn't seem like a big deal to me.

But I especially like Bob Dylans rider.

[calebbullen.livejournal.com]

Oh there is some editorial content, my bad.

But you missed what they were making fun of. It wasn't the china it was the word BOWELS where BOWLS might've been more appropriate.