One (1) monitor man who speaks good English and is not afraid of death
August 29, 2013 7:34 PM   Subscribe

Iggy & The Stooges tour rider begins with "First of all, can I say what a pleasure it will be to work with you all. Probably." And keeps going.
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard (28 comments total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
I love The Stooges, but this is -

A) embarrassing - "Big Chief Fucks-With-Drums"? Really?

B) as a technical document, a pain in the ass. Van Halen put in one stupid detail to make sure you were paying attention, but this guy tests your patience and distracts you from the critical details for 28 pages.

They should ask Watt to do a rewrite - he'd be decent, concise, and professional.
posted by ryanshepard at 8:00 PM on August 29, 2013 [5 favorites]


Rollins does a spoken word bit (worth listening to) about how in awe he is of Iggy Pop's energy and just raw power on stage. This rider actually seems fairly decent. 15 pages of stage stuff, some camera information after that (watch out for your camera is the gist) and then the normal food stuff. They don't even specify what brand of beer they want. Worth it to get to page 25. Iggy was also great on Marc Maron's WTF.
posted by jessamyn at 8:13 PM on August 29, 2013 [9 favorites]


Double.
posted by Sys Rq at 8:27 PM on August 29, 2013


Not afraid of death? By what, boredom?
posted by telstar at 8:30 PM on August 29, 2013 [2 favorites]


This is one of my favorite documents in the english language.
posted by The Whelk at 8:48 PM on August 29, 2013 [1 favorite]


I would like to know where on the web I can follow the literary diarrhea of this bass-playing Internet Pepys or Boswell.
posted by Devils Rancher at 8:54 PM on August 29, 2013 [1 favorite]


Not quite a double, as it's the updated-for-2012 version of that 2006 rider. But I am hanging my head for not catching the previous post.

And yeah, agreed that this is monstrously useless as an actual tour rider– my eyes rolled right outta my skull when I got to the "checklist" and saw more editorializing. But it's pretty amusing.
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 9:09 PM on August 29, 2013 [1 favorite]


I would be astonished to learn this document wasn't written somewhere along the curve of a good old-fashioned amphetamine binge. The structure is... familiar.
posted by not the fingers, not the fingers at 9:14 PM on August 29, 2013 [3 favorites]


The rider has its own rider. And that rider has its own rider.
posted by not_on_display at 9:25 PM on August 29, 2013 [1 favorite]


I'd hate to be the guy that had to turn that into something actually useable. Especially in a festival environment where there might be dozens of riders for dozens of bands to try and make sure you had all the grosses of towels they'll all want and whatnot.

That being said, I read the rider for Molly Hatchet one time like ten years ago and the alcohol requirements ran to half a page, including at least a case of top-shelf booze and four cases of beer. A couple of bottles of nice wine and a case of beer seems tame by comparison. So I guess Iggy and The Stooges may have mellowed is what I'm saying.
posted by ob1quixote at 9:42 PM on August 29, 2013


No mention of Bovril, knee-blankets, or The Young Ones on DVD, I'm calling this fake.
posted by turbid dahlia at 9:54 PM on August 29, 2013


Agreed, double.

This has been making the rounds for years in pro sound circles, and it's a perfectly comprehensible and useful tech rider.

Hint: The stuff in Boldface is the important stuff, the rest is wise-assery.

But considering that about 9.999999 times out of 10 the rider the production company gets bears little or no resemblance to what the budget allows for or what the band actually wants or needs by the time they get to your town . . . . *shrug*. You might as well have a laugh while you're reading the Book of Lies.
posted by soundguy99 at 10:28 PM on August 29, 2013 [4 favorites]


I'm not through reading the whole thing yet, but it is quite funny. This part tickled me:

Also, he needs to know a little bit about monitors. This may seem a little obvious, but believe me....
(For example, in Santiago de Compostela, in Galicia in Northern Spain, they appear to think - if they just ignore riders like this, then supply a fat, bearded, ignorant hippy with a digital monitor desk (doh!) who doesn't know shit about eq-ing, and monitor wedges that would be better suited to wedging doors open, and a load of stage managers and PA geezers and promoters reps who shout a lot - that this is the same as actually providingwhat the band needs in order to do a gig to the best of their ability. And that if they deny that their gear is no good, it will suddenly, mysteriously, become good.
Well I would just like to say that the next time the Stooges get booked for their festival, I'm going to turn up with some pickled eggs, a small blue vibrator with a jelly dolphin balanced on the shaft, a set of dog-eared encyclopedias with the volume E-G missing, and a screwdriver that's been accidentally dropped in a lavatory
And then, when they say, "That's not the Stooges",
I'm going to say, "Yes it is!"
And then they'll say "No it isn't".
And I'm going to say, "Yes it IS!!!"
See how they like it, the fuckers!

posted by Unified Theory at 11:24 PM on August 29, 2013


About Iggy's vocal - we need lots.. The best thing is, make it strong and punchy, a bit like a boxing kangaroo. Then turn it up.
When you think you have turned it up enough, turn it up some more!


... because after more than 50 years of performing, he is irretrievably deaf. The monitors can only work through quantum effects.
posted by rhombus at 12:58 AM on August 30, 2013


Ah, this old thing doing the rounds again. One of the few ancient internet faves I don't mind that happening with.
posted by Decani at 2:25 AM on August 30, 2013


Their road manager is interviewed about the writing of the rider here.
posted by forgetful snow at 3:58 AM on August 30, 2013 [2 favorites]


Isn't this from back in 2008, when they went on tour and their truck got stolen in Montreal and they lost all their gear?
posted by charlie don't surf at 5:10 AM on August 30, 2013


I used to have to deal with these things some 20 years ago. A lot of bands would put in things like "1 bottle of single malt scotch in the dressing room after the show," or whatever. Often they would put in just impossible shit or super annoying ones. We just lined out what we were unwilling to do and sent it back. Most of the time this was fine, but occasionally we'd get a call back that said, "No, the Jayhawks really won't play unless they have a 6 pack of such and such," and then I'd have to spend an afternoon calling liquor stores to find out if they carried some rare belgian beer, then I'd have to drive a hundred miles to get it (this is Iowa), then I'd have to get a waiver that allowed alcohol into a dry campus building. I did a lot of favors for people that could do me favors just so I could put on a concert. I hated riders, and when bands put in stupid shit it made me hate them just a little bit more.

Occasionally you'd fuck one up as well and then the band would be all like, "We don't have to play now! Nah nah na nah nah!" And you'd have to reply with, "Our lawyer says you do or you can come back when we take you to court." Sometimes you'd feel horrible about screwing up. I had some punk band, Hot Glue Gun or Fugazi or someone play once and they had a rider about needing to be paid in cash. I'd had that all cleared prior to the show, but when I went to pick up the payment accounting says, "It's our policy that we only cut checks," but when I tried paying the band in this they were mortified. They needed cash to pay for gas and food and to make van repairs and such. This was 20 some years ago, so predates your VISA check cards, and all night check cashing places. I drove this band around after the show looking for a place they could cash a $1,200 check (I don't really remember the amount). Eventually I ended up waking up every roommate I had, we all hit the ATM for what we could, I wrote a personal check for the difference and the band signed over their check. I felt super shitty about this one.

If I got this rider I would have started looking for an alternative booking.
posted by cjorgensen at 6:01 AM on August 30, 2013 [5 favorites]


Metafilter: I would like to know where on the web I can follow the literary diarrhea of this bass-playing Internet Pepys or Boswell.
posted by Lipstick Thespian at 6:03 AM on August 30, 2013 [1 favorite]


As a sometime insurance professional, all of the references to insurance were pretty spot-on. Yep, those are the things we worry about.
posted by valkyryn at 6:43 AM on August 30, 2013


I would like to know where on the web I can follow the literary diarrhea of this bass-playing Internet Pepys or Boswell.

That would be right here.
posted by lowest east side at 8:21 AM on August 30, 2013 [2 favorites]


Mike Watt is playing in the Stooges?! Why wasn't I told?
posted by Devils Rancher at 9:06 AM on August 30, 2013


The beef has to come from a cow? What a bunch of prima donnas!
posted by Area Man at 12:50 PM on August 30, 2013




I still have a torn up rider from a formerly-very-famous southern rock band that I found in a dressing room in Mississippi. By that time, this band's ship had sailed many years prior but some of the demands made it evident that they still thought they were the shit.
posted by KevinSkomsvold at 11:43 PM on August 30, 2013




"...this band's ship had sailed many years prior but some of the demands made it evident that they still thought they were the shit."

Two drummers means twice the need for atttention.
posted by vapidave at 11:02 AM on September 1, 2013


Probably best to put them in the fridge, so we don't end up with a couple of cartons of Rice Nightmare.

As a veteran of too many alternative milk-approximate substances, truer words.
posted by jocelmeow at 1:13 PM on September 6, 2013


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