The good folks at The Smoking Gun are infamous for breaking confidentiality rules and leaking the surreal world of major artist tour rider documents to the world. Hilarity ensues, such as when Christina Aguilera demands “Soy cheese and Oreos. Flintstones chewables and votive candles. Nesquick and dried cranberries.” and rival Britney Spears chows on Doritos and International Foods coffees (hopefully not at the same time). The world laughed. The world vomited.
Iggy Pop is different, taking each legal item as an opportunity to add jokes — all while subtly threatening all on the tour who would deny them a properly-working gig. Smart. The whole thing is worth a read, but this being CDM, we’ll skip straight to the gear stuff.
First, I proudly present CDM’s slogan / t-shirt moniker of the week:
1 x KORG 2000 DIGITAL RACK TUNER. Digital in the sense that it works via an electronically generated number system, not digital because it only works if someone holds it together with their fingers.
And then it goes on …
3 x MARSHALL VBA BASS AMPLIFIERS Make sure they’re good ones or we’ll all end up as wormlike web-based life forms in the bass player’s online literary diahorrea. Honestly. He’s like a sort of internet Pepys or Boswell, except without the gout and the syphilis. For all I know.
And on …
We need: one(1) monitor man who speaks good English and is not afraid of death.
… in Galicia in Northern Spain, they appear to think – if they just ignore riders like this, then supply a fat, beared 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 providing what a 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. I’d 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 volumes E-G missing, and a screwdriver that’s been accidentally dropped in a toilet.
… and on and on, and I expect you’ll be reading this thing all day and laughing and not getting any work done.
Iggy Pop’s concert rider funniest in rock history? [The Smoking Gun; thanks, Jaymis!]
Feel free to add your favorite bits in comments.