"One of the first managers I met was a guy named Scott Brickell, who managed Audio Adrenaline at the time and later Mercy Me, among others. He’s a big dude, probably 6’5. He leaned way over the ledge near my desk and said, “Hey, kid, you know the story about why green M&M’s are in riders, right?” I’d booked bands and promoted concerts for four years in college, but I’d never seen that in a rider before. I’d heard it was one of the more famous weird demands that hair metal bands did to be obnoxious, which is what I said to Scott.

“Nope,” he replied. “The bands have nothing to do with it. It’s the road manager that puts it in.”

Because road managers have an inate thing for green M&Ms?

“No, it’s a trigger. A road manager puts that in the rider to see if the concert venue reads the rider. If they pull up to a new city and arena, and walk into the green room and see a big bowl of green M&Ms sitting there, the road manager knows he’s working with people who are detail-oriented and have read and followed the rider. (A rider is the list of technical and personal requirements for an entertainer.) But if the road manager walks into the green room and sees a bowl of regular M&Ms, or worse, no M&Ms at all, he realizes he’s not working with detail-oriented people, and he’s in for a long day. With concerts, you’ve got all kinds of rigging and lighting and sometimes pyrotechnics. You can’t afford to work with people who are bad at details. If they got the M&Ms right, chances are they got the other things, right, too.”

http://brianlord.org/2014/08/21/the-surprising-reason-rock-ban ds-demand-mms/

Oh whoops I had the story backwards. Going through I dunno how many bags and bags of M&Ms just to fill up a bowl with the green ones is a lot crazier than just taking the green ones out.. anyway if Roth had sliced up his nose like this he probably would've just said "show's over folks."

My one experience doing lighting was when my brother hired me for his band's Portland show, which was very AV heavy; everybody else were a touring lighting crew, and my brother was like "oh yeah he can do it" because I used to change lightbulbs at the movie theatre I worked at, and sometimes helped the road crew load shit in for touring Broadway productions. Anyway, I got used to it but it was clear that I was more in the way than anything else, and felt like a total pill, so the guy in charge just gave me other random tasks and told me the M&Ms story; it made me feel better about not carrying my fair workload.

stop telling boring lies you fucking weirdo

When Buddy Guy came through a local venue a guy I know was part of the team that facilitates needs of the artist. About an hour before curtain the road manager takes my friend aside and wants to know where this particular bottle of scotch is. Something in the 0 range. My friend has no idea what the road manager is talking about, he's not the managing board who hired Buddy, he's just a guy the board hired. The RM starts getting really pissy and says it was stated clearly in the rider that Buddy won't go on stage until he's had a glass of the scotch. Now it's panic mode as runners are being sent to every liquor store in the area. Finally a bottle is located, the RM calms down and the show is a success.

A few days later a board member is on the phone with Buddy's agent demanding to know what the fuss about scotch was since it clearly isn't in the rider. The agent is quiet a moment and then laughs. He replies "Well, I can tell you Buddy hates scotch. But you know who loves scotch? His road manager."

tee hee