“What’s the strangest (weird, interesting, funny, etc.) thing you’ve ever seen requested on a rider?” Let’s see what our panel of audio professionals has to say.

Christopher “Sully” Sullivan: While still a young, wide-eyed “soundling” trying to find my way in the Philadelphia music scene, I found myself faced with a rider from Bad Religion. I was working for a regional company and my boss handed me their rider as it pertained to an upcoming show at a local rock club. The venue itself was an old burlesque house with a proscenium stage opening of about 35 feet.

Excitedly, I began to read the document that would allow me to interact with a big-time front of house engineer and impress the punk out of him with my skills. I scrolled past the catering and hospitality section and landed on the audio portion. This is the sum total of what it said: “Front of house sound system, 25,000 watts.”

I scrolled a little farther down seeking the rest of it, but there was nothing more under audio except the FOH engineer’s phone number. So I dialed him up. A deeply Manchester, England-accented voice answered and I immediately explained my purpose in life to him, then waited, pen ready for the specifics he was going to lay on me.

Him: “Are you able to read, mate?”
Me: “Yes… yes I can.”
Him: “OK, good. Did you read the part about 25,000 watts?”
Me: “Yes.”
Him: “Do you not understand 25,000 watts?”
Me: “No, I understand it.”
Him: “Good. See you at the gig.” Click.

That was the advance. For those curious, I stacked three-high, three-wide Turbosound TMS-3s plus 24-inch subs on the ground, and effectively closed the proscenium opening to a slot. Prior to the gig, the gigantic, bearded FOH engineer showed up, played a DAT (digital audio tape) of his band with every driver into limit, then muted it, nodded to me and said, “Right. That’ll do,” and he walked off.

Craig Leerman: The weirdest rider I ever got was years ago from the band Jackyl that required a mic for a chainsaw and one for a wooden barstool that the chainsaw was to cut during a song. Shure SM57s were requested as first choice for both applications. During the song “The Lumberjack,” the chainsaw was used as an instrument, played a solo, then proceeded to be used to cut up the barstool to show everybody that it indeed was a real chainsaw sporting a really sharp blade.

Becky Pell: I see lots of riders when I’m doing pre-production for the Glastonbury Festival, and the hands-down best has to be from the Foo Fighters. (I’m not talking out of school here as there are leaked excerpts which are widely available online.) It’s a really entertaining read with coloring pages, word searches and some hilarious jokes! The genius of it is that it makes you want to read it thoroughly, unlike most riders, which are dry as dust and can make it all too easy to think “yeah yeah” and end up missing things.

Incidentally, the whole “no brown M&Ms” thing is usually just to see if the promoter is paying attention! And on my own riders I’ve been known to request “no grumpy know-it-alls who’d rather be anywhere else” on the local production crew…

Erik Matlock: I think the craziest yet most common and frustrating thing on riders is usually the date. Back in the day when I worked with a “hired gun” sound crew most of the time, we were constantly handed outdated riders and stage plots. Maybe three shows out of 10 involved the classic conversation where someone says, “Oh, you got the old paperwork.”

At the bare minimum, it meant losing half an hour of setup time. Even when we double-checked our details, someone would almost always show up for sound check with an “updated” stack of papers. Working with the same artist repeatedly obviously resolves most of that, but the poor souls at festivals and one-offs will probably always struggle with it.

Christopher Grimshaw: Most of the riders I get are fairly sensible, requesting well-respected equipment, etc., though I always enjoy the ones that specify a PA system that’s capable of full 20 Hz to 20 kHz reproduction. Very few systems will ever manage 20 Hz, even the big dubstep ones, so requesting that is a sure sign that someone doesn’t know what they’re doing.

Dave Natale: There are two things tied for this dubious category. First, in 1979 I did a gig for The Plasmatics and they had a mic for the chainsaw on the mic chart.

The second was a gig where the guy had an SSL console at FOH and insisted that the Waves SSL plugins were loaded, so he had an SSL console with SSL EQ on each channel, and then had another SSL EQ on the channel as a plugin. In either case, I was not impressed…

Nicholas Radina: Although I often don’t review full riders with regard to hospitality (where I know some interesting, funny and weird requests flourish), the technical riders have revealed some gems. Just recently, while mixing a festival, the technical rider mentioned the need to mike “bike wheel spokes,” which was a first for me. The wheel spun and sounded great – and yes, it was miked with a good ol’ Shure SM57 (of course).

Another weird request from years back was a vocal mic that had to be a Shure SM58, and the rider noted that it would get “wet.” The artist took the stage, and when needing both hands to perform, that 58 was down his pants. A convenient mic stand, I guess.

Bill DiPaolo: I had to really think about this because I’ve seen my fair share of wacky things. In 2017, I worked on a production for a major pop star who requested that her dressing room be decorated for a “Sweet 16” party, including a birthday cake with candles. The artist never even set foot in the room, and the crew ate the cake at the end of load-out.

Recently, another rider for an extremely obscure artist requested a very expensive microphone configured with a rare set of options. I’d never heard of such a combination, and neither had my A1.

After striking out with several audio vendors, I decided to double-check with the artist that the spec was accurate. Of course, the artist’s techs insisted that they always use that mic, and that all of the previous venues had been able to provide it. When I finally called the manufacturer directly, they said they’d never heard of anyone ever ordering that particular mic, but they custom-built one for us!

Ken “Pooch” Van Druten: I don’t often get to see other riders – I usually make them for the artists I work for. But I have put things in my riders like “one child’s playpen full of rescue puppies” just to see if they’re reading it.

Nobody ever got me a playpen, but one time a promoter did have some rescue dogs on hand to play with, and that made for a great day. My favorite is the Van Halen “no brown M&Ms” – some poor soul had to pick through a party bowl of M&Ms and remove all of the brown ones.

Check Out More Roundtable Articles On PSW:

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— Name That Tune: A Cornucopia Of System Test Track Selections
— Bang On The Drum All Day: Tips For Optimizing The Kit In The Mix
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