War Stories & Other Lies

Hey Roadies, Fans, and other persons who troll this blog routinely, if I might make a humble suggestion:
Buy one less T-shirt from me, or skip 2 cocktails in the expensive hotel bar, take that $20, and send it to:
http://www.icrc.org/eng

Which is the website of the International Committee of the Red Cross [which incidentally has a much higher efficiency rating than the American Red Cross last time I checked]. There is a button on the top that says ‘Donate’. You can figure out the rest.

You’re watching the Haiti horror unfold on TV. Don’t just watch. This is not a show. If your cash buys one more case of penicillin, some kid may not die later this week of an infection received in the rubble.
…just a suggestion…

And about F***in’ time.
Hope you all had decent new Years’ gigs. Some of us here at ThisGigSucks had pretty fun gigs on 12/31; others, a little less fun. But we all got home safely, and wanted to wish you and yours a healthy, happy, productive New Year. May you get the tours you want, may your artists be happy, and once again, may we all live to spend another year doing what we love best.
Cheers,
TGS crew

Yep, it is THAT TIME…the week we remind you that if you were planning on getting swag for a brother, significant other, or your crew, ORDER NOW.
After Wednesday the 16 (although we will continue to ship 2-3 day USPS Priority Mail) all bets are off regarding getting your stuff for Christmas. Even the post office doesn’t guarentee 2-3 days for delivery after mid-week shipping.
Of course, if it’s a Hanukkah gift, you need it by Friday latest, so get serious, fast.

As for news, well, there have been more bus wrecks (no more recent fatalities, thankfully, in those) but that’s getting boring to report. There have been so many lately…it used to be really, really rare…now you seem to hear about one every two weeks. It’s been a bad season and bad weather for the drivers, no doubt about it. And yeah, there have been show cancellations but no major tours folding in the last few weeks. Some of our partners who’ve been overseas awhile are finally heading home, so welcome back, guys.

As we wind up toward the holidays, all here hope you’ll have a few days home with your family and friends, and that things will shake out tour-wise this winter for you all.

Remember, get those orders in, pronto. As far as the Holidays are concerned, Brothers, Doors are open, so best get on it!

Miley Cyrus’ tour bus rolls over
Associated Press

Miley Cyrus’ tour bus rolled over in a deadly crash near Richmond, Virginia early Friday morning. The bus skidded down the road several hundred feet after it rolled. Miley Cyrus’ crew was on the tour bus, but she was not. Miley Cyrus has a show scheduled in Greensboro, North Carolina on Sunday and they were on their way there.
“It was one of our tour buses, but not Miley’s,” People reported. “It was one of our buses that transported our lighting crew.”

Nine people on the bus have minor injuries, and the bus driver died in the roll over. The bus drifted off the road and rolled over into a ditch. Early reports have not confirmed why it happened. The bus was one of four buses traveling together from Long Island, New York where they performed two shows.

>>>>

They’re here! The new long-sleeves are available now for only $20. Check them out on the swag puchase page. We’ve also opened up the shopping cart, as we do in the winter, to speed up purchasing for everybody between now and the holidays.

About the picture…we’re now counting confirmed kills by the buses, WII fighter style.

Keep your eyes peeled on the website, brothers and sisters:
This year, after having heard the suggestion for awhile, we are doing a run of long-sleeved cotton shirts in our most popular design, “I know this looks like fun, but This Is My Job…kindly don’t fuck with me”. They’ll be available online in a week or so.

As always, they’ll be ’show blacks,’ with the website logo small on the front, and the text on the back. Also, as always, we’re using 6.1 oz pre-shrunk Ultra-Cotton shirts, the heaviest weight available so you can fluff & fold with confidence. We get a lot of letters about the superior quality of our swag (as opposed to, say, our bootlegger, who will remain unnamed here but you know who you are, and so do we). Quality always tells.
Finally, the best part: since this is a sideline for us and we are not, frankly, profit-driven, we are offering these good long-sleeves at only $20, for all sizes from Med to 2XL!

The shopping cart will be back up shortly -in about a week- for your convenience for the holiday shopping period, and this new item will be available through it then. Until then, we are still using the ‘order form’ system for tee-shirts, but these long sleeves are not listed on the order form.

If you can’t wait and MUST have our new long-sleeve shirt immediately, email us at shirts@thisgigsucks.com and we’ll hook you up.
Cheers.

You never know when fun will find you, or when you will get to cross something off your to-do list.
Last week, playing an arena in Illinios, one of the room managers was a local farmer. Conversation wound around, as Bob was a good conversationalist, to crops, rain, prices, harvest time (I mean, I don’t know about you, but I don’t get to chat with many small independent farmers and their perspectives on thing like, say, government are interesting and not what you’d assume) and he mentioned he’d been delayed a few days getting his corn in; it was only now just dry enough to start harvesting his 550 acres. His father, in fact, was prepping their old corn head and mounting on their new John Deere 9600 today.
Wistfully, I said I’d seen the Discovery Channel shows on the modern combines, and they looked cool and fun to drive and I wanted to drive one, just once, someday.
“How about today?” Bob asked.
After focus and line check was done and we were 100% show ready -and mercifully we had good vendors, so that was around 4- we bolted from the room.
Bob’s farm was only a few miles up the road. A few minutes of driving class later, there I was in the corn field.
And yes, those machines are just a cool, powerful, and fun as they look to drive.

In amusing news from another tour, a tour manager has just been made aware that his Keys tech, in filling out his Visa application for an upcoming tour leg -possible stoned, possibly in a hurry-, managed to check the boxes indicating he was both a multiple-conviction felon AND a war criminal.

We’re sorry to have lost Gordon ‘Gungi’ Patterson, a veteran brother and a legendary FOH mixer, to Lymphoma this week. Cheers, Mate- you’ll be missed.