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A similar story that I love regarding the infamous Van Halen brown M&M contract rider: “Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, th

A similar story that I love regarding the infamous Van Halen brown M&M contract rider: “Van Halen was the first band to take huge productions into tertiary, third-level markets. We’d pull up with nine eighteen-wheeler trucks, full of gear, where the standard was three trucks, max. And there were many, many technical errors — whether it was the girders couldn’t support the weight, or the flooring would sink in, or the doors weren’t big enough to move the gear through. The contract rider read like a version of the Chinese Yellow Pages because there was so much equipment, and so many human beings to make it function. So just as a little test, in the technical aspect of the rider, it would say “Article 148: There will be fifteen amperage voltage sockets at twenty-foot spaces, evenly, providing nineteen amperes …” This kind of thing. And article number 126, in the middle of nowhere, was: “There will be no brown M&M’s in the backstage area, upon pain of forfeiture of the show, with full compensation.” So, when I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl … well, line-check the entire production. Guaranteed you’re going to arrive at a technical error. They didn’t read the contract. Guaranteed you’d run into a problem. Sometimes it would threaten to just destroy the whole show. Something like, literally, life-threatening.” https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/brown-out/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/brown-out/

deleted 6y ago
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bpyne 6y ago
Interesting. I wonder who thought to add this test into the contract. It's a simple but brilliant strategy.
- SN76477 6y ago
  I have seen the story many times. I think it is brilliant.
michaelcampbell 6y ago
> So, when I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl … ...They didn’t read the contract. I don't know that that necessarily follows. It could be that they read it, said "fuck that", and did everything else to spec. Good story tho.
- zanderwohl 6y ago
  But it's trivially easy to do, and the venue knows that not doing it is a violation of contract. A violation of contract could cost them the whole show, so there's no reason not to do it.
- GlenTheMachine 6y ago
  It's a heuristic. A single, cheap, effective one IMHO, but no heuristic is 100% accurate.
  - michaelcampbell 6y ago
    There is nothing to indicate any effectiveness whatsoever; how many shows were cancelled as a result? The post even said they'd go ahead and check stuff. Does anyone think they WOULDN'T have checked that show equipment for one of the biggest rock bands of the day if they found no brown M&M's? Really?
    - runamok 6y ago
      It's a canary in the coal mine. Presumably they still checked other critical things but based on the canary could determine how closely they needed to check everything.
- romwell 6y ago
  > It could be that they read it, said "fuck that", and did ... Exactly. You wonder what else they said "fuck that" to because they don't care or think it's not necessary. An even better case to catch.
  - jschwartzi 6y ago
    Yeah. I'm imagining the guy who says "fuck that" to picking the brown m&ms out as the same kind of person who goes "10A circuits should be fine. They build safety margins into those" or "those rafters should be fine to hold 2 tons of equipment. They're really stout 2x6's." You know, the kind of person who just assumes they know better and that what is planned doesn't matter. And if you let them do that they will totally kill you with their negligence.
joe_the_user 6y ago
But this isn't like that at all. The Brown M&M is a clever hack that seems weird (and that gets posted here over and over and over...). What's going on here is simultaneously much more mundane and much more interesting. A given strategy at a corporate level is something like a 10 dimensional cube, with half of those dimensions within the company and half of those side outside. It begins as a concept floated by those in charge, it gets floated to people who float it to people who finally put out another version, say, a 5 dimensional cube. And final thing has requested qualities, with some things added simply as CYA, things that aren't good but the low level operative can't be criticized for. Sometimes this process result in a dimension that a moderately intelligent person can look at and say "that's moronic, that would never work" and it doesn't. The thing is, indeed, the critic doesn't see even the 5 released dimensions of the whatever-the-fuck that's being sold so they don't know the difficulties involved. Because the thingy is trying to barely satisfy each of these dimensions, not be great in any of them. Because these are all constraints, Why push out a crappy version of Windows (say Vista), why produce yet another fail sequel in series X, etc. Sure, when such satisficing projects fail, the dumb stuff seems obvious but people forgot that so many projects succeed by just barely missing the bar of inadequate and so some are going to have to hit the bar too, in one of those dimensions.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

bpyne 6y ago

Interesting. I wonder who thought to add this test into the contract. It's a simple but brilliant strategy.

SN76477 6y ago
I have seen the story many times. I think it is brilliant.

michaelcampbell 6y ago

> So, when I would walk backstage, if I saw a brown M&M in that bowl … ...They didn’t read the contract. I don't know that that necessarily follows. It could be that they read it, said "fuck that", and did everything else to spec. Good story tho.

zanderwohl 6y ago
But it's trivially easy to do, and the venue knows that not doing it is a violation of contract. A violation of contract could cost them the whole show, so there's no reason not to do it.
GlenTheMachine 6y ago
It's a heuristic. A single, cheap, effective one IMHO, but no heuristic is 100% accurate.
- michaelcampbell 6y ago
  There is nothing to indicate any effectiveness whatsoever; how many shows were cancelled as a result? The post even said they'd go ahead and check stuff. Does anyone think they WOULDN'T have checked that show equipment for one of the biggest rock bands of the day if they found no brown M&M's? Really?
  - runamok 6y ago
    It's a canary in the coal mine. Presumably they still checked other critical things but based on the canary could determine how closely they needed to check everything.
romwell 6y ago
> It could be that they read it, said "fuck that", and did ... Exactly. You wonder what else they said "fuck that" to because they don't care or think it's not necessary. An even better case to catch.
- jschwartzi 6y ago
  Yeah. I'm imagining the guy who says "fuck that" to picking the brown m&ms out as the same kind of person who goes "10A circuits should be fine. They build safety margins into those" or "those rafters should be fine to hold 2 tons of equipment. They're really stout 2x6's." You know, the kind of person who just assumes they know better and that what is planned doesn't matter. And if you let them do that they will totally kill you with their negligence.

joe_the_user 6y ago

But this isn't like that at all. The Brown M&M is a clever hack that seems weird (and that gets posted here over and over and over...). What's going on here is simultaneously much more mundane and much more interesting. A given strategy at a corporate level is something like a 10 dimensional cube, with half of those dimensions within the company and half of those side outside. It begins as a concept floated by those in charge, it gets floated to people who float it to people who finally put out another version, say, a 5 dimensional cube. And final thing has requested qualities, with some things added simply as CYA, things that aren't good but the low level operative can't be criticized for. Sometimes this process result in a dimension that a moderately intelligent person can look at and say "that's moronic, that would never work" and it doesn't. The thing is, indeed, the critic doesn't see even the 5 released dimensions of the whatever-the-fuck that's being sold so they don't know the difficulties involved. Because the thingy is trying to barely satisfy each of these dimensions, not be great in any of them. Because these are all constraints, Why push out a crappy version of Windows (say Vista), why produce yet another fail sequel in series X, etc. Sure, when such satisficing projects fail, the dumb stuff seems obvious but people forgot that so many projects succeed by just barely missing the bar of inadequate and so some are going to have to hit the bar too, in one of those dimensions.