Live From Basra

I have no idea if this email was serious or not, but its pretty funny.

Hello Ben,
Is your act available for touring overseas? If your band, solo act comedy or novelty act offers quality entertainment we would be interested in speaking with you.

Regards,

Christopher Ray
www.MusicPromoBiz.com
Nashville Headquarters

And from their website

We have been appointed to locate talent for the U.S. Department of Defense (DOD) Tour Division. DOD favors bands, however solo artists, comedy/novelty acts etc. are also welcome. The tour roster includes the following regions: Australia, Bahamas, Caribbean, Europe, Egypt, Spain, Greece, Turkey, Italy, South Korea, Japan, Puerto Rico, New Zealand, Thailand, Diego Garcia, Most of the Middle East, Parts of Africa, Jordan, Israel, Afghanistan, Equador, plus Central and South America and more.

Compensation:

$150.00 PER PERSON per day. This is NON-NEGOTIABLE. Tours can last from 5 days to 6 weeks.

A Band with 6 pieces would make anywhere from about $4,500 (for a 5-day tour) up to about $64,800 (for a 6 week tour).

An individual would make anywhere from $750 (for a 5-day tour) up to about $10,800 (for a 6 week tour).

If anyone is interested in performing around the world for troops you should check them out. At least they guarantee $150/day. I doubt my draw in Diego Garcia is as good as it used to be.

Read on to see the response Brian wrote for me.God I want to send this.

Dear Christopher:

Thank you so much for your interest in my act. I’m currently fine tuning the production, but our target date for completion is Halloween, which I’m sure will provide more than enough time to make the necessary arrangements for overseas travel.

The logistics of my act can be quite daunting, however, so I will warn you beforehand. For one, I’m not sure about how the transportation of animals is handled, but I’m assured that your company is quite experienced with this issue. However, the three monkeys that make up my backing band are not well mentally and become very destructive when traveling alone without me in the immediate vicinity. This means that my chimps will also require one First Class ticket each as well as myself when traveling (of course, I expect nothing less than first class and I’m sure as a skilled talent recruiter, you can understand and appreciate this). I have been able to get away with dressing them up as children and saying that I sponsor them through a Christian charity and this has worked quite well (at least on Southwest). If time is an issue, I’ll wait until the very last minute to put them in their normal stage attire (pirate costumes with martian antennae and gerbils instead of parrots), so that the flight attenmdants will be powerless to remove me from the flight.

I will also warn you that my music covers very controversial topics like lesbians, martians, being a teenager, going to jail, serving servants and generally “sharp lyrics” with “a zany sense of humor”. I would be appreciative of not playing venues in nations were this would cause me to be stoned or branded. As I understand it, this automatically disqualifies Belgium.

I and my chimp band await your response.

Ben