I’ve been curious for awhile about this. On thesmokinggun.com they often post celebrities’ concert riders, poking fun at some of the odd demands that these folks want. Consistent across many of them is some variation of “Bottled water, but no Evian.”
Where’s the love for Evian? I’ve had it–it doesn’t seem any better or worse than any of the rest of the bottled waters I’ve tried. Is it some sort of environmental thing? Does Evian use Third World slave labor to strain their water through dead baby harp seals or something?
Probably because Evian spelled backwards is “naive.”
Actually, I used to book and promote medium-size (300-3000 seat) concerts for a few years, and I asked a fairly well-known band why they asked for Volvic and accepted Evian only as a last ditch option on their rider. Their response was that they thought Evian tasted bad.
Weird Al Yankovic’s rider notes in several places, quite strenuously, that the band isn’t to be served Dasani. You’d think a Dasani deliveryman kicked Al’s poodle. Of course, Dasani tastes like crap, so maybe that’s all it is.
Every so often on TSG you run into a rider in a “realistic” state: half the junk crossed off. Like the Bloodhound Gang one. It has all the liquor and tobacco crossed out.
There’s also a few that have buyout conditions. Like they have the big list of stuff, and then it says “or pay $60 extra and we’ll take care of it”. For smaller acts where you don’t have an entourage to feed, I’d imagine this comes up a lot more.
Probably not. On the other hand, while I have no great animosity toward Coke products in general, bottled water from Coke kinda disturbs me, know what I’m saying? Like OneCentStamp says, it’s not going to be just plain water.
I’ve never bought Evian because it tends to cost half again as much as Aquafina or Dasani. When I buy water, it tends to be Arrowhead or Crystal Geyser. Both available locally (Central CA) and both taste good, as well as being cheaper than the Coke / Pepsi brand waters.
