Late at night, while we’re working on the latest schedules for The Figgs and Rufio, we sometimes think we can hear the ghosts of the ones who have gone before us. We hear the floors creak, the glass panes vibrate and mysterious groaning sounds coming out of the heating ducts. And when we hear these noises we can’t help but ponder the unthinkable. Are we are losing our minds?

After all, we wouldn’t be the first.

Due to Pollstar.com’s generous no-age ceiling retirement policy, we can see how micromanaging schedules for artists like k.d. lang and Tony Danza affects one’s sense of stability and inner social balance. The oldtimers shuffle down the hallways, muttering about past itineraries for Anthrax and Steve Hackett while they sweep the floors and take nips from their pocket flasks when they think no one is watching. We see them in the courtyard, trying to direct each individual water droplet shooting from the fountain while telling stories about the Average White Band to anyone kind enough to listen. Is this our future?

It takes a special kind of person to work here. Sure, we have plenty of applicants, young men and women whose only goal in life is to plug dates for Vonda Shepard and Asleep At The Wheel into our database. Every day hundreds of new recruits arrive at our Pollstar.com training facilities, their eyes shining with the hope that, they too, will someday track club dates for Embodyment and amphitheatre shows for Tom Petty & The Heartbreakers. But after four weeks of basic training, including the mandatory smashing of heads against the fire hydrant so that they may properly interface with our custom software, we are fortunate if two, maybe three people pass the muster to become tour date specialists. Are we that unique?

But we remember the old saying; “Insanity is sanity in an insane concert world.” If our friends think we’re a little looped, a little odd, so be it. We find safety in the dates for “Weird Al” Yankovic, solace in the routings for Brad Paisley and Kip Winger, and we don’t care if a few of us are perceived as being a little touched in the head. We know we’re sane. We know we’re normal. Each and every one of us maintains a grip on reality as solid as Marilyn Manson as we check and recheck the dates for The Rolling Stones, 50 Cent and R. Kelly.

Well, almost every one of us. There’s that guy in the next cubicle who used to work at Disneyland. Believe you me, he’s more than a little strange.

He’s freakin’ goofy.