Proof the Brown M&Ms clause is not an Urban Legend

I don’t feel like talking about economics right now, so let’s talk Rock and Roll.

The contract with Van Halen’s legendary “brown M&Ms” rider has been published by The Smoking Gun. And it was there for purely rational reasons:

While the underlined rider entry has often been described as an example of rock excess, the outlandish demand of multimillionaires, the group has said the M&M provision was included to make sure that promoters had actually read its lengthy rider. If brown M&M’s were in the backstage candy bowl, Van Halen surmised that more important aspects of a performance–lighting, staging, security, ticketing–may have been botched by an inattentive promoter.

All we need now is the clause by whatever band it was that requested “the brown M&Ms Van Halen refused.”

Otherwise, an open thread with which to discuss Rational Expectations.