one cool thing I came across a while ago about riders was david lee roth talking about the infamous same coloured M&Ms jar.

it's not verbatim but he said something along the lines of: people think we did that just to be dicks and because we could, which is half true but when you've got such specific technical details like the kind of power regulation you need, what exact sort of trussing you need to hold tonnes of lighting and stage gear, this was our acid test. it was just a tiny clause stuck in the middle of the contract with all the food and drink requests. if we got in the room and the M&Ms hadn't been sorted the way we wanted we knew that they weren't going over the minute details of the contract so couldn't trust the promoter to provide a safe environment for the show.

pretty good idea really.