Casting pearls before swine

[davidw]

Have you ever been part of a pop culture moment that didn't mean much to you, only to later find out that others would have killed to be in your position?

The one that stands out for me happened in 1993, when I saw Tupac and Notorious B.I.G. in concert together. This was back when they were still friends, before Biggie's first album dropped. Biggie only had a single out at the time, and he was opening for the Brand New Heavies. Tupac came out on stage with him and performed a few songs.

I wasn't much of a Tupac fan, and to this day I'm not really a fan of his music. Biggie, I can understand why people like him, and I like some of his songs, but really, I was never a huge fan of his either. My clearest memory of the show was my girlfriend about to fight a couple of girls who kept shoving her to get closer to the stage when Tupac appeared.

When I mention that story to some hip hop fans now, they act as if being there would have been the most awesome thing ever, and I can see why, with all the drama that followed. But at the time, I was like "meh," and it still isn't that big of a deal for me.

Any stories like that from you guys?

[Daddypants]

Sorry, I thought you were talking about a movie adaption of Pearls Before Swine (http://www.gocomics.com/pearlsbeforeswine).

[koeeoaddi]

Probably not a watershed moment, but apparently I saw the original line-up of the Allman Brothers and have almost no memory of their performance. :smack:

(I was there to see The Chambers Brothers and remember exactly nothing about the Allman Brothers' set, except that Little Richard ran onto the stage and started ranting about something or other before they hustled him off.)

[Electric Warrior]

I saw Fall Out Boy play in 2003 on a makeshift stage in a gym. Actually the stage was set up such I was standing behind it for the whole concert. I then met Pete Wentz and got his signature. It was actually a really nice concert and I have liked a few of their hit songs since then but I never got really into the band.

[RealityChuck]

Probably not a watershed moment, but apparently I saw the original line-up of the Allman Brothers and have almost no memory of their performance. :smack:I saw them twice. They were the opening acts at two different concerts -- Chicago and Mountain. I remember being disappointed the second time because it was the same act I'd already seen.

I would have seen them a third time, but the concert started two hours late (and they went to a lame local band as the opening act) and my ride decided to go home. :smack:

I've also seen them with Berry but no Duane, and without either.

[salinqmind]

Back in the day we went to see a band with a funny name, playing downtown in a loft, across from city hall. New fangled punk-rock, sort of. I think tickets were about $10 including a ticket for a free beer at a pub across the street.

A few short years later, that same band was playing to an audience from all over the North East at the Dome. It was a BIG event for our city!

And that band, ladies and gentlemen was ....The Police!

[njtt]

I saw David Bowie back in about 1970 or '71 (I can't even remember accurately) when he was that guy who had a big hit with Space Oddity a year or two ago and then pretty much faced out of public consciousness. It was an open air concert thing, but very small scale. IIRC the headliners were May Blitz (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_Blitz) (if you ever heard of them), and Bowie was just one of several smaller acts on the bill. As I recall the whole performance was pretty understated. There were no flamboyant clothes or obvious makeup, and I think (though I can't swear) that he and his band were seated through all or most of their set. I do remember him apologizing, because, he said, the monitors were not working and they couldn't hear themselves playing. I do not recall any of the songs the played. I wasn't paying that much attention.

I couple of years later he was a huge star (and I was a huge fan), and he has been ever since.

[KneadToKnow]

My senior year of high school, my girlfriend and I thought we were going to Carowinds to see the Power Station. Somehow we got the date wrong and actually wound up seeing some other act perform, whose name I now neither remember nor am interested in researching. However, they wound up with some big hits in the early 90s, IIRC.

[well he's back]

I saw Springsteen play in a small venue at my college. a few years before "Born to Run". He wasn't well known at all but there was small rumblings that he was the next Dylan. My friend and I walked out of the concert. Bruce was so mumbly we couldn't understand a word he sang & all the songs had three times more words than they needed. He seemed pretentious & it was a turn off.

He got better & I became a great fan, and I haven't been able to make it to one of his shows since.

[freckafree]

Not performance-related, but I was a worker-bee at a big reunion of past and current players of an NFL team. I am not what you'd call a sports fan. I had the opportunity to get many, many autographs, had I cared to pursue them. I think I had a few of the players sign a T-shirt and/or a program, and I'm not even sure what happened to either of those items. I wish I had known someone for whom those autographs would have meant a lot, because I would have gladly passed them along.

[SpoilerVirgin]

When I was a child, my parents took me to see a popular San Francisco act called Asparagus Valley Cultural Society. I hated it -- I found it creepy and disturbing (they made a rose bleed! -- shudder) Of course a few years later they started performing as Penn and Teller, and the rest is history.

I've mentioned before that for the past 20 years, I had the opportunity to attend the NCAA Final Four and/or the Super Bowl if I'd asked nicely, but since I had absolutely no interest, I always let the tickets go to someone who would appreciate them.

[hajario]

It was 1982 and my senior year of High School. I went to the L.A. Sports Arena to see the J. Geils Band. The opening act bored me. It was an Irish band that I had never heard of called U2.

[President Johnny Gentle]

Kind of niche, but I've met a number people who've expressed jealousy at the fact that I saw Neutral Milk Hotel on two different tours back in the 1990s. The first time there couldn't have been two dozen people in the room. I was there to see the second band on the bill. The second time, the venue was packed because they had a major college radio hit with "Holland 1945." Even then, the bar only held a few hundred, so there weren't that many there.

My wife has better claims for this thread. Not only was she with me for both of the above, but she managed to see a World Series seventh game and Cal Ripken's 3000th hit. In neither case was she thrilled to be present.

[Kobal2]

I was maybe 18, 19, spending the summer working in the US and my boss' wife offered to take me to a Metallica concert. Which was seven shades of awesome in and of itself, mind you.
But there was this weird band opening, didn't much care for their sound and as for the lyrics, super lazy stuff. Mostly they repeated the same thing over and over again. Nu metal bullshit, man. No soul to that crap whatsoever. After one or two songs I just elbowed my way back out of the pit to go take a piss, grab some drinks and just hang around in the shade, waiting for the real act to begin.

I still want to dopeslap my younger self for missing out on System of a Down before they'd really made it big.

[cjepson]

Not exactly what you're looking for, but... a couple of weeks ago a friend of my daughter's was visiting, and he said, "WOW! You've got a first edition of the Simarillion!"

Yeah, I got it when it first came out... never thought that much about it.

[fiddlesticks]

I rolled my eyes through a Marilyn Manson set as he opened for Nine Inch Nails during the Downward Spiral tour before he became the official scary-to-parents artist of the late 90s.

I was quite bored with Queens of the Stone Age when they opened for The Smashing Pumpkins at the Roxy in LA in 2000.

[StusBlues]

I still want to dopeslap my younger self for missing out on System of a Down before they'd really made it big.

I saw them when they opened for Limp Bizkit in the late 90s. (I know, I know.) They were rather good, but I wasn't exactly blown away.

[kushiel]

Not exactly what you're looking for, but... a couple of weeks ago a friend of my daughter's was visiting, and he said, "WOW! You've got a first edition of the Simarillion!"

Yeah, I got it when it first came out... never thought that much about it.

This is the first post in this thread where I went 'awesome!'.

[woodstockbirdybird]

The only ones I've ever had anyone envious about were seeing (and meeting after one show) The Replacements a few times as well as R.E.M. and The Pixies (all in the '80s). I saw U2 on both The Joshua Tree and Zoo TV (Achtung Baby) tours, but those weren't that rare, I suppose.

[florez]

In 1968 I saw the Doors play at La Crescenta High School in California.

[GargoyleWB]

I saw Nirvana play for a "5 bands for 5 bucks" show at the UW campus. They hadn't released Nevermind yet, and only had a little local buzz about them.

I thought they sucked and left after a couple of songs, thinking "what a waste of $5".

[gallows fodder]

I saw the National around 2005 or so when they opened for my favorite band. The only impression they left on me was "boring."

A few months later I got a new roommate whose favorite band was the National. In the next couple of years I hear and see their name dropped all over the place as people's new favorite band. I gave their later albums a listen in the hopes of figuring out why they were so beloved and may have succumbed to the hype for a moment or two, but ultimately my first impression was a lasting one.

Seriously, them?

[digs]

Grew up spending every hour possible at Summerfest (http://www.summerfest.com/), so saw a lot of bands that were bigger later on. We were waiting for Sly and The Family Stone and barely paid any attention to the opening bands. One of them was The Jackson Five. "Pissant boy-band kids' pop... we came to hear some real soul! Where's SLY???" (He was holed up in his hotel room, afraid of the huge mob)

So you see my dilemma: if I said I saw Michael Jackson live, my street cred with my students would go up... but I'd feel like a hypocrite, so I've never said it.

[digs]

Y'know, I'm looking at the list of bands (is it anywhere online? People have tried to start a list, but Summerfest wants people to buy their coffeetable book to get it).

I could claim to have seen Clapton, Carlin, Stevie, Tony, Ringo, Alice, BS&T, CSN&Y, RHCP, OAR, REM, BÖC, The Allmans, The Pips, The Temps, The Doors, The Femmes...

But we were just there for the vibes, the second-hand herbalness, the picnic... chatting with old friends (and newfound stoner friends) with cool bands in the background. So I could say I've seen them... but I didn't listen to them.

[Ponch8]

Four years ago I was at an Israeli Independence Day festival on the National Mall in Washington, DC. After a while, a singer/piano player I'd never heard of named Regina Spektor started performing. It was a pleasant little diversion, but I got bored after a couple of songs and wandered off to do something else.

[salinqmind]

Justin Bieber played at the State Fair a couple of years ago and I have to say I have never seen such a MOB at the fair. Traffic was backed up for an hour... The free concert that afternoon was Sugarland just before they hit it big - who'da known? - I stayed for the opening number and had to leave because of the crowds, and the 98 degree heat. So I can say I saw Sugarland before they became ginormous. (that time of year we get killer thunderstorms but so far no stage collapse.)

[astorian]

In either 1977 or 1978, when I was in high school, I answered a trivia question posed by a disc jockey at WNEW FM, and I won tickets to see some new band that was playing at the Bottom Line the next night.

I blew it off because it was a late show on a school night, and I didn't really like the only song I'd heard by this band.

The group was the Police (I didn't much care for "Can't Stand Losing You," the only song of theirs I knew).

Years later, I saw an interview in which Sting and Stewart Copeland talked about that very show. They said there were only about 6 people in the audience, and they spent the whole night chatting with the audience, socializing with them, taking requests, whatever!

That would have been a hell of a memory, if I'd had the sense to show up!

[elbows]

Bob Marley. It was awesome! I only went because my international student roommates were all mad to!

And I saw Stevie Wonder, when he opened for the Stones. The fans were there to see the Stones and didn't give him much respect, but he was awesome too!

[Scumpup]

A movie rather than a musical group. I could have seen a very early pre-release screening of Raiders of the Lost Ark. In those pre-internet days, one typically didn't know about movies months in advance. My date and I went to the theater and there was a plain white sign indicating one screen was showing "Raiders of the Lost Ark." No pictures. Nothing about the cast. No details at all. Just the title in plain black letters. We assumed it was probably along the lines of Sun International pictures like "The Search for Noah's Ark" and elected to see something else. I couldn't even tell you what at this point. Several weeks later, Raiders was released to great acclaim and the rest is history.

[psiekier]

I blew it off because it was a late show on a school night, and I didn't really like the only song I'd heard by this band.

The group was the Police (I didn't much care for "Can't Stand Losing You," the only song of theirs I knew).We should hang out, astorian. I hate that song, too.

When I lived in Wichita Falls, some of my friends were into the local music scene, and we'd go down to The Refuge (a coffee shop in a most unlikely town) on occasion. The only band I can clearly remember seeing there was Artificial Rhonda; they had a good song I liked called "Majority of One".

I never went to see Folkadots when they performed, and I left town to attend college somewhere else before a fat kid/marching band geek named Jaret Reddick started playing up there with his band, which included the Folkadots' Erik Chandler and Chris Burney.

They call themselves Bowling For Soup (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bowling_for_Soup) now, and we love them.

[Anamorphic]

In 1988, I saw Jane's Addiction open up for Iggy Pop. Nothing's Shocking had just been released, and they were definitely already generating some buzz, but I didn't know anything by them, and frankly, didn't really care for their performance. I've since grown to like them a lot more, and wish I'd been more familiar with them at the time.

[aruvqan]

I was given a pair of tickets to Superbowl 12 in New Orleans, and a hotel room. I scalped the tickets and enjoyed the hell out of a quick vacation to New Orleans.

I am less than interested in watching sports.

[Jack Crazyquilt]

Way back in 1976 I saw Rush during their 2112 concert tour, and was so bombed out of my skull that I literally have no recollection of it. I know for a fact I attended (I have witnesses), but the entire experience is a complete blank now, other than a vague memory of randomly meeting someone else I knew and having a babbling conversation with them, which I imagine could probably be summed up as "Argle bargle gargle."

I have a good friend now who is an uber-fanatical Rush fan. I occasionally find sadistic pleasure in reminding him that I saw a concert he would have killed to attend, and remember absolutely nothing about it.

[Icarus]

1981 Rolling Stones tour - one of the opening acts was this tiny black guy jumping around in what looked like purple underwear(???), wasn't really a good fit for the Rolling Stones crowd. A year later Prince had a hit album with "1999".

[Reepicheep]

My parents moved to the DC Metro area when I was under 3 years old. My mom took me downtown in my stroller sometimes. One of those trips she made hats out of newspapers for many of the other people who were also downtown, because it was so hot. I remember nothing except seeing adults wearing my mom’s newspaper hats. I have a picture of me in my stroller and my mom wearing a newspaper hat. I heard the “I Have A Dream” speech live.

[hajario]

1981 Rolling Stones tour - one of the opening acts was this tiny black guy jumping around in what looked like purple underwear(???), wasn't really a good fit for the Rolling Stones crowd. A year later Prince had a hit album with "1999".

I saw that tour in Los Angeles. Poor Prince lasted four songs dodging bottles before he gave up. It was a disgrace.

[Fear Itself]

When I was in college in Corvallis, Oregon in the mid to late 70's, I used to see an exceptional blues guitarist who played every six weeks or so at Mother's Mattress Factory, a college dive known for 10 cent beers on Tuesdays. He was good, but after a while, when I heard the entertainment was once again Robert Cray, I moved on to the Dungeon to see who else was playing.

[MacSpon]

Don't know how much of a "pearl" this is, but I can remember seeing Doctor Who episodes that are now lost.

[koeeoaddi]

I heard the “I Have A Dream” speech live.
Thread winner!