What band or performer did you catch on their way up or down the popular music ladder?
Up: I saw Nirvana perform in on-campus housing at The Evergreen State College.
**Up: ** My friend Laura claims to have seen REM opening for a children’s puppet show at a county fair in Athens, GA.
Down: I saw a diminished-but-still-amazing Don McLean perform “Vincent” and “American Pie” when he opened for Air Supply in the early 80’s.
I saw Widespread Panic playing a near-empty frat party in Atlanta in about September 1989.
Your friend Laura’s claim sounds suspiciously similar to a scene in This Is Spinal Tap, although the Tap were on the slide by then.
Saw Cake as an opener just before ‘Fashion Nugget’ came out. They introduced their cover of ‘I Will Survive’ with ‘Listen…we’re not playing the next song as a joke, OK? We really think it’s a good song.’
Saw Arlo Guthrie about 1999 or so playing at a craft fair in Maryland. Probably 50 people watching. Entertaining as hell.
Saw Mary Prankster at a publicity appearance at 6:30AM outside the MCI Arena in DC. She stood on the back of a pick up truck with a tiny amp and played acoustic. Only 3 people were there. I ended up late for work and she wrote me an excused note for my boss.
Jimmy’s Chicken Shack at the Montgomery Count Fair before ‘Pushing the Salmonella Envelope’ came out.
Ooh.
Joan Jett…
Before she ‘reinvented’ reinvented herself as a bald lesbian for the theater crowd.
Late 1980s. Playing benefit at the abandoned Cumberland racetrack outside Cumberland Maryland. None of the original Blackhearts with her…she still wearing the hair and the spandex. The place had maybe 200 people at it. The stage was in the middle of the infield and hadn’t been mowed. Ugly.
I saw The Clash in their 5th ever performance at the Roundhouse in 1976.
I saw The Sex Pistols at The 100 Club but they already had a pretty big following.
I saw Motorhead at Midnight Court at the Lyceum in what was announced as their debut but I think they had played outside London under other names.
I saw INXS at the Manly Vale Hotel with about 50 other people when they were nobodies (good nobodies though).
i first heard the grateful dead in a small club in omaha, nebraska summer of 68, i think.
i first heard steely dan as the front group for frank zappa
I saw Tiny Tim playing one ring of a crappy little travelling circus in the crappy little town I lived in.
He then offered to sign autographs, and my mom got one, because she felt sorry for him, standing there all alone in the sawdust with no one wanting his autograph.
John Denver opening for Blood, Sweat and Tears in 1970. he hadn’t yet had a hit record of his own, so his claim to fame was having written Peter, Paul & Mary’s hit “Leaving on a Jet Plane.”
Tom Waits opening for Frank Zappa and the Mothers in 1974. He got the most hostile audience reception I’ve ever seen (although Victoria Williams, opening for Richard Thompson at the Fillmore in 1988, came close). No opening act had been announced. When the audience was allowed in, Zappa and company were still on stage trying to deal with sound problems. This continued until past showtime, so Zappa decided to start the show while the crew worked on the sound. After playing three or four songs, he decided that was as good as things were going to get, and then brought out the opening act, Tom Waits playing solo. Even though this was Waits’s home town of San Diego, almost nobody knew who he was (including the critic who wrote the review in the newspaper the next day, who only caught Waits’s first name). Some jerk near me kept yelling “Somebody shoot that fucker!”
January of 1978 saw Van Halen open for UFO at a small San Diego theatre. A few months later they were all over the radio.
My wife and I saw the Doobie Brothers at a local Indian casino a few months ago. The band encouraged many of the songs to be audience participation to cover the apparent lack of singing skills they now possess. I was rather disappointed with the show.
I saw Hootie & The Blowfish as an opening act for Big Head Todd when they were on their way up. They hosted a party for local press, and had to entice journalists to show up by offering free pizza and beer. Regardless, only about two showed up. The next week, they had their first #1 single.
I saw Foghat play a fairly redneck bar in southern Indiana in about 1996. They kept dropping ticket prices for weeks before the show, yet only about 50 people showed up.
I saw Great White play a bar in southern Indiana in ’96 or so, promoting their new acoustic CD. One of them (can’t remember which one) told me their new release was on a level with the Stones’ Let It Bleed. Right.
I saw the Association about 15 years ago or so - they had only 2 of the original members.
At the same concert, I saw Herman’s Hermits, sans Herman. (I had seen them perform in the late 60s or early 70s when they were still kinda big.)
3 or 4 years ago I took my daughter to see 3/4th of the Monkees perform.
I also saw the Kingston Trio with only one of the original members.
I’m not much of a concert goer…
Up – I saw Bruce Springsteen when he was still playing smaller venues – he was at my college chapel, which seated about 1000. He only had two albums out at the time. Others that performed there before they became massively famous included Sha Na Na and The J. Geils Band.
down – The Beach Boys in the 60s at a free concert at Nassau Community College. There were only about 300-400 there, since everyone assumed they were washed up. Later, they switched to being an oldies act and went back to the top.
Up – not musical, but I saw the Flying Karamazov Brothers at Novacon 9 West, my first SF convenion (held in Albany, NY). There were only two Karamozovs at the time, and they actually passed the hat to get paid.
Down – Wilson Pickett at a cheesy Miami tourist hotel.
I saw Drew Carey at a comedy club in Cleveland before he became well known because of his tv show. He was great, especially his “imitation” of Bernie Kosar, who was then the Cleveland Browns’ quarterback. Bernie was not noted for being especially mobile, and Carey’s “imitation” consisted of knocking the microphone stand over.
Carey said, “Here’s Bernie Kosar” pointed to the microphone stand, and then knocked the stand over with one swing of his arm. You had to be there, but it was really, really funny at the time.
I saw the Red Hot Chili Peppers opening up for Nash the Slash (the Michael Jackson of Canada) in…I don’t know when but their only “hit” at the time was “True Men Don’t Kill Coyotes”.
I also saw Ministry at the same tiny club back when they were a snyth-pop band.
Oh, and I saw Henry Rollins’ very very first spoken word tour (a friend of mine was the opening poet.)
While I was a soldier stationed in Texas I used to see Pantera play bars in 1984. Darrell (RIP) and Rex were too young to drink, so I snuck drinks backstage to them. Vinnie was one of the nicest, most stable, down-to-earth people I had met up to that time, especially for a heavy metal drummer.
Not sure if they were on their way up or down at the time, but I saw The Beatles when they were just a cartoon.
Not -saw-, per se, but still a fun story:
Back when Smashing Pumpkins was still a Chicago bar-band, I was with a group of fellow actors who were stranded in the deep bible belt. We were all pretty ‘freaky’ looking, and we were video-documenting our show, as well as our stranded-ness.
There’s a wonderful moment in said video archive when we’re leaving a pizza hut after getting way too many stares. One of the actors, who’s been narrating the entire thing, looks into the camera and says, “I told the manager we were from Smashing Pumpkins, which will be really funny if they ever make it big.”
Three months later, their album career took off.
I always wonder if the manager ever talks about meeting them.
Does seeing them on an early morning local talk show count?
Back in 1970, the Carpenters appeared on a 6:00am Tv show in Hawaii, to promote the release of “We’ve only just begun”. The lipsynced and didn’t smile.
Down – The Mamas and the Papas in the early 90s. Of course, Cass was dead, and Michelle was still pissed, so you had Denny and John and a couple of women. Young women. They joked about it being “The Papas and the Daughters.”
Down – The Vogues, a few years ago. Actully, many 50s-60s groups still perform, usually with one or two members from their heyday, plus others they can recruit.
Up – Around 1970, I saw the Allman Brothers Band twice as an opening act – once for Chicago and the other time for Mountain. They only had one album out at the time.
Up Manhattan Transfer – they only had one album out, and were still searching for a sound, and were booed off the stage.
Up – On Broadway when I was a kid, I saw Bette Midler in “Fiddler on the Roof,” Christopher Lloyd in “Red, White, and Maddox,” Jo Ann Worley (pre Laugh-In) in "The Mad Show, " and Linda Lavin in “It’s A Bird, It’s a Plane, It’s Superman,”
Up Peter Bonerz (The Bob Newhart Show), Melinda Dillion (A Christmas Story), Mary Frann (Newhart), Richard Libertini, and Valerie Harper (who had started playing Rhoda) in “Story Theater” on Broadway
Up Broadway again: “Lunch Hour” starred Sam Waterston, David (Sledge Hammer) Rasche, and Max (Alf) Wright. Waterston was successful on Broadway at the time, but had not broken into TV.