not me, but my coworker mentioned growing up in a small town in Texas (outside of San Antonio/Austin) and often babysat for a little boy when she was preteens/teens. She said she sometimes did grocery shopping errands and took him with her and they used to make fun of celebrities and whatever they wore in magazines they checked out on the racks (in the 70s). He grew up to be fashion designer/director Tom Ford.
I’ve mentioned it several times here: I went to the same high school as Sarah Silverman. She graduated before I started, but was a senior when my sister was a freshman. My sister was involved in theater, and was in the school musical that year (Sweet Charity) with Silverman.
Not me, but my wife: she went to high school with Mark Buehrle. He was cut from the baseball team.
Was the show called Over Here?
I saw Thomas Gibson (actor who played the role of Greg in Dharma and Greg and in everything else he was ever in) and Broadway star Norbert Leo Butz (Fiyero in Wicked, OBC of Dirty Rotten Scoundrels and other shows) when they were interns at the Alabama Shakespeare Festival. I remember thinking Gibson was good looking but not that great an actor, and that Butz was a great actor but not that good looking [ordinarily not a problem, but he was playing Romeo at the time- still rocked it]).
Not sure if it counts as seeing them, but I used to work with Octavia Spencer (many years ago in a completely non-showbiz related hotel job). She was very nice, very funny, super smart and a reader; I understand she’s still all of these things.
I remember Norm MacDonald before he was on SNL, quite a bit before. He was a very funny comedian, one of my favorites. I was stunned when he made it big. Never figured he would(too weird).
I will repost my Mark Maron story from another thread.
Not quite before he made it. But certainly before he became a major touring comedian and a long time before that podcast.
Jay Leno, at a small comedy club in Philadelphia. (He was [del]much funnier than he is now[/del] funny.) Steve Martin, before fame and SNL.
Oh, and John Oates (Hall and Oates) was my guitar teacher when I was 14. Does that count?
Apparently she was still not big when I saw her at an open mike night in the Castro district of SF around 1991. I was there to support a friend (who was awful). I remember one joke: “So, I got fisted last night. (pause) What, am I opening up too much?” That gives you an idea of her material.
Roddy
Friend of mine said he was going to this club in Stone Mountain to see this guy “that’s supposed to play like Hendrix” so I went along. Kid with long straight blond hair down to his ass and flowing. blowsy prog rock (think Yes) type garments. Billed simply as “Little Stevie Ray.” Guess who he turned out to be?
Yep, we were at the same Zappa/Waits show. I went to high school and college with Nathan East, though I didn’t know him well.
My man! We’re practically related. If you were at UCSD with Nathan, did you by any chance know Rob Norberg? Small world and all that.
Dunno. The name sounds vaguely familiar, but I could just be imagining it.
I saw Kathy Bates at the Humana Festival of New American Plays at the Actors Theater of Louisville in 1985. She gave an absolutely riveting performance in which she did not move from her seat on a couch for the entire play, “Rain of Terror,” which is part of a longer work called Two Masters. Her photo in that role is on the cover of this collection of Frank Manley plays. It’s probably from the very production I saw.
Does seeing “big name bands” when they were opening acts count? I saw Aerosmith open for The Kinks and Tom Petty open for Be Bop Deluxe.
I saw kd lang and the Reclines in a Folklorama venue in Winnipeg around '81 or so. We were at long tables that seated maybe 40 people. Every person at our table, at least as far as I could see, appeared to be half of a lesbian couple. Well, other than me and my boyfriend. The whole table of people seemed to know each other. I guess they already knew who kd was too. She was great! Dressed in cowgirl outfit, did a screaming roaring lying on the floor rendition of the old song “Johnny get Angry,” called the crowd “Bobs and Bettys” all night. “How’re ya doin tonight, Bobs and Bettys??”
Circa 1970, my folksinger sister shared a bill with an up-and-coming singer-comedian named Butch Gallagher. This was before he went by “Gallagher” and smashed melons with hammers. He was actually quite engaging, kind of a low-rent George Carlin hippie character whose signature piece was a song called “My Apartment,” describing his residency in an urban phone booth.
I saw Richard Belzer in a comedy club in DC around 1987. Not sure when he can be said to have “hit it big,” probably around the time of Ghost or Law and Order SVU, but the guy’s been nationally known at least since The Groove Tube (plus, he was the warm-up act for SNL’s studio audience and was a background character in a lot of early sketches circa 1975-76), though not quite a household name. He made fun of my clothes.
I saw Moxy Früvous at the 9:30 Club in DC (Old location; this would’ve been around 1993). I was unfamiliar with them and am not sure if this was before or after their peak of fame, but they were opening for a reggae band, Eek-a-Mouse, so I’m pretty sure it wasn’t at their peak of fame. Their set list was mostly songs off of Bargainville.
In the late 90’s, I was bartending at a tourist trap restaurant at the South St Seaport in lower Manhattan. One rainy January day, this family comes in and sits in my station. I immediately recognize one of the kids, because just a week or so before, I had seen her picture in the NY Post - there was a blurb about this fresh faced 11 year old who had been playing Annie on Broadway had just been cast in a remake of The Parent Trap. I distinctly remember thinking that day, I wonder how big of a career this Lindsay Lohan will have.
It might have been around the same time that I went to a showcase at this acting school at Union Square. I was going to see my ex-girlfriend perform. She did well, but after the show, she was raving about her scene partner, an unknown named Melissa McCarthy. Sidenote about that show was that I sat behind Louise Lasser.
Last one - I was working on the set of a movie a few years ago and I must have spent an hour talking with the mother of a girl who had a bit part. They were from Atlanta and my sister had just moved there. When I saw Kick Ass, I thought, that girl looks familiar.
I was in the same dorm as Christopher Reeve as an undergraduate in college. He was in the Drama Society at the time, but I never went to see him in anything.
I dated a future astronaut about 8 years before she entered the space program. She made 3 shuttle flights.
I frequented Atlanta’s many comedy clubs in the late 80s, early 90s. Saw Jerry Seinfeld before he got his TV show, and Chris Rock before he was even on Saturday Night Live. Also caught Bill Hicks.
As for musical acts, I saw R.E.M., 10,000 Maniacs, The Pogues, Widespread Panic, Green Day, Live, The Avett Brothers, The Lemonheads, Radiohead, and Drive-By Truckers in small venues.
Awesome. Did he have the 'stache at the time?
My parents have much cooler celeb connections. My Mom grew up with Bill Murray, his sister was her good friend. My Dad’s roomie in prep school was kind of a “Nature Boy”, his name was Ric Flair.
I was waiting tables back at my uncles restaurant in surburban Detroit in the early 80’s. one of my table had 4 or 5 guys with English accents who had great hair for the time and cool clothes. They were very attractive and friendly. I chatted with them awhile and they said they were a band from the UK who was the opening act at a concert that night. They were hoping to make a name for themselves in the US. They gave me some stickers and buttons with their band name on it. I wished them luck and hoped I’d see them soon enough on MTV. I thought the band name was weird having no idea what Duran Duran meant, but as you know, they did eventually end up on MTV.