I got to meet Anneke van Giersbergen twice, back when she was still frontwoman for The Gathering. She was very nice.
Over ten years ago, I was lucky enough to meet Chuck Jones.
He was doing an event at an animation art gallery (since closed) in my hometown. He was only signing animation cels bought at the gallery, though, and since I wasn’t about to plunk down what amounted to my entire life savings at the time (while I was still in grad school, yet) I was content just to shake his hand.
His car was visible outside–a white old-fashioned looking limousine that looked like something Bugs might have arrived in. The line was long, of course, but I figured it was well worth it.
I finally got to shake his hand. At the time, he was pushing ninety but still looked pretty spry. He was wearing a Twain-like white suit.
I told him that it was an honor to meet him, that he had helped spark my love of opera (“Kill da wabbit!”) and that the Grinch was a beloved tradition in my house. He, in turn, told me a little (just a little) about adapting it, how they’d had to overcome a hurdle or two with the design because in the original Seuss drawings Cindy Lou Who had looked like “a bug”.
All in all, a nice experience with a gracious and talented man. Three years later, when I heard he’d passed away, I was grateful I’d gotten a chance to tell him how much I’d liked his work. And I hoped he and his old friend Ted Geisel were having a nice catch-up. 
Stevie Ray Vaughn was my favorite music artist. In college me and a friend travelled from Maryland to Boston to see him (another friend going to school there got the tickets). We dropped two off front and had to try and park around back. Just as we were walking up to the venue SRV comes out of his bus and heads in. There were about a dozen people back there and we all went up to him. He was extremely nice. I had a scrap of paper and a pen for some reason and got and autograph. My friend had him sign a dollar bill. He stayed out there until the band and crew literally dragged him in. All were laughing. I’m glad I have that memory of someone taken way too soon.
I had a front-row seat to see Victor Borge when he appeared at El Camino College in Torrance, CA, in 1984. He had not become any less funny in more than 30 years–since the early 50s when he made his first LP.
I sat in the middle of the first row. At one point I laughed at the wrong time and got his immediate attention, and said, “Sorry about that!” He asked, “Vhat and vhere did you eat?” I was too embarrassed to reply to that. :o
Years ago, when I was a budding, amateur stand-up comedian, I had the opportunity to meet George Carlin. He’d performed live, and a buddy and I hung around the backstage door afterwards. He came out, signed autographs, took a few pictures. As he was about to leave, my friend told him that I wanted to get into comedy. George came over to me asked me to tell him a joke.
Which made me nervous as fuck.
So I told him the first one that popped into my head. He smiled, told me it was okay, then took out a blank envelope. He then showed me how I could word the joke better, a different inflection, and how to punch it up. I still have that envelope framed on my wall.
Is it a *secret *joke??
The mention of Bob Mould makes me realize that I did indeed meet two of my favorites.
When Shudder To Think was playing Club Clearview in the early 90’s, I walked into the bathroom before the show, and Craig Wedren and Nathan Larson were in there figuring out how to play the Sesame Street theme song. I stayed until we’d figured it out and we sang it in the bathroom. Maybe they don’t count as stars because they could sit around in the public bathroom at a show they were headlining without getting mobbed, but I couldn’t have asked for a better way to have met two of my heroes.
I met my favorite author at the time, Orson Scott card. At a Science fiction convention, I was his guest liason and he really wanted to spend time with his family nstead of being taken out to eat. strangely enough my friends and I ended up at the same restaurant and we were all trying to be cool about it and not make a scene. Mr. Card came over and chatted with us and he complimented me for allowing him the space to spend time with his family as well as doing all of his con obligations as Guest of Honor. I also got to be a deaconess for him at his Secular Humanist revival show, afterwards I helped him sell tapes of a previous show and the man actually handed me his wallet to make change from. I was rather stunned. A friend know my admiration for Mr. Card made some comment about that I rather have his body at which time Mr. Card comically leered at me, I blushed and we all laughed.
I have since learned some of his biased views and no longer hold him in quite as high esteem. I do still admire some of his writing.
No, not at all. It was a joke that I’d written where I said it’d been so long since I’d had a date, my cat walked out of the room backwards. I was kinda stumped on where to go with it after that, and then George mentioned the words “genital ticks,” my buddy chimed in with “sandpaper tongue,” and I had the bit finished in my head by the time we got back to my friend’s car.
Yesterday was the concert and the meet & greet. Best concert of all time. The meet & greet was before the show, and I got my photo taken with Ke$ha! I asked her about her cat (Mr. Peep$), and she said that he was in the tour bus. He gets to travel around the world with her.
I’m happy for you, Ponch8. I have to admit sometimes I make teasing comments to the spousal unit about “that guy on the SDMB who somehow manages to work Ke$ha into every post,” but it’s always cool when somebody gets to meet their idol like that. I’m happy you got to meet her and glad you had a great time!
I’m lucky in that I’ve had a good deal of luck discovering artists early in their careers before they become famous. On the other hand, I’ve met an even larger number who never became famous, so it evens out. For instance, I first saw Sarah MacLachlan at Chicago’s most beloved music venue, Schuba’s. A place that can hold maybe 250 people if they don’t have a lot of personal space issues. And one of the most amazing things about the place is that the only way onto the stage is to either walk through the audience, or enter through the side door from the sidewalk. So I talked to her outside on the sidewalk after the show not long after Touch was released.
This venue has been especially lucky for my wife and me. We saw Tori Amos there, when she had to play a rented Yamaha electric grand piano with a flaky sustain pedal that she had to crawl onto the floor to fix. We saw Imogene Heap there, who is freakishly tall and skinny.
But our best female singer-songwriter meetup (though sadly not the most famous, despite her immense talent) is Victoria Williams. We got a phone call from a friend who told us to put our shoes on and hurry the two blocks to the Heartland Cafe. He wouldn’t tell us why. We did, and wound up having dinner with Victoria, and the fact that we were fans wasn’t revealed until someone asked about her sister, who was just barely seen in D.A. Pennebaker’s documentary about Victoria Happy Come Home. Few things cooler than having a nice dinner with someone you admire without the inherent distance of the artist/fan relationship.