REM played the crappy little, acoustically-challenged pseudo-useful meeting hall at my college in 1984. It was had to tell at the time that they’d go on to such acclaim. (Did I mention the bad acoustics?)
While in grad-school in the late 1950s, my father-in-law and some friends spent a weekend in Manhattan. While enjoying some cocktails at a bar, one of the group made a point of telling everyone to remember the name of the trio providing the background music. My father-in-law did. The group: Peter, Paul, and Mary.
I used to know Jake Steinfeld (“Body by Jake”) back in '81 when he was playing the Incredible Hulk at Universal Studios, in the Castle Dracula stage show.
Also, I think it was around that time that I started going to see Los Lobos in various LA clubs.
Jim Carrey was one of the acts in a comedy night at the college I attended in Toronto. This was back in about '82 or '83, I think.
I also saw Howie Mandel in 1980. He was doing the warm-up for a TV show taping that a friend and I attended in Los Angeles. We talked with him afterwards, too.
I saw No Doubt a few times in the '83-84 timeframe. A couple times at “kegger parties” and when they opened up for The Untouchables at The Golden Bear in Huntington Beach. Gwen wasn’t singing then, they had a male vocalist and were more of a ska band back then, but they were fun.
I saw the Flying Karamazov Brothers at a science fiction convention in Albany, NY in 1980. There were only three of them at the time, and they passed the hat afterwards. Even then, they were amazing.
I saw Bobcat Goldthwait the week before his first late-night-talk-show appearance. (I forget which one.) He wandered onstage alternatingly mumbling and yelling about various things and generally acting like the kind of person you hate to share a subway car with. We spent a few minutes looking at each other with “this is an act, right?” expressions, but after our discomfort level eased off a bit he was very funny.
Saw Creed playing an outdoor club in Gulf Shores, AL early in 1998. They were on the cusp of fame, and surely were’t playing clubs much longer after that.
I saw the Sex Pistols in London in 1976, I think it was at the 100 Club. They were terrible.
The band I managed and did live sound for, played with INXS at the Manly Vale Hotel, in front of about 30 people. They were great. This would have been 1978 or 79.
I saw Dennis Franz and Joe Mantegna when they were in the play “Bleacher Bums” at the Organic Theater here in Chicago in the 70s. I liked the play enough to see it a second time.
I saw Dixie Chicks play a night club in the suburbs northeast of Houston in 1988 or '89. Oddly enough, we weren’t really there to see the Dixie Chicks. A couple of the guys in the local band that opened for them held day jobs working for my husband and we went to see them play.
The National Lampoon Show (not “Lemmings”, please note) came on a college tour circa 1975, and I saw them at MIT. They had just lost their chubby comedian/singer John Belushi to some late-night Saturday TV show, so they replaced him with … Meatloaf!
This was before Rocky Horror Picture Show or Bat Out of Hell, and no one knew who the hell he was. “Meatloaf? What kind of name is that?” He not only sang the opening song (“We Don’t Give a Shit!”), he also acted in skits like “The Rhoda Tyler Moore Show.” Very weird.
Well, Staind used to play just about every weekend at a bar in Springfield, Mass., around 4-5 years ago (the Infinity; oh how I miss it since it closed). They would play nothing but grunge-era cover tunes. They then started playing originals, which most people hated at the time since they came to see covers.
(I’m feeling out of the loop again, as about 2-3 of the people/acts mentioned–which must be popular if they’re in this thread–are not even vaguely familiar by name to me.)
I suppose I couuld scan the brain for more, and perhaps will, but in 1971 I took a date to see Brit blues rocker John Mayall and the opening act was one we’d never heard of. Expected a girl singer blues band when we noted the show opened with an act called Alice Cooper.
In late '72 or early '73 my band opened at The Warehouse in New Orleans for another Texas band we’d known in a previous incarnation as The Moving Sidewalks, then reconstituted as ZZ Top.