I saw The Presidents of the United States of America in '94 or '95 as the opening act for They Might Be Giants.
Brendan Fraser went to college?
Melissa Etheridge, playing at Mac Hall at the U of Calgary, in 1989.
Jann Arden, while still playing bars, in Calgary. A lot. I like her.
The Odds playing in Calgary. Uh, about 1990 or 92.
Come to think of it, I’ve seen a lot of bands in a lot of bars in Calgary. Some of 'em are even famous now, or at least making a living doing what they love. Trouble is, I can’t remember them all too clearly.
I went to the Second City comedy club in Chicago in 1989. The cast at the time included Mike Myers, Chris Farley and Tim Meadows.
Friend and I are in the college dorm sitting by the open window. We hear music coming from the grassy area between two dorm quads (groups of dorms). We went to check out the band. Asked around and couldn’t find out the name. The next day, the Diamond Back (U of Md paper) said that a little known band “Living Color” had played La Plata beach (the informal name given to the grassy area).
Fast forward 1 year. Same friend comes back from the Rolling Stones concert at RFK. Says, “You’ll never guess who opened for the Stones.”
I saw the Verve Pipe back in '92. Yes, they played “the Freshman.” Yes, I was sick of it then, too, four or five years before it became a hit…
I jammed with Bruce Hornsby at a club in Norfolk VA in the early eighties.
“I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.”
—Oscar LevantI saw Margaret Cho and Caroline Rhea doing their standup acts in college (early 90’s) before both made it big.
Nirvana, in the two months it took between the release of Nevermind and when they became huge. All three band members signed my copy of the album.
Counting Crows, opening for Cracker in 1993, in front of a grand total of 25 people. I was impressed with the rest of the band, but thought the lead singer was insufferably whiny, an impression that still stands. We hung around their dressing room for a bit in between the sets. A few months later, “Mr. Jones” and their album were everywhere.
My high school’s basketball team in Germany soundly beat Fulda American High School, where Shaquille O’Neal was a student. I went to all the games, but don’t remember the guy at all. He was only a sophomore his last year at Fulda, so it’s possible he was on the j.v. team, but we beat Fulda’s j.v. squad that year as well.
I worked in a theater costume shop backabout '88 and made a pair of pants for Chris Noth. I don’t remember if he was “Mr. Big” but he sure wasn’t much of an actor.
Garth Brooks, touring to promote his first album, in a little dinky place (can’t recall the name now) in Seattle, probably around 1988 or 1989.
My friend and I were sitting in chairs on the dance floor. At one point, he got off the little stage and walked around the crowd, singing “If Tomorrow Never Comes”, or maybe it was “The Dance”, one of those ballads anyway.
He stopped right in front of us. My nose was about a foot from his groin. I really, really wanted to look up at his face, but I couldn’t.
Back in high school, Mr. McCourt tought English class, and Tim hung with the student theater types.
Today, Mr. (Frank) McCourt shines his Pulitzer Prize when he’s not cashing his “Angela’s Ashes” checks. And Tim (Robbins) is starring in Hollywood blockbusters when he’s not boffing Susan Sarandon.
(While I, on the other hand, piss away my days on online message boards. Big whoop, right?)
My old band opened for Ian Moore at the library(a club called the library), in Denton Texas. My microbus(we were kind of a hippie band), didnt lock, so I spent most of his show out in the parking lot watching the gear. Somebody in his group called my playing “tastefull”, whatever that means
I used to play in a band with the quitar player from the Grand Street Cryers, but they never made it that big(got a little airplay though).
About as close as I get. Pretty pathetic really
I seem to have lived my life by missing the big things.
REM played in Chapel Hill, N.C., in the early '80s. Small clubs. Didn’t see 'em, although I did take in a Root Boy Slim concert (big hit: “Boogie Til You Puke”)
In the late '70s, I heard in the dorms about this great concert by this guy you had to see. I never heard of him, so I didn’t go. That was Billy Joel, just before “The Stranger” came out.
Then, as a book reviewer in the early '90s (and a trained, card-carrying journalist, just so you know how humiliating this is), I was standing in line in a bookstore, behind a woman buying FIVE copies of a little book that she planned to give all her friends. Maybe I should write the title down and enquire. Which I did, but I didn’t follow up about it, until later, after “The Bridges of Madison County” shot to the top of the best-seller list.
I passed on an interview with Mel Torme because I couldn’t wait any longer and published my review of his book “My Singing Teachers.” He had a stroke and died not too long after that.
I’ve got a lovely note from Robertson Davies’ secretary from an impassioned fan note I wrote him after reading his Cornish Trilogy. I also reviewed several of his later books, but before I could interview him, he died.
Did get an interview with Albert Speer (Hitler’s architect), but that was rather past his prime, y’know.
Oh, just recently, a name that had popped up a few years ago among fans of XTC – Yazbek – is in this week’s Entertainment Weekly’s top 100 creative list.
Yep, when it comes to the greats, I manage to miss 'em all.
I was at one of those big radio station-sponsored megaconcerts in December of 98 where I had the misfortune to see a just-about-to-be-really-famous Kid Rock emcee the event. It was a nightmare. The midget, the screaming, the bad clothes, the slurred speech (he went through maybe 3 bottles of Boone’s Farm onstage)…dear god. I remember thinking that they had only hired him because he was a local act. Now, after two years of Kid Rock’s reign of terror, I like to tell people “I saw Kid Rock before he was famous…but not before he was drunk!”
I saw the Red Hot Chili Peppers when their big hit was “True Men Don’t Kill Coyotes” (I wonder if even they remember that song) and they were an opening act for a band you do not know.
I only took pictures of them because I was there to shoot the main act (who you don’t know) for East Coast Rocker, but I have documentation of a relatively tattoo free Anthony Kedeis.
I’ve got a lot of “almost” stories.
I almost saw Nirvana in 1989 at the 9.30 Club in Washington DC (capacity: 250). Only reason I didn’t go was nobody else wanted to, I didn’t have a car and I’m not stupid enough to try to get home from downtown DC on my own late at night. Disclaimer: it wasn’t them I wanted to see, but the band they were opening for, Loop.
I saw Green Day when they were still called Sweet Children back around 1986. I also knew their drummer when he was 13 and playing in a band called The Lookouts.
I would have gone to see the Pixies in San Francisco in 1987 (?) opening up for Throwing Muses, but I wasn’t 18 at the time so I had to go to the all-ages Muses gig in Berkeley instead, which the Pixies weren’t playing.
I would have gone to see Oasis’s first gig in New York at … some small club in Tribeca I can’t remember the name of, but my friend backed out of going and I didn’t like them enough then to go on my own.
sigh
I did see REM in 1984. They were already quite big on the underground circuit - this was at the several-thousand capacity Wilson Theatre in DC.
Also saw 10,000 Maniacs at the 9:30 Club around that time (i.e., when they were good and before Natalie Merchant became the insufferable tree-hugging prat I soon grew to despise).
I saw Blur several times on the tour for their first album in the early 90s (and loads and loads of times since).
If I can add a few relatively-obscure but still internationally-known (by the “right” people ;)) bands, I saw the first gigs ever played by Operation Ivy and the Lilys, and I saw Velocity Girl at least a dozen times when Bridget from Unrest was still their singer. And I saw Mogwai in 1996 at a tiny club in King’s Cross, London, the first opening band on a gig filled with other Scottish bands who’ve since faded into (mostly well-deserved) obscurity.
I had the hilarious good fortune to see Sinbad, before he had even made his first television appearance, at the Comedy Club. He was not the headliner, but he was by far one of the funniest comedians I’ve seen in person in my life.
Same goes for Jeff Foxworthy. He had just started to make a name, and was appearing at the Comedy Club, too. That is one guy that is absolutely hysterical onstage. His t.v. shows weren’t that great, but in person, he’s a riot.
I saw Van Halen open for Kiss in the mid 70’s, but since I’d never even heard their name before, I think I spent most of the time they were onstage getting beer at the concession area. I guess some folks liked them pretty well, though. 