Heh- asked The Untouchables about this once. We wanted to hear a bunch of older stuff, and they said no way- they had a new album to pimp, and some record company guy was there that night! 
I have had that experience. Two Loons For Tea played a benefit for WXPN at Chicago’s Darkroom. It was a Tuesday night and there was a good crowd. But the pinheads who were putting on the show decided that their friend’s band had to be on the bill. None of whom were in the same genre, or any good. And it wasn’t as if any of the THREE opening acts particularly needed the exposure, given that they all had regular gigs, one was the house band for the bar across the street.
Two Loons were amazing.
The end result? The headliner, the band that had traveled to Chicago from Seattle? They finally hit the stage at 1:00 AM! There were maybe six people left in the audience. Grown ups have jobs, and can’t get home at 3:00 AM when they have to get up at 7:00 AM.
The band hasn’t played Chicago since.
I’ve been to a ton of shows in my time and the only opening band that I ever liked and went out to buy their album was the Flaming Lips opening for Beck. They were touring in support of Yoshimi so I’m not sure how “opening band” they were - they may have been a double bill (I think my brother won tickets or something).
All of the hundreds of other opening bands I’ve seen can take a hike.
Tanya Savory opened for David Wilcox at a concert I went to many years ago…I’m now a big fan of her music, it is up there in my top ten list.
I rarely find opening acts to be particularly interesting. But they do give one the opportunity to really get into full concert-enjoyin’ mode by the time the headliner takes the stage.
My experience with opening acts has run the gamut from OMG-this-band-sucks-so-bad-I’m-embarassed-for-them to HolyShit-this-band-rocks.
There have been times I’ll show up late because I know I don’t like the opening bands, and times when there were too many opening bands and I started getting really antsy because I wanted to see the headliners.
But all in all, I enjoy the opportunity to discover new music.
I’m not a fan of live music at all, so I’m even less keen on Some Band I’ve Never Heard Of when I’ve shown up to see The Headliner.
I understand that’s how Lesser Bands get exposure, but even so, I don’t necessarily want to be exposed to them.
Opening for other bands must have left quite an impression on Paul and Storm, as they wrote a song which sums up the experience pretty well.
Ugly Duckling has a very similar track called Opening Act. Unfortunately there don’t seem to be any free online versions available, other than short samples.
I can think of two good opening acts I saw:
Guns 'N Roses opening for Aerosmith, 1988
Primus opening for Rush, 1992
I don’t have a problem with opening acts, per se. Everytime I think of opening acts, though, I think of when I went to a Ja Rule concert when I was in high school (if I remember correctly, I only paid two dollars for my ticket, so that was the only reason why I went) and there were FIVE opening acts before Ja Rule. In the beginning, the audience and I would cheer them on, because performaners have to start somewhere, but by the fifth act, we were all getting very irritated and chanting “Ja Rule! Ja Rule!”
On the opposite side of the spectrum, I was at a Tori Amos concert in 2002, and Howie Day opened up for her. I had never heard of the guy then, but he put on a great show, and the whole audience loved him (He was even shocked on how well received he was). I almost even bought his Austrailia cd before I heard what a huge dick he was. But he put on a good live show!
a partial list of opening acts I’ve seen:
Mahavishnu Orchestra
Climax Blues Band*
West Bruce and Lang
Sun Ra
Jack Dejohnette
Lake*
Dixie Dregs*
Blue Oyster Cult
Foghat
Tommy Tutone (amazing live band)
Joan Jett
Golden Earring
Blackfoot
Saxon
Fastway
Shooting Star
Stevie Ray Vaughan*
Zebra (left before headliners Cheap Trick)
Dokken
Survivor
Yngwie Malmsteen (sucked, BTW)
the Motels
Robin Trower
Guess Who
Heart
Fabulous Thunderbirds (Jimmie Vaughan)
Foghat
Atlanta Rhythm Section
Outlaws
Dave Mason
Spirit
Little Feat
Big Head Todd and the Monsters*
Screaming Cheetah Wheelies*
Jeff Beck
Buddy Guy
Eric Johnson
Derek Trucks Band*
Lynyrd Skynyrd
Kenny Wayne Sheppard
Aaron Squirrel Band*
Joe Cocker
*these were all unknown to me before the show.
I’ve learned not to ignore the opening acts. Some of them are going to be headlining by the end of the year (and yeah, some of them will fade into obscurity). I almost talked my friends into going late to a Moody Blues show because I thought, based on his one song on the air, that the opener would blow. That was Stevie Ray Vaughan. I’ll never forget his show, but don’t remember a single Moody Blues song from that night.
Different time and place, same story for a Doobie Brothers concert. I don’t want to have to sit through a set by a band that has “Dixie” in there name. “I hate that bluegrass, down-home corpone crap.” Fortunately cooler heads prevailed and I got to see one of the truly great underappreciated bands - The Dixie Dregs.
Yeah I like opening acts.
The only bands in your list that I’ve ever heard of are Lynyrd Skynyrd, Jeff Beck, Joe Cocker, Tommy Tutone, and the Blue Oyster Cult. And I can’t name a Blue Oyster Cult song, I’m just aware of their existence. So this just proves most opening acts are nobodies, IMHO.
I saw AC/DC open up for Savoy Brown. I thought they were insane and I gave the guitar player a year before his head snapped off and rolled into the audience. I saw them open up for Ted Nugent maybe a year or so later.
Guster is the greatest band that will ever make music (in my eyes at least). I’ve seen them four times as the headliner and they always put on a good show.
And even their opening acts are pretty good. The last time I saw them, they had Matt Nathanson (who did the cover of “Laid” used in the American Pie movies) and he was great with the crowd (and played “Laid” like he was having the time of his life). The time before that I saw them and their opening act came down with some horrible sickness and they canvassed the college looking for any band that would be willing to play. The band they found was pretty good and they even sat with Guster on one song.
Like others, once, I even went for the opening act when I saw Flickerstick open for Lit. Lit was a fun band in college, but Flickerstick was awesome (and sadly saddled with the “not a real band” label because they were on a reality show).
Are you serious? You’ve never heard of the Mahavishnu Orchestra, Sun Ra, Joan Jett, Stevie Ray Vaughan, Robin Trower, the Guess Who, Heart, Dave Mason, Spirit, Little Feat, or Buddy Guy??? Where’ve you been living, under a rock?
Some awesome opening acts/second bills I’ve seen:
Gentle Giant
Emerson, Lake & Palmer
Procol Harum
Strawbs
Renaissance
Fairport Convention
Steeleye Span
Van Morrison
Joni Mitchell
Tom Waits
It’s a Beautiful Day
Donovan
Robert Fripp
Not so awesome to me, but notable:
John Denver
Doobie Brothers
J. Geils Band
Pearl Jam
You do realize that most of these bands (and many of the other ones you listed) were popular between 25 and 40 years ago right? Why would someone have heard of them?
Really? Maybe it’s an American thing, but I have at least heard of almost every band/performer on that list. It’s a YMMV kind of thing, I guess, but just because I haven’t heard of a band doesn’t mean they aren’t popular or well-known in their genre/country/whatever. 
Example- I have only heard of Westlife, Robby Williams, Take That! and several others because I read Hello! magazine, but I understand they are quite popular in the UK… 
Uh, for the same reason I’ve heard of Glenn Miller, Louis Armstrong, and Robert Johnson. And unlike those people, many of the artists mentioned above are still performing. Does your musical world really begin less than 25 years ago? That’s fucking sad.
Don’t be a jackass, I never said my musical world began less than 25 years ago, I said that someone wouldn’t necessarily have heard of musical acts that had their peak between 25-40 years ago.
I know boomers like to think they invented music and what they liked as teenagers is the ultimate form of musical expression (watch any sci-fi movie set hundreds of years from now, all the cool guys love John Lee Hooker), but it’s not fucking true.
Are you 15 or you live under a rock?
You’re going to tell me you’ve never heard of Heart (Barracuda), Foghat (Slow Ride, Fool for the City), Survivor (Eye of the Tiger, Is this Love?), The Guess Who (American Woman), or Joan Jett?
Listen to your local classic rock station for an afternoon- you’ll hear something by one of the bands I mentioned above, and if you’re around here (Texas), you’ll probably hear some Little Feat, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, and Big Head Todd.
Hardly nobodies, just not necessarily currently on the pop charts. I’d argue that if they’re in heavy rotation on classic rock stations around the country 25 years after their songs were big, they’re hardly nobodies, certainly less so than someone like Wilco or Franz Ferdinand.
As for the OP’s question, I like opening bands, provided that they’re at least sufficiently close in talent to the main act to not irritate me. There’s something that just galls me about going to see a major band, and having to suffer through some garage band that should be playing a local club, not a real concert venue. On the other hand, opening acts of the proper caliber enhance the experience.
I’m a bigger fan of seeing bands headline at smaller venues before they get to the bigtime- where they have an album or maybe two, but they’re playing the larger local venues (like say… Fitzgerald’s in Houston was in the 80s or 90s, or like Sons of Hermann Hall in Dallas is for the Texas rock/country/Americana scene is). I got to see Primus headline back in the day, before they took off to open for Rush in about 1993 or so. I also saw 3 Doors Down, with Nickelback(!) opening for them in about 2000 in Dallas. Much better shows than seeing them in the American Airlines center or some huge venue like that.