What are the strangest concert combinations you have seen?
I have seen a decent number of concerts over the past 15 years or so and the format typically consists of the headliner with a somewhat lesser known opening act, usually of the same musical genre. However, I have experienced a couple of shows where 1) the musical acts seemed somewhat incompatible, and 2) the fans of the headliner/opener were somewhat incompatible.
Example #1:U2, the Sugarcubes, and Public Enemy ca. 1991 on the Zoo TV tour at the stadium formerly known as the Oakland Coliseum (Please excuse my unclear dates. I tend to date things by “after high school but before college” or “before kids but after marriage” so I am often off by a couple of years. If this is the case here, please forgive me.). Great concert made even better by 30,000 white boys and girls from the Bay Area jumping up and down chanting “Fight the Power, Fight the Power.” I assumed that they were just really excited about the song that Chuck D and Flavor Flav had written for them.
Example #2:Primus and Rush ca. 1993. This was a case of the latter. A large (and vocal) contingent of the crowd was there for Primus. This was apparently somewhat irritating to the Rush fans who were quietly sitting and waiting for the guy in the pig suit to get off the stage so Geddy and Co. could come out and do their thing. The area around me became quite heated both before and after Primus played and I subsequently left, as I don’t particularly care for Rush.
:::runs for cover and gets hit in the back of the head with a copy of Moving Pictures:::
(Incidentally, my very non-scientific theory about Rush is that you have to be a musician to appreciate them. Within my circle of acquaintences, this is largely born out. Musicans like them. Non-musicans don’t. I find this is also true for Mr. Big, Extreme, and Dream Theater. I am now prepared to be rebuffed by all of the non-musician fans of the aforementioned bands.)
I also used to run sound for a band that did a '70s style Elvis show. We once had a clown who did balloon animals open for us. It was a birthday party. We all got balloon hats.
There was a concert featuring the well-matched musical styles of Jimi Hendrix opening for The Monkees. Definitely a show that you’d leave after the first act!
In August I saw CAKE play on the “Unlimited Sunshine” tour and it was a different musical experience.
The first group to open was Kinky, who is a Mexican funk rock group. I’ve never heard of them, but they were real good.
Next up was a group who came on in between sets when they were setting up for the next band. These guys were the Hackensaw Boys from West Virginia I believe and they played mountain music. It was like 9 guys crowded around one microphone playing the banjo, accordian, washtub bass (I made that last one up, but it would have fit). They were fun to see.
Next was Modest Mouse who were kinda an alternative group, but they played too long and were a little boring.
Next up was De La Soul. They were pretty good, even though I don’t like Hip Hop too much, they did great.
Then we got to hear The Flaming Lips and I had never heard of them, but they were awesome. Very weird, but good music. They put on a great show, complete with disco balls, band members dressed in animal costumes and a video screen showing clips of random stuff.
Finally Cake came on and rocked it out.
They were very very good and I was impressed. So all in all, it was an eclectic 5 hours of music, but a lot of fun.
I saw the Folk Implosion open for the Melvins in Philadelphia a year or two ago. That was pretty freaky. I and my friends were there to see both bands, but most of the audience members were strictly Melvins fans only.
This was well before my time, but in Iggy Pop’s autobiography he tells a story about meeting Buffy Sainte-Marie when they were both playing at a music festival in northern Wisconsin. I guess the festival organizers really wanted to provide a little something for everyone…
The Who first toured the US opening for Herman’s Hermits. My mother’s older siblings attended one of these shows, and my aunts were none too happy about having to sit through the Who’s set!
I have the same theory, and of the many Rush fans I know, only one is not a musician.
As for a strange band combination? I saw Asia back in the mid-eighties at the Santa Cruz civic center. The show opened with a juggler. But it was the coolest juggling act I’ve ever seen. He was dressed in all black, so they’d turn the lights off, switch on the black lights and he’d juggle with glow-in-the-dark balls, or multi-colored gauze swatches, etc. It was extremely cool. And he’d do all this to music. That is, his juggling matched the tempo of the song. It’s hard to explain, but I swear the whole crowd was completely blown away.
It was the first time that I ever saw a opening act get an encore.
Speaking of Rush, I seem to recall that on one tour (I’ve seen all of them since 2112) they opened up with .38 Special (I think it was). I thought that was pretty strange, a “Southern-fried” rock band opening up for the Canadian progressive Rush.
It was like drinking a beer and chasing it with champagne.
I saw the Rush/Primus tour when it came to NY; pretty good concert. I can spot Rush fans fairly accurately based solely on their appearance. While the two bands are fairly different, the guys in Primus were Rush fans, which is probably how they got the opening gig. A better combination was Fishbone/Primus, which I saw at SUNY Stony Brook around 1991. The worst combination was Fishbone at Hofstra, with Major Domo (?) as the opening band. I think they were a local Long Island band or something. One thing is for sure: I seriously doubt anyone walked out of that show saying “Wow, I’m going to pick up that Major Domo record tomorrow!”
I saw Counting Crows back in 1994 with the Cox Family–the very traditional bluegrass outfit responsible for some of the music in “Oh Brother Where Art Thou”–opening for them. Adam Duritz came out beforehand and explained that they invited them to open some shows for them because they really liked their music. Indeed, the whole band sat in a roped-off area to the side and watched the Cox Family’s set. I thought it was cool, but I was in the minority. (This was long before “O Brother” made bluegrass somewhat cool.)
I also saw a Phish show in Nashville in the summer of 2000 where they were joined by Ricky Skaggs, Sam Bush, the Del McCoury Band, and a very drunk Wynonna Judd. Sam and the younger McCourys sat in on “Harry Hood”, Del and Ricky joined them for a few bluegrass standards, then Wynonna took the stage to sing “Free Bird”, after announcing that she was celebrating her divorce becoming final.
I talked to Ronnie McCoury a couple of months later, and he wouldn’t confirm that Wynonna was hammered, but he did say that she had called them up and asked if she could come and hang out. The guys from Phish weren’t completely sure who she was, but after he and the others explained, they said fine. The whole night was apparently a hoot. I know I had a good time.
Another weird combo–I was at the HORDE Festival in Cincinnati, traditionally a traveling festival of hippie rock, when it featured everyone’s favorite hippie band, Smashing Pumpkins. They were on the main stage right before Blues Traveler. I forget who else played, but between the two, Government Mule was playing a set on the second stage set up out back. I do love the Mule, so we listened to the Pumpkins while jockeying for a good spot for the Mule set.
I have come to appreciate SP somewhat more since then, but it was weird to care more about the little band playing out back than the huge one up on the stage.
A friend of mine said one of his favorite concerts from the 70s was seeing The Marshall Tucker Band open for Jethro Tull.
I went to see The Allman Brothers Band in Auburn, AL in 1995, their opening act was Edwin McCain. This was when McCain’s “Solitude” was still a popular song. When he finished his set, a big chunk of the audience left. Philistines.
Can’t say ive seen many weird combinations (i THOUGHT that the Promise Ring opening for Bad Religion was going to be weird, but they sound remarkably similar in concert. Or perhaps, sounded, since while Bad Religion has certainly gotten a softer edge in the 2 years since I saw them, TPR has utterly changed its recording style. I wonder if they sound different in concert too…did anyone see them on Conan, I missed it.
I’m not going to their concert, but some of the opening acts for the Stones current tour seem remarkably incompatible: 'fristance, No Doubt and, get this, Elvis Costello!!! The only one that made much sense was the Strokes.
Hmmm, the best I can think of was a show that had Nonpoint opening for Sevendust opening for Fuel…
2 very hard, very funkified Rap-Rock groups opening for cheesy 70’s rock star type wannabes. It was kinda funny, as the Nonpoint/Sevendust fans were predictably extreme in their moshing, crowd surfing, beating the crud out of one another, etc. (I know I know… “how original and HARDCORE! grrr!”) while the Fuel flans fled to the back. Think grungy chain wearing angry teenage boys slamming in to each other while preppy girls in abercrombie t-shirts and those damned 3 inch thick foam sandals screamed and fled :D. The venue cleared out significantly when the openers had finished.
