To their credit, when KISS became headliners themselves, they almost always had excellent bands as their opening act. Over the years, bands like Rush, Judas Priest and Queensryche, among others, have opened for KISS.
Some acts seem to make a conscious decision NOT to have good young bands tour with them, for fear of being upstaged. KISS was always willing to take that chance. In their case, IF they ever got upstaged by their opening acts, it’s because they had the balls to give a very good band that opportunity.
I saw Moby right at the very peak of his Play days. Early 2000, or thereabouts.
Hybrid opened for him. This was before they had really made a name for themselves.
Hybrid was devastatingly great. The whole place jumping and dancing. Enough to where I thought - fuck this concert, I’m going home, getting on Napster (it was those days) and downloading everything I can find of them.
They ended, the crowd roared.
Then Moby came on. Let’s just say things were a bit quieter and more boring. Most people clapped politely, but the energy just wasn’t there.
I know country isn’t huge around these parts, but late 80’s - I went to the Steve Warner concert with a little known new artist who was just releasing his 1st album - Garth Brooks.
This. A lot of bands seem to go for the “Harlem Globetrotters vs. Washington Generals” approach to booking support acts. Some, notably, don’t. KISS, the Stones, and a few others have dared to have somebody at least interesting open up. But the whole “hate the other band” mentality of some audiences makes it difficult for any self-respecting band to want to open.
I had a friend in college who was a HUGE Red Hot Chili Peppers fan, so when we heard they were coming to campus we camped out for tickets. There were two opening acts. I’d heard of one a little, the other not at all.
Which is how I saw Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins open for RHCP*. Literally about a week before Ten just exploded. They were both really great.
*The Peppers didn’t even play a whole set. About the 3rd song in, some guy climbed on stage and security ruthlessly stomped the poor dude. Kiedis stops the band and calls out security, going on a pretty lengthy rant. In the middle of all this, one of the other Peppers (Chad, maybe?) screams, “Rush the stage!” Almost everyone did. The show ended in chaos.
I can’t imagine this happens a whole lot for fairly mainstream concerts, but I see it quite often at metal shows. I think it’s mostly just that when you get to smaller shows you’re just that much more likely to come across an undiscovered gem of a band.
For instance, when Nevermore wasn’t able to headline shows, I saw them open up for a few bands. In one case in particular, where they opened for Savatage, they put on such a good show, that I think I actually nodded off during Savatage because they were just so tame in comparison. I also recall Virgin Black completely outclassing To Die For whose performance was rather mediocre, then again, I was there to see the former and couldn’t have cared less about the latter, so maybe that was some perspective. I do also recall actually going to see one band, Amorphis, and actually being so surprised by how awesome the openning band, Opeth, was, that they even out-played the band I was there to see. That, of course, was back when I was only cursorily aware of them and they weren’t big enough to headline here in the US; it’s a completely different story now.
I’m sure I could think of a few others, but those are the most glaring examples I can think of off the top of my head.
In about 1971 Jerry Garcia was touring solo. In Boston, he had John McLaughlin’s Mahavishnu Orchestra opening for him. I wasn’t there, but the radio and the press both said that McLaughlin blew him away - and the radio started playing “Inner Mounting Flame” as a result. I saw them the next time they were in Boston, and I can believe it.
I’ve never seen Moby play live but have seen some of his concerts on cable channels. And as a fan of his music I can honestly say his concerts look horrible.
He needs to stick to sampling, keyboards, and drum machines. Get him away from guitars, singing, and preaching.
My senior year at UCLA, RHCP were still local hometown heroes, but hadn’t gotten any national exposure yet. They headlined a campus Halloween show with another popular cult college-rock band, Theolonious Monster, and an old-school punk act, The Dickies. The fourth act on the bill nobody had heard of. One friend said “I think they’re some Sunset Strip hair farmer band”. Some band called Guns N Roses.
I was too young, but I can remember a weekend back in the late 70s when the older teens up the street got back from an Aerosmith concert and couldn’t stop talking about the opening band AC/DC blowing Aerosmith off the stage.
Ironically, during the David Lee Roth era, Van Halen was notorious for having crappy no-name opening acts. (Ever heard of The Velcros? Me neither - not before - not after)
U2 seem to go out of their way to take along bands they like. I saw them with The Sugarcubes and Public Enemy, and I know they’ve had The Ramones. Here are some others: The Pretenders, Lou Reed, UB40, The Velvet Underground, The Pixies, Primus, Pearl Jam, RATM, Oasis, No Doubt, Kings of Leon, The Killers. Of course before they were a stadium act, the fame of the opening act was considerably lower.
Speaking of Stones, Jethro Tull and The Who in Rock n Roll Circus. Not only did I notice it, a lot of other people did, too, if Wiki is to be believed. Then again I’m not a Stones fan, even if they did put a little more energy into it than I expected (but were still outshined by JT and the Who)
This is an example of the supporting act not stealing the show. Unfortunately.
The New York Dolls were booked to play the Minnesota State Fair circa 1975. They were supposed to do two 40 minute sets, but after being booked they got a little more famous and blew off one of the sets. I can’t blame them much, since it was about 40 degrees.
The 2nd billed act was Larry Raspberry and the Highsteppers. I knew squat about them, but it turns out that that Raspberry was the force behind the Gentrys (“Keep On Dancing and A-Prancing”).
The Highsteppers came on stage barefoot (in the cold) and were as tight and high-energy as James Brown. The hardest working band in rhythm and blues.
But the crowd was there for the Dolls. Raspberry got ignored. The Dolls were too good for a state fair venue, ran through a few songs and split. The crowd worshiped them.
I saw it and tell the story often. Van Halen seemed almost hungry to please the audience. It also helps that most people at that point hadn’t heard anything like Eddie Van Halen’s guitar style. Black Sabbath seemed tired and just walked through the set (I believe they broke up shortly afterwards).
This is often the case in concert with younger bands versus established ones, the younger bands try harder.
I’ve also seen a Bon Scott fronted AC/DC open up for Ted Nugent. Nugent could play guitar, but relied a lot on his “antics.” AC/DC just blew him away.
Again with the RHCP. I saw Fishbone open up for them, and while the RHCP were great, Fishbone just had so much more energy, they wore the crowd out.
It was either late 1970 or early 1971 that we drove to Knoxville, TN to see Savoy Brown. This was in the Kim Simmonds, Dave Peverett, Tony Stevens, Roger Earl days before the latter three left to form Foghat. They were a really rocking band. But the opening act was the Small Faces, Rod Stewart and Ron Wood having taken the place of Steve Marriott. Their only album was “The First Step,” and they hadn’t changed their name to Faces yet. They blew the roof of the dump! The audience wouldn’t let them leave the stage.
Poor Savoy Brown never had a chance!
Similarly, in early 1972 we went to see Quicksilver in Birmingham, AL. The lineup at that point was Dino Valenti (guitar, vocals), Greg Elmore (drums), Gary Duncan (vocals, guitar), Mark Ryan (bass), and Chuck Steaks (keyboards). So John Cipollina and Nicky Hopkins had left the band. It was still a strong lineup but certainly not their best. The opening act was a group none of us had heard of: Z Z Top.
Guess who carried the day?
That is pretty much the most notorious example - I just saw it when I got the newly released T.A.M.I. DVD - the Stones are fine when they play, but having just had The Hardest Working Man in Showbiz own the stage before you is a bit tough.
The other most notorious example is both well and less known. It is Monterey Pop - and yeah, the famous story is that The Who demanded to go on before Hendrix, because they didn’t want to be upstaged by him or have it look like they were stealing guitar-bashing from him. Both acts killed - as the film shows. But what is forgotten at times is that the actual headliners - who organized the whole Monterey Pop event, and came on last - was the Mommas and the Pappas.
Can you imagine trying to come out and sing Monday, Monday after The Who AND Jimi Hendrix just obliterated the stage??
Epic Fail, as my son would say. The ultimate upstaging…
Not necessarily. The Mamas and the Papas had a different style and no one expected guitar pyrotechnics from them. The change of pace would have worked nicely.
I’m reminded of something Jack Benny once said: that it was impossible to follow the Marx Brothers in vaudeville. They were just too crazy and too funny. Benny was once booked to follow them, which he dreaded – his act was just him playing a few notes on the violin and quietly telling stories and jokes (as opposed to the Marxes tearing apart the stage). But he learned that the audience knew he wasn’t going to be like them, and was willing to listen to the change of pace.
Why did I spell the M&P’s the way I did in my thread :smack: I knew it was wrong…
…anyway, from the documentary I saw about Monterey Pop, it was portrayed that they bombed and might as well not have been on stage after Hendrix. That is not meant to be a slam on them - it’s not like they did anything wrong or just tried to phone in their performance - just that it couldn’t follow those two…
Here’s a description from a DVD review that puts it in a better light:
