The best opening act you've ever seen & heard?

Well, there was this dive bar in Berkeley and Quicksilver was headlining. It was the bad Quicksilver, Dino Valenti posing and Cippolina long gone but we went anyway. The opening act was this bunch of High School kids. Really, 16 and 17 year old gals. We all liked the blonde bass player. we had never heard of the Runaways.

You should have seen the groupies. All guys...

That show in Oakland where the Dead opened for the Who, we were right up front and we were yelling at the Dead from the start to tune up. After a bit they stopped and started talking about how the guys in front were yelling at them so they tuned up. They were really good after they got that out of the way.

Mott the Hoople at Winterland. Second on the bill was BTO. We couldn't stop laughing at the. It was like having three fat bass players on stage at the same time. The opening act was a bunch of kids that seemed more interested in shaking their behinds than playing music. We couldn't hoot them off the stage quickly enough. That was Aerosmith. Man they were lame.

Then there was Doc Watson at Stanford. The opening act was John Fahey. John came out on stage alone with a chair and a guitar and a bottle of Burbon. That's it. He tore it up.

Thw Who at the Cow Palace, the kick off of the Quadrophenia tour, the night that Moon only played half the set and had to be carried off and they got a kid out of the audience to play drums for the second half of the show, that night? The opening band was a complete unknown, Lynrd Skynrd before all the guys were dead. They were at their best when they were alive.

I won't even mention the Go Go's opening for AC DC.  They were fun. Then again, the Dead Kennedy's opening for the Clash at Kezar Pavilion was great. The floor there is on springs. It's really a Basketball arena. Great but small. They had the stage set up on the floor of course with all those overhead lights. When the crowd commenced to pogo the floor went up and down on the springs and the lights went up and down over their heads. 

They had to stop the show to pull the lights down.

After that drama the Kennedy's continued followed by the Cramps and the Clash. The real star was the floor.

Sometimes the very best opening act is no act at all. Saw Ray Charles a couple of times at the Great American Music Hall which holds only a few hundred and there was no opening act. Ray and his band came out and did their thing.

That was just fine with me.

Larsman

Man, you do get around. Sure, the Dead stopped and talked and fiddled around during shows, nothing odd there. What was hilarious about this particular show was that they had just started and they stopped and tuned up specifically in response to this group of idiots making fools of themselves right up front. I remember the sentiment from the stage being along the lines of "We really must be bad, damn, they're yelling at us, let's fix this." 

I guess you had to be there.

Wait, you were. 

Anyway, I haven't seen the Dead but a few times since Pig Pen died. I'm a native San Franciscan so I guess I got used to seeing them for free. 

Here's a show you most likely saw, March 8, 1973 in Berkeley, a single guy strode onto stage with his guitar. We, in our ignorance, didn't know who he was but after he got the spotlight on him we figured out that Ramblin' Jack Elliot was something special. He was followed by Commander Cody and his Lost Planet Airmen with the New Riders of the Purple Sage headlining. The New Riders, as you know, were the country wing of the Dead. Great show. Great opening act.

Why is the date significant? Well, we didn't know until later that that was the day that Pig Pen died.