In 1983 I went to see The Plimsouls (Peter Case’s pre-solo career band) at The Garage, a tiny little "club" on Ventura Blvd. The room had filled up (elbow-to-elbow tight), and the opening act started their set. My woman and I both looked at each other, our mouths agape. It was Los Lobos, and they were great! Their debut album How Will The Wolf Survive? had yet to be released, but I sure picked it up when it was.
I went to see John Hiatt at The Roxy Theater on Sunset Blvd. during his Perfectly Good Guitar tour, entering the room just as the opening act was starting her final song. The ads for the show listed her name, which was unfamiliar to me. As the song started and progressed, I was stunned; the song she and her band were performing was a great one, and I knew I had missed a quality set of music. It was Sheryl Crow, whose debut album had not yet been released. Damn it!
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.
In the seventies, Earl Klugh (who I never heard of at the time) opened for Bob James.
After the concert, the record store was still open, so I bought every Earl Klugh album they had.
His live performances are WAY better than his studio work (which still ain’t shabby!)
A few years back Ledisi opened for Gregory Porter. She was excellent! Funny, warm and told some fun stories. Since I had a VIP package my wife and I posed with her and got some nice pictures (when I posed with her she looked at my wife and said, “Don’t worry. I’ll give him back when I’m through!” She was very sweet and funny!
In 1972 I went to a free concert in Eisenhower Park on Long Island, NY to see (if you can believe it) Jay and the Americans. The opening act was an unknown group called Steely Dan!
1. Definitely the Clash opening for the Who at Shea stadium
2. Jimmy Cliff opening for Van Morrison at an outdoor show in what used to be called Great Woods in Massachusetts
3. Simple Minds opening for the Pretenders in Hartford CT
4. The Go Gos opening for the Police in New Haven
It was 1978 and as a young G.I. at Fort Hood we went down to Austin to listen to Renaissance. The opening act was AL DiMeola and I have been a HUGE fan ever since.
Last year, I attended a concert by Dwight Yoakam. He had two opening acts, the second of which was The Mavericks. I had never heard them before, and I’m not really a mariachi type of guy, but their playing and singing were so good, and the music was lively and party-mood that I was impressed. Actually, I could have kept listening to the Mavericks — no offense Dwight!
Nine Inch Nails opening for The Jesus & Mary Chain....first tour and they were "flavor of the month" per the record store guy.
I have to agree about Stevie Wonder opening for the Stones in '72... was blind-sided dumb by the genius he so effortlessly displayed, and Talking Book was released a few months later. If the Stones that night had cancelled I knew I'd gotten my $7.50 worth! (Martha Reeves & the Vandellas opened first.)
Why The James Gang (Thirds tour) picked Black Oak Arkansas to open for them is a mystery....BOA was all boogie energy and the JG was drudgy narcotic.... the vibe was confusing.
@kqvkq9- I was at a number of those shows - Who's Dead (I've seen them hundreds of times; at every one of those shows, they often stopped between songs and talk and tune up and all that. I don't think that was special for you, but who knows?), Mott the Hoople, BTW, and Aerosmith (I think that was my first show at Winterland after I moved here), the Who at the Cow Palace (I have some good photos from that one), and the DK's and the Clash at Kezar Pavilion with the bouncy floor; I still remember that!
@alvinnir2- I've got that immense Woodstock box set and was able to hear all the bands that played there in order; Santana was indeed awesome, and they were the first band there that actually ROCKED.
@larsman- And rock they did. There had never been a band before them with so much persussive elements. They were so tight.
I just recently read Sanata’s autobiography and he has a good story about that concert. Apparently they were told they would not go on stage until later in the day so he and the band partook of some psychedelic drugs. Then when they were in the least shape to play an hour or 2 later, schedule changes made it such that they had to go on right away. " Stay in tune....Stay in time" was what Carlos kept saying to himself.They pulled off an amazing set.
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.
@kqvkq9- I moved to San Francisco in 1973 and I've been here ever since; I was in the retail and wholesale record business from '74 - '84 so I got to see a lot of shows for free.
The New Riders weren't really any wing of the Grateful Dead; just good friends; they were a totally separate band except that they sometimes toured with the Dead, Jerry played pedal steel on their first album and when I saw them back in '70 or '71 opening for the Dead, Jerry played pedal steel with them there, too. After that, Buddy Cage joined, one of the best pedal steel players ever...
On the other hand, Jerry Garcia Band and Kingfish were certainly wings of the Dead!
I wasn't here yet in March of '73 but I wouldn't have gone to that in Berkeley anyway; I'm not much into roots/Americana; the Grateful Dead is about as close as I venture there!
@jreiter- Styx opened for Marty Robbins??!!! That's inspired! Dang, somebody should start a thread about the most unlikely-billed shows they've ever gone to..
In February of ‘74, I saw Billy Joel open for Harry Chapin. Joel was on his first tour for the Piano Man album.
So much energy and great music that night!
1978 The Warehouse in New Orleans. The Specials opened for The Police. We didn't know who they were at the time, but were absolutely blown away by their pure fun energy. They were actually swinging from the rafters in the venue. Everyone in our college gang immediately went out and bought their album.
Mine was seeing Pat Benatar open for Billy Squire. Pat and Spyder killed it, and Squire got booed off the stage. As a side note... Santana's drummer Michael Shrieve was the youngest performer at Woodstock.
First warm up band that blew my mind was a little band from TX, before the beards, wearing white cowboy suits and hats. Never heard of ZZ until that night in Tulsa. Main act was Humble Pie. IIRC, it was summer of 72.
A more recent warm up act that endeared me forever to her music was Shawn Colvin, who preceded Don Henley on his Cass County tour earlier this century. It was at the Cobb Energy Center in GA, and her acoustic guitar was as good as I've ever heard live.
Most disappointing warm up band (and please don't bash me, they're very talented) was Tedeschi Trucks, who filled in for Steely Dan when illness took them offline as warmup for the Eagles tour with Vince Gill. Or Vince Gill's tour with his new band. TT was just not what my ears were looking for, given my original expectation was for SD. The Eagles were better than ever that night, so my disappointment was short lived.
In the Summer of '68 my best friend and I went to The San Jose Civic Auditorium to see Lee Michaels open for Steppenwolf. The curtains opened, and there was Lee sitting at his Hammond organ and dual Leslie speaker cabinets, with about fifteen Vox Super Beatle amps running from left to right at the back of the stage. Impressive!
Lee and drummer Frosty kicked off the set with one of the songs from his Carnival Of Life album, and they sounded fantastic. A roadie brought out a glass of some liquid for Lee, setting it on his organ. Unfortunately the kid wasn't looking at what he was doing, as the glass fell over, the liquid splashing all over the organ, shorting something out. End of set!
We stayed for Steppenwolf's set, but I can't tell you much about it. The only live show at which I fell asleep.
This isn't technically a case of an opening act, but at the 1968 Northern California Folk-Rock Festival I witnessed The Electric Flag precede The Doors on stage. The concert poster shows Country Joe & The Fish as the act between the two, but I don't remember them (didn't like 'em).
The Electric Flag were absolutely on fire, Michael Bloomfield proving what a great guitarist he was, drummer Buddy Miles making Keith Moon seem like a light-weight. The Doors had to follow them, and in contrast sounded pretty weak. I had seen the Doors about six months earlier (at The Continental Ballroom in Santa Clara, where I played my first live show in 1966), and they were much better that night. Maybe hearing The Flag intimidated the members of The Doors.
I had a similar experience the first time I saw Los Lobos in 1983. Robert Cray was then king of the West Coast blues circuit, but on this night in Portland, OR he was headlining the Key Largo, not a blues bar (saw the great Emily Remler there on another occasion). One of the pre-concert rumors was that Los Lobos included the son of Garth Hudson. They had to have meant David Hidalgo, who kept soloing on different instruments throughout their set.
When Gram Parsons died with an album in the can, the studio needed to do something to reclaim the situation. They put together a hot studio band, recorded an album featuring Gram’s backup singer, and got them a slot opening for solo guitarist extraordinaire Leo Kottke on tour (late ’74 or early ’75?). We were front row center, and didn’t even know there was an opener until we saw the stage set up for a band! The evening ended up being truly life-changing from the moment the young Emmylou Harris walked onstage and literally stunned the audience.
Many years later, I saw an interview of Leo where he talked briefly about this tour. On later dates, Emmylou joined Leo onstage to sing some harmony vocals. Leo was flat-out amazed.
“I don’t sing in tune. How can you harmonize with me?”
“I sing halfway between where you’re singing and where you should be.”
Some other special opening acts:
Stevie Wonder opening for The Rolling Stones in 1972 - as mentioned several times by others
Bonnie Raitt opening for John Prine in 1973 - my first live "Angel from Montgomery", done as a duo with the author & Bonnie Raitt
Marshall Tucker opening for Charlie Daniels Band & The Allman Brothers in 1973 - the MTB seemingly owned the Santa Monica Civic for good stretch of the 70s
The Band opening for Bob Dylan in 1974 - first time seeing my all-time favorite group
Jackson Browne/David Lindley acoustic duo opening for Bonnie Raitt in 1975 - just before the Running on Empty tour, when Bonnie opened & Jackson had a kick-ass band featuring Lindley
Roy Buchanan opening for Robert Cray, Albert Collins & Freddy King in 1984? - Roy could do anything that could be done on an electric guitar
Since Santana & Michael Shrieve have come up a few times I’ll relate a story told to me by a friend of Michael’s:
Carlos & Michael were friends and hung out together a lot. To see the movie Woodstock they, like everyone else, went to the theater when it first came out.
At the end of the show, when the light came on, people looked over, recognized them, and everyone there started applauding them!
Damn @petaluma, great post! I saw our (yours and mine) favorite band at The Berkeley Community Theater in 1969, on their tour in support of the brown album. By a wide margin the best band I’ve ever seen and heard live (and I’ve seen a lot). I sent for tickets to their ’74 tour with Dylan (held in my area at The Oakland Coliseum), but wasn’t one of the lucky ones whose number came up (it was a lottery). Damn it! And then I moved away from the Bay Area just before The Last Waltz was announced. Double damn!
I saw The Beatles at The Cow Palace in 1965, and they had a hot opening band, an instrumental one named Sounds Incorporated. Call me crazy, but I found them more exciting than the headliner. My first favorite band was The Ventures, whom I finally saw live in 2003, on the Surfin’ To Baja Cruise. Their opening act was another instrumental band, Los Straitjackets, who were a hard act to follow. And I don’t say that because their bassist was an old friend of mine (we met on the first day of 7th grade, and performed together in the 8th grade talent show). LS are now out on tour with Nick Lowe, doing an opening set and then backing him in his.
I’d give one my two hanging organs to have seen Emmylou with The Hot Band live.
I have to agree with everyone who's said this is a great thread! Brought back lots of memories.
For me, the first great opening act I ever saw was UK with Bill Bruford, John Wetton, Allan Holdsworth and Eddie Jobson at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium in 1978. They did the entire first album and repeated "In The Dead of Night" for the encore.
The main act was Al Di Meola doing the Casino tour. When he came out for his encore, he said he'd like to introduce "3 very special friends." Chick Corea, Lenny White and Stanley Clarke came out and they did a 45 minute improv of "Romantic Warrior" mashed with "Duel of the Jester and the Tyrant."
No one was "better" than anyone else that night. It was simply 8 of the best musicians on Earth at the top of their game playing for people who loved them. A truly transcendental experience.
The only other one as memorable was seeing a young Joey Bonamassa at all of 10 or so doing a set with his dad's band at a place called the Beginning II in East Syracuse NY. We saw him play a couple of years later with B.B. King in the Landmark Theater in downtown Syracuse. 5 or 6 years later, he was showing up on PBS specials. We can truly say "we saw him when..."
Hey Richmon that must have been a great show! I did see Allen Toussaint open for Little Feat at the Irvine before Lowell left us. Caught The Captain with The Mothers for the Bongo Fury tour at the Trenton War Memorial and at Emerald City with Rootboy Slim opening. Saw him at the Bijou for the Bat Chain Puller tour also, a true original. We were shouting " webcor, webcor, webcor!
@joeyfed55 - Also was at that Emerald City Beefheart concert, one of the few memories I have of the show is the Captain doing a song where he did his impression of a man in a straitjacket where the song lyric was 'I need some thorzine'
Always will remember the day my friend came over with orange sunshine and Trout Mask Replica - we musta listened to it 5 times and my brain never returned to earth
Outlaws opened for Skynyrd. "There goes another love song" was on the radio some, but few were prepared for The Florida Guitar Army. 40 minute long Green Grass and High Tides encore blew everyone away.
Skynyrd came out drunk and were terrible and we left.
Night Ranger opened for 38 Special at Saratoga Performing Arts Center in 1984.
I saw the Journey Departure tour in 1980. The Babys were originally scheduled to open but the date got pushed back and they had a conflict with the make up date. Too bad, I would have liked to have seen them live.
1979 south side Johnny and the Asbury Jukes opened for j geils band, Boston Gahden. Floor seats, $7.50. Next time Ian hunter and Mott the hoople opened for j geils, v maybe 1980.whew amazing opening acts
November 17th 1978, The clash played my local town and The Slits were one of the warm up acts. They were outstanding. Between the Clash and The Slits it was certainly the best concert I have been to.
Hooten Hallers warming up for Reverand Horton Heat a close second
Several years ago, at the Sheldon in St. Louis. The featured act was the Milk Carton Kids. The opening act was Molly Tuttle with, I believe, "She's with Her" as her band. IMHO, they blew the Milk Cartons into the weeds.
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