I saw him around '77. He'd already caught on, so it was a fairly large show, but pretty cool to see him back then.Originally Posted by Ten Thumbs
I also was in the audience for Monty Python Live at City Center, but I don't know if they did just the one performance or if it was more than one. Very cool though, and fun. A few guys in the crowd dressed as the Gumby guy with the hankerchief on their heads.
I saw Saga many many time when they were actually fucking excellent.They were called Pockets back then, and played a 6 night stint at one of the diviest bars in our town. But they layed waste. Were a great band till that first album came out.
(I have to put that in incase Uschi sees this.
I don't know if it counts, but I'm proud of seeing Adrian Belew several times before he achieved some fame. First with Zappa, then the next year with Bowie, then the next year with Talking Heads, and then finally with Crimson on the Discipline tour.
on one of many extremely boozed up nights on hamburg’s reeperbahn in 1996 i caught neal morse busking in an irish pub with another local muso who'd entertain the usually legless saturday night punters. the following monday i picked up germany’s leading rock/metal mag and recognized his pic in a rather raving article about SPOCK’S BEARD. two years later that band played annual tours covering most of europe with attendances of ~ 1,000/night. ah, memories...
Last edited by iguana; 01-21-2013 at 07:09 AM.
In his book "Testimony" Neal talks quite a bit about those solo acoustic tours he did in Europe just prior to Spock's being able to tour there. He has some good stories.
Steve Sly
Dennis Chambers used to play in local bands around here but I was mostly seeing national acts back then.
I knew him in Baltimore, when he was with Carl Filipiak.....
Hell, they ain't even old-timey ! - Homer Stokes
He has a double CD, "Two Separate Gorillas," of one or more of these shows. Wasn't it Nick D' Virgilio he played with? Can't remember. Is this CD oop?
Carl's first cd Blue Entrance is really good, but from the second one on they slowly got less fusiony.
Saw Bon Jovi walking down Grafton Street (main shopping street) in Dublin before they were famous. All in full leather gear and poodle hairstyles – so small they were like a set of action figures. Everyone ignored them!
Dave
i have got it and indeed i was at one of the gigs that were recorded for this! it was in july 2000 at the “thomas reed” pub in hamburg. the following day SPOCK’S BEARD were supporting DREAM THEATER in town. during the gig all of the other members of SB joined in on stage as well as john, mike and jordan of DT, performing “baba o'riley” and “papa was a rolling stone” with nick, neal and everyone else who couldn't get off stage quickly enough. in the meantime they all basically mingled, drank sumptuous amounts of beer and chatted with everyone. one of the finest evenings of music that i ever had the privilege to attend. all of this for 10 marks at the door. ryo okumoto was a hoot and a pleasure to speak to, also, the members of DT were very cool and it was great to witness how excited they still were about music in general, even if just being able to make a racket and bash out a few tunes without any great ambition. i also attended the regular concert the next day – and SB totally destroyed DT, imho. it was during the “scenes from a memory” tour, an album which i never liked, and, come “snow”, which was equally ambitious but ultimately a huge step backwards and a disappointment for me, i quickly went off both bands and moved on musically. shame really, good memories keep coming back sporadically. prog on and keep moving.
no idea whether this CD is out of print. at the time it was mailed directly from radiant records and neal morse himself signed the attached customs sticker ;-)> it has a catalogue number (RA-007), but no barcode. best try them directly.
Last edited by iguana; 01-27-2013 at 06:06 AM. Reason: addendum
I saw Bon Jovi opening up for ZZ Top on the Eliminator tour. They definitely hadn't broke yet, and I'm not even sure the first album came out at that point. This is a bit embarassing, but I thought they were good. Then again, that night was the first time I ever smoked hash.
In December of 77 I saw Kiss at Madison Square Garden (my first concert) and the opener was a decent hard rock band named Piper. A member of Piper later went solo and got pretty huge for awhile: Billy Squier.
I saw Metallica opening up for Raven a few months before Ride The Lightning came out. They were great.
I saw Primus just as they were breaking big (well, as big as Primus ever got). They were booked into a small club in NYC that my friend's band usually played. I'll never forget the show, because it was one of those really hot NYC summer nights, when it was still in the upper 80s at night and extremely muggy. Add to that that the show was oversold and the AC wasn't working right, and it was a steambath in the club. Even though it was super crowded, it was easy to move around, as everyone was drenched in sweat. Literally, after the show I took out my wallet and everything in it was wet.
I don't know if/when Angel became famous or successful, but I saw them open for Queen during their NOTW tour, which was my first (of three) Queen shows.
I saw Led Zeppelin open for The Who. Page was still using the Tele and the Rickenbacker Transonic amp I saw him use a couple of years earlier with The Yardbirds....
Hell, they ain't even old-timey ! - Homer Stokes
This isn't exactly on-topic but maybe it fits. I attended a 'rock n roll flea market' in Philly in the early 80's, and Peter Tork was a 'special guest.' I saw him in the VIP area, but to me he was just another person in the room. I mean he wasn't charismatic or anything.
I played on a bill with Herman's Hermits (minus Herman, of course) back around '92. That's in the "after they were famous" category, obviously. The guitar player (original guy) was a real dick, so we kept bringing up Peter Noone, who was on TV, and asking if he had seen him lately...
Marillion and Iron Maiden on their first US tours.
Billy Sheehan and Rick James when they were only famous locally. Sheehan was in a local band called Talas. Great group.
High Vibration Go On - R.I.P. Chris Squire
I thought Page used a Supro in the early days, or maybe that was just in the studio?
My first amp, circa 1978, was a battered old Supro tube amp from the 60s. Everyone used to tell me that Page used the same amp in the early days, and I'm sure I've read that too.
Last edited by ItalProgRules; 01-30-2013 at 03:57 PM. Reason: dyslexia
High Vibration Go On - R.I.P. Chris Squire
Kinda related: My first year at university and I start volunteering at the radio station. Met this dude who did the time-slot right before me. He walks in and says "we just got this album in, and it's pretty damn good" and he hands it to me... the first Dire Straights album. So I play the first song on the record, that's always easy. Opened the show with Sultans of Swing. Loved it right off the hop. Buddy says "ya, I just played that one on my show too". So that guy and I sterted playing the shit out of that album. We started getting calls from listeners to hear SoS. Every other dj was catching on and getting calls to play that song, and more music from that album. I swear to God, it was as close as I ever saw to having a "hit" sensation on campus radio. No word of a lie...it was literally months before they exploded commercially with that track. I was already sick of the song by the time SoS became a hit. lol This is going back 35 years, but I'm gonna guess that it became a hit 6 months after we had worn the grooves off the record.
Did you steal records? I had a campus radio slot too, and i have to confess, I swiped a lot of records. My theme song was the opening of ELP's "Fanfare for the Common Man" but they made me play a lot of New Wave. I remember playing a lot of A Flock of Seagulls.
Man am I old
High Vibration Go On - R.I.P. Chris Squire
I worked in radio for about a year, and although I never stole anything I (and the rest of the staff) used to “borrow” a lot of albums taking them home to listen to them. Actually……now that I think about it there may have been a few of the more obscure titles that never made it back to the station. I remember when Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” was released we had to get multiple copies because they kept disappearing from the station (this is back when everything except for ads was played on turntables.)Did you steal records? I had a campus radio slot too, and i have to confess, I swiped a lot of records. My theme song was the opening of ELP's "Fanfare for the Common Man" but they made me play a lot of New Wave. I remember playing a lot of A Flock of Seagulls.
Man am I old
Steve Sly
I had that Piper album, it was pretty good. I wasn't much interested in Squier's solo work, probably because it was HUGE.
You say Mega Ultra Deluxe Special Limited Edition Extended Autographed 5-LP, 3-CD, 4-DVD, 2-BlueRay, 4-Cassette, five 8-Track, MP4 Download plus Demos, Outtakes, Booklet, T-Shirt and Guitar Pick Gold-Leafed Box Set Version like it's a bad thing...
Nahhhh not really. Would have loved to, but that station plastered the album cover with a big CFBU in magic marker...then the programming dept put a sticker on it describing the genre and suggested tracks to play.
Not to veer too far off topic, but I did have a very cool and unique experience when I re-commenced my radio gig in 2000. As Steve noted, back in the day, it was all records...and they had a huge and wonderfull record room....all 4 walls from floor to ceiling shelves full of albums.
Anyway, after 20 years since my last show there as a student...CFBU got an FM licence and an old friend suggested I go there to try to get a show again. long story short, I did, and they gave me one. Of course by now, the record room was hardly used, it was all cds. One day, I had a long track on, so i thought I'd wander into the old record room where I had spent so much time. I'm looking at so many old records that I actually played on my show back then. Out of the corner of my eye, I spot something. You have to remember, with so many albums, you have to get up close to read the spines, that's all you could see. Except this one album was the last on the shelf so i could see the cover. I go to pull it out: the original prog all-star "Peter and the Wolf", complete with the thick booklet. SO THAT'S WHERE MY ALBUM WAS! I had often wondered what had happened to my album as I could never find it...thought maybe I lent it out or lost it in moves. Yup, the only album in there with no sticker, no CFBU identification...zero. It was MY album that I had accidentally left there over 20 years earlier. Man was I excited. Not only did I dig the album, but it's pretty unique with the booklet and all. I went and told the kids running the place and they were more mind blown than me (well, they were all tickled pink to have a dj there who was a dj back at the beginning in the 70's when they weren't even born lol.)
Another crazy part as I browsed the room, I read many stickers on albums that I myself did the review and picked out suggested tracks for other dj's to play. Bands like Maneige, Roxy Music, Ornette Coleman...it was really cool to look back at how I felt about that music back then.
Anyway, sorry for the steer away here, but you brought back some memories.
Saw Blondie open for John Cale 1977 at My Fathers Place...all I remember was Debbie Harry's perfume as they walked past us
Death of a Child
www.soundcloud.com/darklounge
Maybe not so famous, but I remember when buying a Vandermark 5 disc at Penny Lane the clerk saying something like, that's a good one, if you like this you should come see my band... yeah right i thinks. A few months later in the parking lot outside a local club the kid from the record store says hi and we BS for a couple of minutes. A few minutes later this band Hella comes on and the drummer (Zach Hill, the same kid) plays like five Cobhams w/ a couple of Yoshida Tatsuyas added on... %$#@!!! INSANE. They pretty much played all of Hold Your Horse Is even faster than on the disc. By the end of the set he was as soaked as someone thrown into a swimming pool.
Saw the Cars open for Rick Derringer at a little club in Boston in 1977. The Cars were just a local punk band at the time.
Saw Sha Na Na as a third biller to Sea Train and the Rascals. James Cotton who's pretty huge now in the "forgotten" bluesmen realm was the fourth biller on that show.
Saw Yes open for ELP in 1971 after the Yes Album was released.
Saw Bruce Springsteen in a teeny club (the Main Point) in Bryn Mawr, PA, in 1973. And saw him as the opening act to Jackson Browne earlier that year at the Villanova Field House.
Saw Nils Lofgren when he was performing as Grin.
Saw Beaver Brown tons of times in clubs in Rhode Island years before the Eddie and the Cruisers movie made them famous.
Lou
Looking forward to my day in court.
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