Great bands or performers you saw by accident

[jesusarenque]

I went to see the Strokes a couple of years ago and a band I had never heard of opened for them. The Eagles of Death Metal ended up being better than the Strokes. The EODM are still the best live act I've seen.

[Toe-Knee]

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nirvana. duffys,seattle late 89 i think. went w/ some friends to see a "nobody" band on our way to victoria canada. was blown through the back wall. i remember thinking that they were the best band i had ever seen. no teen spirit yet. bad brains at the wow hall in eugene, or was 2nd best.

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I hate you! Here's mine. I won tickets off a radio contest to see BB King, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, and some Joe Bonamassa guy that was opening. Me and my girlfriend got there late and caught the last 5 songs from Bonamassa, I was blown away. He blew Kenny Wayne out of the water. The show turned out to be BB>>>>>>Bonamassa>>>&gt ;>>>>>>>>Shepard. Anyway, I lost my Kenny Wayne Shepard CD, but I have all of Joe Bonamassa's [img]/images/graemlins/tongue.gif[/img]. Here's Clip of Joseph

[Mister Z]

I used to work at a tennis shop (around 1996 or so) and would basically sit and listen to the radio all day. They had a contest where the 5th caller wins tickets to a concert. So I call and low and behold I'm caller number 5 and I've won tickets to see Marily Manson in Jacksonville, FL. So a friend and I drive up from Gainesville on a Friday night and get incredibly stoned on the way. The whole parking lot scene was practically a riot as the entire christian coalition had showed up to protest and to convert the sinners. Kids were handing out pamphlets that said "body piercing" on the outside and would have Jesus loves you and you're going to hell type messages on the inside.

We get into the show and it turns out HELMET is opening up and they were absolutely incrdible. Fricking Helmet. Then a group made up of 3 chick cello players and a drummer come out dressed in strange Victorian-style dresses. They have all kinds of effects on the cellos and it was flat out amazing and completely rocked. They were all obviously very talented and I wish I could remember the name of the group. I'm sure someone on here will recognize them.

Finally Marily Manson comes out and scares the living [censored] out me. He cut himself across the chest with a broken bottle, was spitting on everyone in the front row, had the first few rows of people spitting on him (like it was freaking raining on him), ripped pages out of a bible while singing from a pulpit in a nazi-ish uniform, and then came out in these gigantic stilts that made him look 20 feet tall. It was like nothing I'd ever seen. He had more stage presence than anybody I've seen, even without cutting himself or doing anything off the wall. The mosh pit was like a [censored] feeding frenzy.

The scene on the way out was a near riot. The christian-crusaders had lined up 20 feet from the entrance and were pissing mad. Just flat out cursing at everybody and holding up Jesus signs and just off their rockers. Of course everybody stopped and were yelling back and it was just a bizarre hysterical near-riot scene. During all this mayhem some car full of rednecks pulls up near the scene and starts honking. Everyone looks over and these dudes get out of the car and pull out a sign that says in huge letters, "YA'LL R SOME PUSSY ASS BITCHES" The whole crowd goes nuts cheering and laughing and the christian douchballs look like they're going to explode. We haul ass to our car and get the hell out of there while things are still somewhat under control.

[turnipmonster]

I'm from raleigh, nc. in high school, a few friends and I used to sometimes drive to chapel hill on the weekends just to see if we could get in anywhere to see a show, or just hang out or whatever. one weekend we stopped by the local 506 and all it said on the door was mergefest, which is (or used to be) merge records' annual festival, going on at a bunch of different clubs around town.

we hopped around from club to club and saw so much great stuff that night, archers of loaf, superchunk, small 23, etc. definitely the highlight for me was seeing archers, who I knew very little about before that night.

[Rushmore]

I'd say that seeing FANTOMAS by mistake was pretty cool.

They were opening for Tool. I had no idea who they were, and they're a freakin supergroup. That was nice.

[bustedchucks]

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Then a group made up of 3 chick cello players and a drummer come out dressed in strange Victorian-style dresses. They have all kinds of effects on the cellos and it was flat out amazing and completely rocked. They were all obviously very talented and I wish I could remember the name of the group. I'm sure someone on here will recognize them.

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Rasputina.

They're very cool. I seen them like two or three months ago. After the opening band we went out for a smoke and ran into some people we knew. We shot the [censored] for a bit and got back inside when we heard them starting. The place - Maxwells, Hoboken - was packed when we got back in. We were all the way in the back, against the bar. Couldn't see much. They play one song and then she asks everyone to sit down. And they do, indian-style mostly, on the floor. The stained, sticky, beer covered floor.

We, however, do not sit. We stand and now we have the best, um, seat in the house. And we're leaning against the bar so getting beer (sierra nevada ipa) is very easy.
We shoot, We score.

[cognito20]

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a buddy of mine dragged me out to see Johnny Dowd - you wouldn't think a grey hair 50 something furniture mover from Ithaca would be worth seeing, but it was like the salvation of Rock and Roll on that stage that night.

Bar was nearly empty too - he's big in Europe, but in the states if you don't got fake [censored] you got no chance -

rb

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I agree. As an Ithaca resident, I can tell you that he's not one of the ten most popular musical acts IN ITHACA. This is much more of a sad comment on the musical tastes in the supposedly "enlightened" musical town of Ithaca, the place that thinks it's the center of the alternative universe, than about Johnny, who I've seen 3 or 4 times and been blown away every time. Nice down-to-earth guy too. Of course, Ithaca is notorious for producing crappy hippie wannabe and horrible white-reggae acts (the only one of them that's any good is John Brown's Body), but we do have people like Hank Roberts (the world's best jazz cellist) and Johnny here, who mostly get ignored in favor of the crap like the Sim Redmond Band (every song from whom sounds like a badly recorded outtake from Paul Simon's "Graceland" album) and Sunny Weather (don't even ask, they're as bad as they sound). Basically, if they haven't been in Ithaca their entire life sucking up to the trust-fund hippies and the Donna the Buffalo (the most overrated jam band in the USA, and that's saying a lot because they have a lot of competition) crowd, they don't count to Ithacans.

Case in point and my contribution to the thread topic: Crowded House played the State Theatre in Ithaca in 1989 on the Temple of Low Men tour, and that show is where I became a big fan of them, and Neil Finn. In a theatre holding about 1,200 people, with a band playing that had already had 2 big US hits (the only 2 big hits they'd have here, unfortunately, although they were huge in the UK and Australia/NZ), on a Thursday night when there was nothing else going on in town, the theatre was -TWO-THIRDS EMPTY-. The tickets were only something like $10, too, so it's not like the price was keeping people away. Just their insularity and closed-mindedness.

Anyway, to sum up, Johnny Dowd's great. I'm surprised he hasn't just up and moved to Europe altogether, where he's a second-level star. Maybe I'll ask him why next time I talk to him.

--Scott

[MicroBob]

Was going to go to some club to see comedian Lewis Black who was popular at the time (not quite so much now).
Being the idiot I am, I read the address on the bottom of the listing in the Village Voice instead of the top so I go to the wrong venue and don't even know it.

I go there, buy a ticket, walk inside, and it's freaking Peter Murphy in concert.
That's when I finally figured out I had screwed something up.
Oh well. I always liked him and had already bought the ticket.
Good concert. Total accident.

[gummy d]

I went to see the flaming lips while they were playing that album that was released as 4 cds you listen to simultaneously. I walked out, went to a local beer coffee joint and saw the white stripes for $5. Place was packed with 60 people in it. All locals mostly there to see the opening band. All as clueless as i was. The band seemed almost as shocked by our excitement as we were blown away by them. Vincent's Ear, asheville nc sometime around the turn of the millenium.

[cobrakai111]

Peter Murphy is cool.

(On a sidenote, I think Lewis Black is actually more popular then ever. He just had a special on HBO and was in a bunch of movies lately)