Iconic Concert Openers: My Favorite Live Performances

For me, that is definitely the Looney Tunes cartoon “Bully for Bugs” which opened for Yes in the year of “90125.” Just awesome and left the audience cheering at Bugs’ triumph.

Second, would be Public Image Ltd. as they opened for INXS in the year of “Kick.” We had pretty bad seats and sat near a row of punks who promptly got up and left after PiL’s set…kind of wish we had done the same. The best bits there were when John Lydon decided to play “Holidays in the Sun,” violating the Robert-Plant-No-Led-Zeppelin-Songs-on-My-Solo0Tour rule AND when he pulled up his shirt and said, “Anybody want a bit of tit?”.

Third would be Paul Carrack opening for Roger Waters with his Squeeze song “Tempted” played solo on a grand piano in the year of “Radio KAOS.” Classy and classic as he was touring as part of Roger Water’s band that year.

Honorable mention goes to the opening act for The Pretenders: Big Audio Dynamite…not sure what year that was. BAD is one of my favorite bands of all time, but never appeared anywhere as the main act at the time…nor for The Pretenders on the night I had tickets for. I think the show had been postponed from a previous date, explaining the non-appearance as the opening act. Instead, they had none.

BAD probably outstripped most opening acts I HAVE seen through the years, though. I always felt bad for the opening acts. Nobody came to see them and nobody knew their songs…or liked them.

Often, they were odd pairings, the strangest that I saw was when Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble opened for The Moody Blues. SRV was small enough to appear as a largely unheard of opening act…but the clash of musical styles and audience rendered it bizarre in concept. SRV would be legendary in the future…still counts. 🙂

What’s the best opening act you’ve seen live and in concert?

For me, that is definitely the Looney Tunes cartoon “Bully for Bugs” which opened for Yes in the year of “90125.” Just awesome and left the audience cheering at Bugs’ triumph.

Second, would be Public Image Ltd. as they opened for INXS in the year of “Kick.” We had pretty bad seats and sat near a row of punks who promptly got up and left after PiL’s set…kind of wish we had done the same. The best bits there were when John Lydon decided to play “Holidays in the Sun,” violating the Robert-Plant-No-Led-Zeppelin-Songs-on-My-Solo0Tour rule AND when he pulled up his shirt and said, “Anybody want a bit of tit?”.

Third would be Paul Carrack opening for Roger Waters with his Squeeze song “Tempted” played solo on a grand piano in the year of “Radio KAOS.” Classy and classic as he was touring as part of Roger Water’s band that year.

Honorable mention goes to the opening act for The Pretenders: Big Audio Dynamite…not sure what year that was. BAD is one of my favorite bands of all time, but never appeared anywhere as the main act at the time…nor for The Pretenders on the night I had tickets for. I think the show had been postponed from a previous date, explaining the non-appearance as the opening act. Instead, they had none.

BAD probably outstripped most opening acts I HAVE seen through the years, though. I always felt bad for the opening acts. Nobody came to see them and nobody knew their songs…or liked them.

Often, they were odd pairings, the strangest that I saw was when Stevie Ray Vaughan and Double Trouble opened for The Moody Blues. SRV was small enough to appear as a largely unheard-of opening act…but the clash of musical styles and audience rendered it bizarre in concept. SRV would be legendary in the future…still counts. 🙂