The support act is always a tricky one. No-one is really there to see them in particular. Some give it their all, others trudge on and bash out a cosy half hour and scarper.
I’m not talking the big festivals, more an evening’s entertainment with a headline act. In just about every case (in my experience) it’s sort of OK for the audience to be a bit disinterested. People will talk and roam around, get a drink, nip to the bog, not really giving the band their full attention.
I saw Cocteau Twins support OMD in the early 80s. They performed in front of a curtain at the Hammersmith Odeon and I was fascinated by Liz Fraser, punching her chest as she sang. But there was silence at the end of a song and a vast expanse of empty seats in front of them.
I also saw Blancmange support Depeche Mode in a hall at Exeter University in early 1982. There were no seats. Blancmange were resolutely ignored by the hundreds of ra-ra skirted teenage girls who were there for the headliners. But after a while, a crescent of perhaps ten people crowded around Neil Arthur and he had good-natured off-mic chats with those within earshot in between songs.
What about you? Have you seen anyone of note perform before they were known, to literally no acclaim?
Oh good, I can trot out my Captain Beefheart story again….supporting a bunch of hairy folkies called the Irish Rovers at a club in Glendale, LA, 1966. A mismatch made in heaven. This was before Safe as Milk – they’d had a single out, Diddy Wah Diddy, I remember them playing that. Of course I had no idea I was present at the creation.
I saw Martha Wainwright at the Eden Project in ’05 supporting Paolo Nutini, another bad idea. Not unknown exactly, but obviously unknown to that audience. Nobody was there to see her, and the crowd mostly talked through her act. She could obviously hear the hubbub – it was just her and a guitar – and she got very rattled and ratty. I asked a bloke standing nearby if he could keep the noise down, and he said, ‘I’m talking to my mate, OK?’ as if that made it all right. But she had no idea how to cope with an indifferent crowd.
She got her own back. I saw her gleefully and spiritedly spit out her brilliantly foul mouthed Bloody Motherfucking Asshole song in a tent at Glastonbury, and some tweeded weekend hippy twat in front of me steered his child by the shoulders through 180 degrees and brusquely stormed out past me, face like he’d swallowed a wasp, completely unable to cope with the language. I grinned from ear to ear. Take that, you fucking amateur.
There seems increasingly a tendency to book higher profile acts as support. At Bobby Plant’s Saving Grace, the Rails were the support, the acoustic duo version, and the Town Hall (Brum) had almost filled for them, rather than staying in the bar. I think James Walbourne is quite canny picking his (or touting for) support slots, noting they are the Jason Isbell support for next year. He seems also willing to support “his other” bigger bands, when they tour, the Pretenders, I guess, being the biggest, even if he is just hired guitar therein, if for some time now. Easy enough for him and Kami to spend 45 minutes with just an acoustic. Probably the only time, mind, he gets to see her.
I’ve seen the Rails several times, I’ve only seen them as support once ( apart from the two times they played with Kami’s dad) I’d gone to see them specifically after the main act came on I lasted a couple of tunes and left.
I was sat next to someone at a Rutles gig in Newcastle, the support was Wreckless Eric. He left at the interval as he was only there to see W E.
The Rails supported Robert Plant last year. Shamefully I had never heard of them, but thought they were really good . Felt like a civilian when I faound out who they were but, in my defence, they hadn’t been announced as support beforehand.
They guy next to me at Wilco Jonson’s Gig at Southend Cliffs the other year did that, left after Glenn Tilbrook’s support slot. Which was fine by me as he was enormous, and took up half of my seat as well as his.
That must be the grossly fat bugger who sat next to me at Explosions In The Sky. Did he reek to high heaven as well and sweat like a bastard?
Explosions in the Sky! I just saw them a couple of nights ago. They were really good. I didn’t really know them before. Maybe played a bit too long though… nearly two hours when really under an hour would have been enough!
I thought that Afterworders were all a bunch of linguistic pedants with a keen interest in semantics!
Is no one going to discuss the word “disinterested” as used by BC in the title of the thread?
“Disinterested”, of course, used to mean “unbiased, impartial”, but over the years it has been used so often to mean “uninterested” that it has acquired that meaning, too – at least in some dictionaries.
The pedants are revolting!
As far as I recall, since I first heard/saw it used “disinterested” has had both usages. Not a recent change and not a problem for me.
Yes that was my immediate response to the header as well (pedant, moi?). But in fairness to Mr Celebration the situations he describes could indeed be covered by use of the word to mean neutral and impartial, as well as uninterested, so in fact he has cleverly covered all bases.
Having both usages as a result of user ignorance is no justification. How else are we expected to make precisely that distinction if we only have words available that have ambiguous meaning?
I queried the use of disinterested when I read it.
Disinterested – neutral on the matter but may be interested in the topic or outcome
Uninterested -don’t give a rat’s.
This surely begs the question of whether it would be inadvisable or unadvisable to pursue the matter further…
I saw Jimmy Cliff as support to The Who and the Spencer Davis Group on a package tour in 1966. The bill was a long one with loads of bands who did absolutely diddley squat afterwards, but the odd individual made it. Paul Nicholas was in one band, as I later realised. Jimmy was booed and had to be rescued by Steve Winwood.
In my (much) younger days of going to see bands in college/uni premises where bar and stage were in separate rooms, it was our common practice to drink and chat in the bar during the support act if we didn’t know them. If interesting sounds were heard coming through from the stage we would venture in, but sometimes the stage was inaudible so we didn’t see or hear them at all. I think this was and continues to be normal at those sort of venues. It can be problematic for quiet supporting artists when both bar and stage are in the same room. There is sometimes nowhere for uninterested patrons to chat, drink etc. where they can do so without affecting the performance. There are still plenty of venues that won’t allow you back in if you go out.
The Jazz Café in Camden is a case in point. I went there a while back, to a gig where American keyboardist Sean Martin (from Snarky Puppy) was playing with his own band. There were two support artists, a male solo pianist whose name I can’t remember and British pianist Sarah Tandy. The place was packed and, as the two bars are at either end of the fairly narrow space and the stage is in the middle, there were a lot of people drinking and chatting to their mates while the supports were on. I had gone there particularly to see/hear Sarah Tandy and although the audience applauded her short set politely they were audibly not there to see her and her performance was spoiled for me. She didn’t seem to mind the chattering, though.
OTOH, when I went to another gig there, to see Yazz Ahmed and her band, when the support act harpist Alina Bzhezhinska started playing, everyone shut up after a minute or so and listened intently. You could have heard a pin drop.
Seeing Wilco supporting R.E.M. at Earls Court 1999 changed my (concert going) life. I had earlier queued up for an hour or two in order to get in the front, fenced off standing area. If I had had a seat I may have drunk beer instead of bothering with the support act …
I was at that gig and I’d met my friend Jon for a drink beforehand.
We had a beer (The Falcon at Clapham Junction, for the record) and decided not to rush off for the train but to have another. And probably another.
We arrived in time to catch the end of Wilco.
I guess we didn’t miss much.
You missed a lot. I think Wilco blew a rather lacklustre R.E.M. off the stage. Although I actually went two consecutive nights and R.E.M. were much better one of those nights, can’t remember which one. I then went to Zurich and repeated the exercise (again with Wilco). Never saw R.E.M. again, have seen Wilco 22 times and counting …
This is not about a support band I saw who went on to be huge or anything, but I caught New Zealand’s fabulous The Mutton Birds supporting Billy Bragg at Southampton University in April 1997. This was the Bard of Barking’s pre-election “get out and vote” themed tour, the campaign trail where change was in the air and the Blair government won by a landslide, and to say the audience was up for it in the pre-election period where it really was Labour’s to lose would be an understatement. But before Billy came on and did his rabble rousing bit, The Mutton Birds played to a scattering of mainly disinterested punters. In all honesty I’d not heard of them, but thought I’d give them a listen, and was so glad I did. Saw pretty much every show the Birds did in the south after that, until they split up. What a great band…the best bits of very early REM married to occasional bursts of melancholic and haunting euphonium. This is much better than it sounds by the way!
I stood near the front and was quickly spellbound, right from the first few chords played, which turned out to be the title track of the about to be released “Envy of Angels” album (what a gem of a record) and I was hooked.
Not my story, but a pal of mine bunked off school and got the train to Glasgow, to see Golden Earring at The Apollo. The support band were Lynyrd Skynyrd. He had never heard of them. Just a lad of 16, he told me the place went mental on their last song(Freebird obvs.)and when the main act came on, two thirds of the audience had left.
Tom Waits used to open for Frank Zappa before he became better known. He said the audience boo-ed him from the start and threw bottles and such at him.
Lynyrd Skynyrd struggled supporting Golden Earring in the Glasgow Apollo, early 70s.
Actually I lie.
They never.
Researching ‘Bathed in Lightning’, I came across a few examples of what used to be called ‘blowing the headliner off the stage’ – one in some arena in NE USA where the Mahavishnu Orch supported T Rex (really) and an audience of teenyboppers ended up demanding encores, and the first ‘big ‘ MO show, late 1971, where they supported It’s a Beautiful Day at Carnegie Hall and most people left before the headliners came on. I didn’t come across any reviews of how things panned out when the Orch supported Oscar Peterson – which seems insane – at, from memory, Carnegie Hall a few months later.
On the other hand, I recall seeing the Cocteau Twins in the late 80s supported by, I think, Dif Juz – another 4AD act. I only think/know this because I was there with a post-punk diehard and even he was uncertain. They neither introduced themselves nor said anything whatsoever and their name wasn’t on the advertising. It was THEY who were un/dis-interested, not the punters. Great way to try and run a career, guys. Google tells me they called it quits in 1986, so I must have seen their last hurrah – or it would have been if any of the berks had said ‘hurrah’.
Up from the country to see The Tubes at Hammersmith Odeon in 1977 (I think – pretty sure it wasn’t 1976), we arrived ridiculously early. So ridiculously early that we managed to cram in visits to the Science Museum, the Natural History Museum and a pizza before being among the very first to take our seats for the gig (where we met Jesus – but that’s another story).
The support act was Wire and even though the Tubes’ audience were primed for their take on punk (encapsulated by White Punks on Dope), they were less than welcome to Wire’s delivery of their debut Pink Flag. The reception was more puzzled than hostile. I was fascinated. No idea what Jesus* made of them.
*Then-ubiquitous gig-going hippy character, who offered to share his many percussion instruments with us.
I saw Queen support Mott The Hoople. I’m still disinterested in Queen.
I did, too. Although I loved Mott The Hoople, I actually went specifically to see Queen!
My only claim to seeing a (later) massive band playing support, is Radiohead supporting The Frank And The Walters.
I arrived after they had started, thought they sounded OK, and thought they would go the way of most support bands in provincial Arts Centres – that would be about their limit.
No idea what they played, although I’m sure they played Creep – which I thought was a bit “standard indie”
Me too: I saw them support James (what was I thinking of?) at the Norwich UEA, and from what I remember thought they were boring- and I still dislike that first album anyway.
Lots of great stories but I’d like to wade in on what they’re already calling “disinterestedgate” mentioned up there.
I used the word to describe an audience who regard the support performers as irrelevant. They are never going to move into the realm of being interested so “dis” seemed better than “un”.
Don’t ‘dis(s)’ the pedants – Afterworders on heat.
I saw Thin Lizzy open for BTO at the Hammersmith Odeon in 1975 (I went specifically to see Lizzy – honest, even though I did sit through BTO’s performance). There was a bunch of Germans in the balcony who screamed “Peenk Floyd!!!” throughout Lizzy’s set. They seemed to enjoy BTO tremendously. Some people have no taste.
I would love to have seen Thin Lizzy in 1975. I imagine at that time they would have been very much a rock act and maybe would not have played the earlier songs which are my favourites. But still it would have been an exciting time to see them.
I didn’t catch them until the Jailbreak tour, and then again a few times after. With the exception of an only OK set at Reading Festival in ’78 they were exceptional.
It was! I just looked it up. The concert was Saturday, May 3rd, and according to Wikipedia, “Nightlife” (the first Lizzy album with Brian Robertson and Scott Gorham) was by then 7 months old, and “Fighting” would be released in September. This must have been the first tour with the twin plank spankers. And, of course, BTO had “You Ain’t Seen Nothin’ Yet” in the charts, hence the tour.
Nightlife would have been a difficult sell to those Germans, I’ve never met anyone who actually likes that album! Brian Robertson blamed the producer Ron Nevison for making them sound like “a Cocktail Lounge Band”
YASNY is a stone cold classic, I bet it brought the house down.
One of the most famous examples of this was the neanderthal Stones fans violently demonstrating their disinterest towards Prince in a series of support slots in 1981. The idiot Richards afterwards cast aspersions on Prince based on his, er, actual name. Never the brightest, our Keith…
https://ultimateclassicrock.com/prince-booed-rolling-stones/
Bought tickets to see Bruce Hornsby who was supporting Huey Lewis in the early eighties.
Bruce did not disappoint and I stayed on to watch the main act who was a bit … meh really.
Funnily enough in the late 70’s I saw Huey support Thin Lizzy. Also a bit meh then too. Graham Parker had been Lizzy’s previous support which fell pretty flat.
Others I’ve seen include Japan dying on their arse supporting Blue Oyster Cult (more a comment on the billing mismatch than anything else) and Motorhead creating a wall on noise to a crowd that didn’t care also ahead of BOC.
Stereo MC’s – yes, it has an apostrophe – supporting EMF, where they blew the headliners off the stage, not that the audience noticed.
Shortly followed by… Stereo MC’s supporting Happy Mondays, where they blew the headliners off the stage, not that the headliners noticed (this was the Brixton Academy gig where Bez had his arm in a plaster cast, so he couldn’t play his maracas properly, and Shaun Ryder seemed to be sweating crack cocaine).