Har Mar Superstar

Back in '01 I lived in San Francisco and my cousin was visiting. We were going to go see a band one night and M Ward was playing as was local band The Jim Yoshi Pile Up. I had End of Amnesia at that point but for some reason we went to see Jim Yoshi Pile Up instead, I think probably because a friend said they were good live. Have regretted it ever since.

edit: oops double post

I saw one of the first White Zombie performances. They were a last minute add to open for Screaming Blue Messiahs when Pop Will Eat Itself weren't allowed into the country.

They sucked...hard.

At a fest, I remember seeing the Black Eyed Peas repeatedly begging people to buy their music between each song.

That was way before they got Fergilicious.

I didn't fully read your post earlier, but I saw the exact same tour here in Lincoln, with minimal attendance. I showed Will Sheff and Vanderslice to a Jimmy John's Sandwich restaurant and was the only person in the bar besides the staff when they actually allowed people in to the venue. It was a dead show as well.

This may be 15 years behind, but why weren't PWEI allowed into the country?

same experience, except that milemarker was also on the bill. they played between the hives and t(i)nc. this was in november 2001. i'm not sure i've ever seen an opener dominate like that. by the next june when i saw the hives again, they'd blown up and i was waiting in line to get in 20 minutes into the set. the last time i saw the hives was two or three years ago at a club show on an off-night from their tour with maroon 5.

i'd say the national is my go-to band for this topic. september '05 was the pinnacle of my live experience with them. they weren't unknowns, but probably a third of the 200 people there left after clap your hands say yeah. the national destroyed. six months later, they were playing a venue over twice as big. later that summer, they had an afternoon slot at a mid-sized music festival. they had a few boxer songs in that set. the following year, i saw them at a 1,100-capacity venue. two girls in front of me talked through half their set. in '08 i saw them for 15 minutes at a large music festival and last year i saw them headline the same mid-sized fest i'd seen them at in '06. do you ever realize that no longer will you ever see your favorite show by a band? that's how i felt with the national last summer.


both times i've seen john vanderslice, someone else on the bill has crushed him. the first time was beulah headlining over him. the second time was sufjan stevens opening.

Never found out. Assumed at the time it was drugs, but in hindsight it was probably someting as mundane as not having the proper work visa.

While living in Miami, I saw Iron & Wine several times at Churchill's. The first show was in front of 30 or so people the same week "The Creek..." dropped. Beam was still a professor of film at a local university. It was truly that coffee house type experience. Those who were there were sitting on the floor a few feet from the stage, listening intently to every word, like school kids at story time.

Though not huge, I have seen him at larger venues and the excess crowd noise detracts from that hushed vocal.

That reminds me, back in summer 2002, I had tickets to see Ugly Casanova, the Isaac Brock side project, at TT the Bear's in Cambridge. But Brock got stopped at the Canadian border, so they couldn't make the show. When I got to the venue, they would either give you your money back or part of your money back and you could still see the openers. One of the openers was Iron & Wine, but I had never heard of them and it was a week night, so I decided to just go home. The Creek Drank the Cradle came out a few months later.

Mine would also be The National, and I met up with Putin at that show in Chapel Hill he referenced. I picked up their first album in 2001 on a whim from the cutout bin at School Kids Records in Raleigh because of the cover art and ended up really liking it. I used a few songs off it in various mixes around that time but never saw them live until that show in 2005. Hard to believe that was about 9 years ago.

Saw The Strokes play the 40 Watt in Athens the same month Is This It? debuted. It was a sold-out show.

this reminds me i was invited to a strokes show in may of 2001. i wasn't 21 yet, so i couldn't go. i'd been playing "the modern age" on my radio show for a few weeks as of then and nobody cared.

when i did see them that november, it was sold out and the girl next to me proudly told me, "they're my favorite band." i told her it was foolish for someone to say a band with one album was their all-time favorite. strangely, what i remember most about that night was: 1) skipping a screening of psycho for a film class (like i hadn't seen it a dozen times before); 2) it was the last time i saw a particular high school crush; 3) it was the second (and last) time i'd seen panties thrown on a stage; 4) the other big draw in pittsburgh that night was a debate between pat buchanan and ralph nader.

I was at a CMJ party back in 2002, they played, they were terrible but I was standing with a girl from Reprise and she said "I should get a meeting with these guys" they're on Reprise so I wonder if she signed them???

Saw Arcade Fire open for the Unicorns at the First Unitarian...they were incredible, saw them headline there a few months later...not even a year after that they were headlining central park.

Saw very early shows for both The National and The Walkmen at SXSW, I believe I also saw Fall Out Boy that year play in the middle of the day at the emo's annex

Some More:
The Strokes at the Stone Pony in Asbury Park
The Wrens in a little college bar that looked like a bennigans
Death Cab For Cutie to a handful kids in a college banquet hall
I think I saw Deerhunter's first show...it was at least one of the first ones.

I was there...fuckers were ripping out the seats from that place...311 shows in Atlanta around that time were mini-riots.

Ahh Churchill"s, I caught one of those I&W shows.

I saw The White Stripes in a very small sweaty room of about 100 people in 2001 just before or after 'White Blood Cells' came out. It was one of the best gigs I've ever been to, Jake blew me away with what he was doing on guitar. I've never gone to see them since because, well, its just not going to compare is it?

When I worked (very loose definition of the word) in the studios I knew Stuart Murdoch (just pre- Belle & Sebastian, no one paid any attention to him) and a couple of the guys from Mogwai (then in a band called Eska).

Yeah that was a good time, really. Well after No Doubt left it was.

I was looking or this post. So awesome.

Yah, I can add some of the other 'local' usual suspects :
The Dears
Metric
BSS
Stars
Sam Roberts
Martha Wainwright
....

kinda.
i saw the Walkmen a dozen or so times when they were known as Jonathan Fire*eater....

yeah, saw the dears about a year or so before they reissued no cities on spin art...I thought they were the worst fucking band I had ever seen.

s. frampton has some pretty incredible ones. mine aren't so incredible.

played in bound brook new jersey some years back, opening band i believe was playing one of their first shows. i thought they were terrible, friend who booked the show thought they were gonna be mammoth. my chemical romance. yups.

was one of i'd say eight people watching a young brand new in a bagel shop.

played exit/in with a young(er) paramore... guess that's about a 400-capacity place. i think their bus prolly fits that now.

not totally sure why the things coming to mind are painting me to be queen emo. (stu, no commenting.)

a good one:
saw ryan adams at fez in ny a couple of times, and brownies, back just pre- and post-heartbreaker. he was so dang good then.

When I heard No Cities, I thought they were the worst fucking band I had ever heard.

The only band I could probably say I was in on early was Lucero which I found just doing endless reading on the internet. The only other person on Obner that I remember hearing of them was El Guapo. They've made a few fans since.

And Dax Riggs is from my hometown. I still remember seeing shitty handmade posters for his various bands around town when I was in high school, which we kind of made fun of.