MM was not surprising to have open up.
it was fem to fem.
being a fan of NIN i knew what to expect, but when fem to fem came out, i had no idea what was going on other than there naked chicks on stage. awesome!
I saw Lenny Kravitz open for The Cult back in '93 or so. That was a weird mix.
I once went to a Crash Test Dummies concert just to see the opening act in person: Milla Jovovich. She was pretty good, actually.
Best opening act I ever saw? I went to see Love and Rockets in late '87, I think. Hadn't ever heard of the opening act...Jane's Addiction. They were AWESOME. Went and bought the Nothing's Shocking cassette the next day!
The BEST opening act I every saw was (don't laugh) Wang Chung. They opened for The Cars in '85 (?) The Cars SUCKED, Wang Chung was really great for a synth-pop band.
ok, they were 2nd best... Tina Turner opened a show I'm embarassed to say I paid money for. If you never saw Tina Turner you really missed a stage show. She brought the goods that night.
Some years back I saw Neil Young and Crazy Horse, and Social Distortion and Sonic Youth opened for them. That was the oddest combination that worked the best.
The funniest I recall was when I was in college my school got B.B. King to play and a local Atlanta band Thermos Greenwood and the Colored People opened. They were a weird Zappaesque group where the drummer was the blue guy.... Greenwood was the green guy.... guitarest was the orange guy....you get the picture. A very strange choice I must say that didn't work too well.
Last year some crazy japanese screamy band, Melt Banana opened for Tool. Tool was incredible! Melt Banana, on the other hand....I wasn't crazy for. I got super lucky. We got floor tickets to three different shows in florida. It was soooooo awesome!
Hey
I once went to see The Cult and they had a new band open for them called Guns and Roses.
I was impressed with Jim Carroll when he kicked off a J Geils show.
I cought a stripped down Foo Fighter show recently when they opened for Bob Dylan.
I couldn't believe the opening acts for a Police show back in the day in a stadium...Peter Tosh, Talking Heads and Stevie Ray Vaughan. SRV opened the show with such bad sound I felt sorry for the great player.
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In 2004 I saw A Perfect Circle in MA. A band called Burning Brides opened for them. I didn't really care for them very much (nor did the crowd, which started chanting "A-P-C;" pretty rude), but APC invited the Brides' guitarist to play with them at the end of the song "Thomas." It was great with the extra guitar.