Tours where a young, hungry support act absolutely obliterates the aging headliners

Also: Orbital and Aphex Twin playing ahead of Moby on the See the Lights tour in 1993 ("younger" by only a couple of years though).

By many accounts: Moby again, getting blown off the stage every night by Outkast on his Area:One festival tour.

Oh yeah: very OTM comment here, in fact, I would go so far as to say they "obliterated" Blur.

Oh well.

I've seen local bands in Reading play to big crowds who then leave en masse when the NME-hyped headliner comes onstage, that was pretty funny.

I'd go with that -- at the least, the sheer hysteria over "Common People" (and this was almost half a year before it was released -- it was just introduced to us as a totally new song, for that is what it was) put Blur's 'okay enough but no more' set in the shade.

They dug the band so much, the same lineup played again recently in the same venue just last week.

I found the quotes on timeisonourside.com. I don't know where the Charlie Watts quote is from, but the Mick Jagger quote is from Rolling Stone magazine.

I went back to the timeisonourside web site today and found these two quotes from 1983 regarding Prince being booed off stage.

Keith: Prince has to find out what it means to be a prince. That's the trouble with conferring a title on yourself before you've proved it. That was his attitude when he opened for us on the tour, and it was insulting to our audience. You don't try to knock off the headline like that when you're playing a Stones crowd. You'd be much better off just being yourself and protecting that. He's a prince who thinks he's a king already. Good luck to him.

Mick: I talked to Prince on the phone once after he got two cans thrown at him in L.A. He said he didn't want to do any more shows. (Laughs) God, I got thousands of bottles and cans thrown at me! Every kind of debris. I told him, if you get to be a really big headliner, you have to be prepared for people to throw bottles at you in the night. (Laughs) Prepared to die!

I don't think Keith understood that Prince was his birth name, not a name that he gave himself.

Blur is a lousy live act; Swervedriver blew them off the stage when I saw them together, and Swervedriver weren't that good.

I guess you're used to people telling you you're wrong, so this won't come as a shock... YOU'RE WRONG! Shane-era Pogues = always spectularly good fun. With an appalling line in support bands.

My answer: Bends-era Radiohead supporting James. Or, and I'm going to cop some flak for this one, pre-debut-album Suede supporting the Fall. I also saw the Cure on the Wish tour, and thought Cranes were immeasurably more enjoyable, but I think that's just me. And it wasn't quite obliteration. But the Cure were plodding old dinosaurs and Cranes were just beautiful.

I'd go for Franz Ferdinand who opened for Belle & Sebastian when I saw them in late 2003.

I saw this show also - it was the infamous Steel Wheels Tour - and I remember hyping Living Colour to my Stones-worshipping classic rock friends and then having to apologize afterwards because they were not very good at all, just lost on the huge stage.

The Stones were great as I recall it.

I just thought of a funny one - Alice In Chains opening for Extreme. And yes, AIC did obliterate. It was at a small club in NYC whose name escapes me...

Did anyone here ever attend one of the infamous Sabbath/Van Halen shows?

And last year American Icon Merle Haggard "supported" American Icon Bob Dylan and regularly blew him off the stage.

On a much smaller scale, Dressy Bessy makes a habit of outshining the headliners they support (Starlight Mints, Apples in Stereo, and other pop stars).

My dad catered that tour one night and remembers encountering Van Halen while they waited for their limo to arrive. He didn't know who they were but he still says they were the most arrogant guys he'd ever seen.

I saw this tour also. LC weren't all that great, and the Stones were OK. However, Guns 'N' Roses was the band in between and pretty much destroyed the planet.

Saw this same tour open in Ventura, CA. Pere Ubu were indeed fun and great, but Pixies killed that night. The band were not floor gazing at all.. Black Francis was jumping up and down, smiling like he was in heaven.

BIAS. (But I actually don't doubt this to be true at all.)

janes addiction opening for the ramones (janes didn't obliterate, and the ramones were the ramones. maybe rockism vs art rock.)

dead voices on air opening for the legendary pink dots

there are at least a few more that i can't seem to remember.

another kill shot was The Reverend Horton Heat opening for Soundgarden when they were riding the "black hole sun" gravy train. The Rev and Taz boiled them in oil.

ps.
Living colour was mentioned and i feel it neccessary to mention they are playing in sydney this saturday

Erase Errata opening for Sonic Youth.

Joanna Newsom opening for Devendra Banhart, before she had released her record and with a crowd of people muttering "Who is this woman?"

Anyway, Voivod>Motorhead by light-years in 2002 and Voivod wasn't even that young.

what is with this blur bashing? i don't get it. perhaps i was so much younger when i saw them that i thought it was amazing.

not sure if this counts, but a few years ago I saw the boredoms supporting john cale, bizarrely enough, at the royal festival hall in london. after the boredoms' ecstatic percussive trance-out, cale's dour monotone burblings about dylan thomas were excruciating. it was like a post-coital hacking off of the foot. many people walked out. I wa among them.

I did see Sleater-Kinney thoroughly upstage Yo La Tengo in 1997, Tramps in NYC. Dig Me Out had just been released. Yo La Tengo were great, they almost always are, but it wasn't their night.

Is this a common practice in your area?

Support: Luscious Jackson (fresh, enthusiastic, happy, melodies, well played, nice, hooray!)
Headliners: The Breeders (messy, long breaks between songs, forgotten lyrics, injokes the crowd couldn't hear, were probably high or drunk, audience were bored out of their skulls)

Support: Bettie Serveert (tight, lots of variation in their set, crowd participation, encores, great show)
Headliners: Buffalo Tom (only played their new boring slow songs (had seen them a couple of years earlier, I know they could do different songs), almost no applause after the main set, no encore)

I saw it happen. Merle's voice was pure gold. He had the poise, the music, a giant. Dylan was in deconstruction mode, in gunslinger stance behind keyboards, but he hadn't found his new voice yet.

My Bloody Valentine opened for Dinosaur Jr, and Mascis and co. just couldn't compete, except in sheer volume.

Boredoms opened for Sonic Youth on an island in the James River in Richmond, VA and made SY irrelevant. Heck, the thunderstorm that rolled in was better than Sonic Youth that day.

Happy Flowers were a revelation opening for Yo La Tengo (And I still cared for YLT at the time).

Cornelius before The Flaming Lips was amazing. Even though he was in dire need of medical attention (I think he was hospitalized before & after the show), he and his band were on point.

Also: Orbital and Aphex Twin playing ahead of Moby on the See the Lights tour in 1993 ("younger" by only a couple of years though).

b-b-but RDJ and Paul Hartnoll are both younger than Moby!!!

(pwnage did not occur)

I saw her right after the record was released, but before it had gotten much attention (I'd never heard of her), opening for Bonnie Prince Billy. They played a tiny art gallery, and I was sitting on the floor, staring up at her, absolutely rapt.

a luminous lisa germano opening up for a pitiful late-period pale saints.

you may be thinking of the rolling stones rock 'n' roll circus, a tv special filmed in 1968 and not released in full until 1995. the who so absurdly upstaged the stones that mick decided against releasing the film. the who's performance of "a quick one" saw the light of day in 1979 (as part of The Kids Are Alright), and the whole thingy was finally released on video in 1995. tho to be fair, brian jones was at death's door, barely able to play (hence his guitar being turned off), and there wasn't much the stones could have done to salvage themselves at that point.

and speaking of the who upstaging the headliner, they were so annoyed at having to open for the doors in 1968 that their smashup climax not only levelled the audience, but "accidentally" damaged some of the doors' gear too.

For the record...the original theatrical and VHS releases of the Kids Are Alright only featured an excerpt of the performance, which as you say turned up on the Stone's vid release in 1995. However, just a few years ago the special edition Kids Are Alright DVD came out and included the whole thing is full digital glory. I watch it weekly.

Saw Radiohead open for the Foo Fighters in some club in Vancouver the month OK Computer came out... the Foos were (charitably) more of a palatte cleanser.

ah, the plot thickens...

the original theatrical release in the u.s. featured the whole performance, as did the rca videodisc release (not a laserdisc, but played with a needle...surprising that that technology didn't catch on). this cut was also shown on mtv a few times. john entwistle thought the film was too long and had too many interview sections, so he cut out a few of the latter and shortened "a quick one." this is the version of the film that was released theatrically in europe and on video until the dvd came out.

the stones' set is actually kinda fun...not amazing, but nice to see. but set next to the who, jeez, it really doesn't show them in the best light.

the blood brothers were one fire, and played with about 60 times the energy than when i saw them close to a year later in sydney.

liars were just plain fucking bizarre and intimidating. the 2nd record had only recently been released and that's all they played. angus andrew was a fairly captivating frontman, however, and pretty damn amusing at times.

liars obviously aren't 'aging', but anyhoo

actually, another instance of this happened the night before: mclusky absolutely pillaging some insultingly bad french punk band, who had me leaving the venue after two tracks.

Late 70's, Houston Music Hall, Headliners --> The Kinks touring behind Sleepwalker.
Openers --> Cheap Trick. The Kinks were great. But C.T., with material the audience was unfamiliar with, won us over in 30 seconds tops. They then proceeded to entertain us so completely and originally that one simply had to stand back in awe of human capacity.
They were untoppable that night.

Joke's on you -- L&R were massive fans and supporters of Jane's from the start, had them open up whenever they got the chance, and probably specifically invited them on that tour. They stayed friends for years and Perkins played with them on the night of L&R's final show. If they got blown off the stage every night (which I fully could see happening, I should note), they were probably loving every minute on it.