singers you saw before they became famous?

Late March 1972 - I was in Miami visiting my parents during spring break of my Junior year in college.
A friend from New York was also there.
One evening we went to the Miami Beach Convention Center to see The Beach Boys in concert.
The opening act was a piano player from Long Island whom no one had heard of.
The thing I remembered most was that one of the songs he played contained the lyrics,
"Your sister's gone out
She's on a date
But you just stay at home
And masturbate."

Definitely unforgettable.

A year later his second album, Piano Man was released by Columbia Records.
The song I remembered, 'Captain Jack' was on that album.
Yeah, I'm talking about Billy Joel.

I interviewed Aussie band Something for Kate a year or so before they signed to Sony.I also knew Brody Dalle who had some success in America, granted, not a household name.

Spiderbait and Magic Dirt are two other bands I saw before they started getting airplay on mainstream radio and tv music shows.

Here's a reverse story. When I was a kid my dad worked for Channel 7 TV Station here in Australia. I was at the kids Christmas party they would put on for the employees and there were some of the Ch7 celebs milling about, saying hi to the kids.

There was a kid's show called "Shirl's Neighbourhood" at the time that was very popular, the host was a guy called Shirley Strachan (Shirl was his nickname as he had long curly hair as per Shirley Temple). Anyway, I met him and got his autograph, I only knew him from the show.

Years later I saw a music video clip of a band called Skyhooks an iconic Aussie band. This guy Shirl was the singer in the 70's and later on in the 80's when they re-formed Wish I still had the autograph. He died in a helicopter crash in 2001.

Growing up my mom had several female friends who were all my "aunts," who had mostly daughters all about five+ years older than me, so they were kind of like cool older cousins/sisters we'd see a couple times a year at least. Guess in my early-mid teens in the mid 80s I was "mature for my age" (drinking in NYC bars with no ID) or just not too annoying, so they'd take me out with them on occasion. Anyhoo, a bunch of them took me to see a midnight showing of Rocky Horror at the 8th St. Playhouse when I was like ~14. Pretty cool. Anyway a couple years after that, one of them was coming to have dinner with me & my mom and she asked if she could bring her boyfriend who was a musician and "gonna be big soon."

Turns out it was Lenny Kravitz. He was nice and polite enough to be a perfect gentleman that we had a lovely dinner and cool enough that I took us youngsters up to the roof to smoke a bit of reefer afterwards.

Later around my college years I followed the Dead from 1989-1992-ish and got in to the jam band scene, my favorite being Col. Bruce Hampton and the Aquarium Rescue Unit. Saw them in tiny venues enough to get on a first name/hugging basis with the guys, especially Jimmy Herring and Oteil Burbridge. Sweet, funny and humble guys, we'd hang after their shows and smoke the weed and chat.

A decade to two afterwards always enjoying live music, but always exploring new genres/bands, I wondered what happened to those guys. Turns out they'd been playing with the Dead (and their incarnations post-Jerry)! I believe I've long outgrown huge stadium and festival-sized venues, preferring to see favorite less-famous bands in more intimate venues, but if I happened to run in to one of them and they actually remembered me and offered me a ticket for old-time's sake, I'd snatch it in a heartbeat, just because I'm so thrilled those humble guys I'd help load their van back in the day have now made the big time.

When I was a kid, my two older sisters, my younger brother, and I saw the great country band Alabama in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, before they became famous. They did a lot of Eagles' covers and they were great.

kid rock

Mariah Carey at her very first public appearance.

my grandma use to talk about going to picnics in Louisiana & a young hank williams would be there singing & on occasion being very drunk even as a teenager