opening acts

 

After listening to the hit song "Arizona" several times, I checked out an interview with Mark Lindsay, on You Tube - at one point he was a member of the band Paul Revere and the Raiders (pictured above).

It's a band whose name is familiar to me, but I haven't studied them, don't know much about them.  According to the online encyclopedia, they had hit songs and a lot of live-performance success in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

        I didn't think I knew any of their songs, but then I clicked on one called "Kicks" and I've certainly heard that! - I know it...

...Oh don't it seem that

Kicks just keep gettin' harder to find,

You know the kicks ain't bringin' you peace of mind

Before you find out it's too late, girl,

You better get straight....

In the Mark Lindsay interview (from the '80s or '90s, I think) he told a brief anecdote about the "Raiders" playing a TV show called "Where The Action Is", in Pittsburgh, where the - Rolling Stones - opened for them...!?!

Like - Wait.  What??!

        I googled that, apparently it's true.  The Internet explained that who the opening act was and who the main attraction was, could vary, according to what part of the country the bands were playing in, based on who had a hit song that was popular locally, at that point in time.

It made a funny story in the interview, because you just wouldn't expect the Rolling Stones to be "opening" for anybody.  They would be the main attraction.  

Mark Lindsay sort of imitated Mick Jagger's accent - "Who are these guys?!"

But it was 1965, when this occurred - the Stones' most iconic albums, Let It Bleed, Exile On Main Street, Sticky Fingers, and Beggars Banquet were all still in the future, at that time - they hadn't been written or recorded, yet.

The Rolling Stones were still on their way up.

        I got to thinking about opening acts, at concerts.  A Bob Dylan concert I attended in the early 2000s had the country band Asleep At The Wheel as the opening act.  I loved that.

        And I thought about the Ike and Tina Turner Revue opening for the Rolling Stones in England, in the late '60s.  (How incredible that must have been!)  The Ike and Tina Turner Revue - musicianship, singing, showmanship would have been on a par with the Stones - they would have been just as wild, and tight, and they would have out-danced even Mick Jagger, because that was part of their style.

I remember hearing Mick in an interview saying that when Ike and Tina opened for them, "we had to work harder" to put on a great show, so as not to be "outshone" by their opening act.

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