Entertainment For Lively Minds
Early Adopter
Posted by smithylad on 14 June 2009 - 10:22pm.
The flip side of Arriving Late to an Oeuvre, (see my rip-roaring, couldn't-be-missed, Dickens-in-blog-form post from a few days ago - http://www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/arriving-late-ouevre) is the band/artist/musician/actor/tv series that you stumbled upon in their absolute formative days, spotting their latent talent and championing proudly as they've grown to greatness.
And any you missed out on? My wife chose to go to the pub and so missed Belle and Sebastian's second gig. I love Belle and Sebastian, as does she, and I point out this faux-est of all pas whenever she picks on my dodgy Heavy Metal past.
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Hello.
I'm pretty sure I "got" the Kings Of Leon before anyone else.
Not before me
Mark and Lard played them before they released anything and I loved them then, as indeed did they. It's kind of annoying (although inevitable, as they're pretty savvy) that they've become so big. I still curse the &*$£ who nicked my 10" vinyl copy of the first album. Didn't think much of them live though.
Also
Tom McRae. But then he turned out to be rubbish. Sorry Tom, the debut is a stunner, all downhill from then.
Missed out on (in a manner of speaking)
In the heady days of punk my friends and I decided, after careful consideration, not to go and see the Sex Pistols on the Anarchy tour at the Manor Ballroom in Ipswich. Intrigued though we were by the racket, as a bunch of long-haired teenage hippies we decided the potential for getting a good kicking was too great.
In the event the gig was one of many on the tour pulled in the wake of the notorious 'Grundy incident', so we didn't really miss out on what we thought we were missing.
Not really one of those "I was there on the barricades" anecdotes, I suppose, is it?
With the lights out...
A local record label put out at half price on blue vinyl Bleach the first album by the then unknown Nirvana. I'd never heard of them but I liked Mudhoney so I got it on spec. It was okay (nowhere near as good as Superfuzz Bigmuff!) but opened my ears to them enough so that when I first heard Smells like Teen Spirit I absolutely flipped.
I played it for anyone and everyone that walked through my door long before it hit the charts. "Listen to this, just listen to it, it's incredibly good, just shut up a minute will ya."
After a few weeks of this my brother said to me, "Hey guess who I heard on the radio today, Little Taters." Of course I didn't know what he was talking about so he said "You know. With the lights out it's less dangerous, here we are now Little Taters." He was completely serious.
I once knew someone
who thought Smells Like Teen Spirit was called The Entertainer. As in, "here we are now, entertainer."
Coincidentally, I don't think he believed there was a Scott Joplin piece called Frances Farmer will have her revenge on Seattle.
You all need this
The Word
as in the totally terrible but utterly unmissable telly prog was always good for first sightings.
I remember this cutting through the fog of my post-pub haze
You'll have heard that at my house first ...
Sometime in 1982 I bought a US import 12" EP, 'Chronic Town', at a record fair, by a band I had read about in Rolling Stone. It was pretty good. The next time I heard of them they had just released their second LP and 'Don't Go Back To Rockville' was getting some airplay. I like to think I gave them just that little bit of encourangement they needed ....