Artists you saw before you realized they were awesome

For most of my early 20s, I hung out at a redneck bar in my hometown. It had a cover band that was way, way better than that dump deserved. They had played there basically every night for 10 years or so before they also came to that realization and moved on.

The replacement band was a rag-tag outfit with a stupid name, Sam-A-Lama. The new band’s one redeeming quality was its lead singer, a 19- or 20-year-old woman with some talent and more attitude. They did the occasional Heart and Alannah Myles covers mixed in with the usual Midwest redneck bar-band fare.

This girl, whose name I had heard once or twice but didn’t remember, took the “redneck” thing seriously. In 2004, some 13 years after that bad bar, she was No. 1 with a bullet with a song called “Redneck Woman.” And I didn’t learn until seven years later that the sassy girl singer for the bad bar band was Gretchen Wilson.

 

I was too young for these, but the Doors played at the Cheetah, which was next to Pacific Ocean Park in Santa Monica.
Spirit played there, too, and did 11 a.m. Tuesday concerts at Santa Monica College (Randy California, aka Randy Wolfe, was late for the show because he found a softball game across campus and was playing).
I was 12 in 1964 when this happened, so I didn't go, but can you imagine the Tami Show at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium?



T.A.M.I. Show - Wikipedia