My nearest civic auditorium belonged to another town. I was lucky enough to play to a packed house there before I turned 13. Unfortunately, I played bad trombone, or as my mom liked to call it, second trombone (there were only two of us). Hosting bad music events is the duty and function of every town’s civic auditorium. Fortunately, rock concerts regularly come through to smudge the place with smoke, Fresnels, and big loud music. So the civic auditorium I stunk up with some spitty tromboning (amongst an otherwise fine ensemble) was also the place where I saw my first real rock concert. I was a child and the band was Rush—this is as close as I will ever get to explaining why I act like a kid whenever I hear a Rush song.

Like many concertgoers, the first thing I did when I entered the venue was check out the gear on stage. As a guitar player, I can say with great authority that on stage, the drums remain the most intriguing instrument to look at. Of course, it is rare that guitars are even visible before the show, and, well, you see one Marshall stack, you’ve pretty much seen them all. Of all the drum kits on all the concert stages over the history of rock music, Rush drummer Neil Peart’s kits are perhaps consistently the most intriguing (even the pink one). To be fair, Stewart Copeland, Billy Cobham, the late Keith Moon, and Danny Carey (Tool), are close seconds.

So thanks to festival seating and my mom dropping me off three hours before the concert started, I was able to run right to the front of the stage to see Mr. Peart’s drums. The only problem was someone else’s drums were in the way.

There, shoved up against Peart’s riser, was another double bass kit blocking my view. Thankfully, I could still make out the tops of the orchestral bells standing tall on my horizon like neatly ordered silver prog Alps. This confirmed that I was at the right civic auditorium on the right night (I guess the plethora of Rush t-shirts and mullets would have been my second and third clues). The drums in the way belonged to one Andy Parker, drummer for the influential British metal band UFO. So while Rush was my very first rock concert, UFO was the first band I saw at my first rock concert. As openers go, we were lucky that night, let me tell you. In fact, UFO was on the cusp of headlining themselves had their lead guitarist virtuoso nutlog Michael Schenker not gone rogue on them. Pity, that. It remains the best opener I have ever witnessed.

Being an opening act is like having an incredibly hot date with someone who clearly has an STD.  Okay, maybe not.

Being an opening act is like being the annoying, younger sibling accompanying your incredibly hot date with or without an STD—closer, but not quite.

Being an opening act is like getting a free trip to an amazing travel destination only to realize you can’t leave the airport and the locals want nothing to do with you—nailed it!

Occasionally, openers can blow your mind and in some rare instances steal the thunder from the headliner—though a brief chat between band manager and sound engineer can often put the kybosh on the latter. More often, if an opener is memorable, it is because they were awful or you pitied them.

Awful: AC/DC Highway to Hell Tour (five months before singer Bon Scott would choke to death on his own vomit). The opener was a prancing new wave band with bad makeup—the singer kind of looked like Johnny Cougar in drag—they did two and a half songs (one and a half too many) and they barely escaped with their lives. They were good dodgers though…

Pity: Peter Gabriel tours the US so infrequently and has such an amazing body of work he should have long ago accepted the mantle of “an evening with” instead of giving his fans a measly 90 minutes of brilliant music and an excellent opener you are guaranteed to have never heard of.  On his shed (amphitheater) tour of a few years ago, he brought with him a beautiful world music band from a struggling country with bad infrastructure. For the band (whose name I sadly do not remember), it was the opportunity of a lifetime. But being the opening act on a summer amphitheater tour means you hit the stage in broad daylight while loud Americans carrying nachos and large plastic cups of beer find their seats. So there I was watching these colorfully dressed musicians play folk instruments from their country while their beautiful and exotic female singer tried to get the small clots of crowd to set down their two beers each and clap in 5/4 (clap, clap, clap, [break] clap-clap). Redemption came when the band returned to the stage to join in the joyful “In Your Eyes” encore.

At the level of Peter Gabriel and AC/DC (there’s a double bill for you…), the job of opening act is a fine one in spite of any harsh reactions or pity claps you get while on stage. Hey, you’re on stage, playing music. Isn’t that 80 percent of the dream? (The rest is legal fees and gear problems.)

Where opening acts really pay a heady price for their visions of paradise (thank you Mr. P.) is at the working musician level where the stages are far smaller, the crews far surlier, and in some instances, the headlining act has kissed fame briefly and gotten drunk from the smooch. These are the kind of gigs where you have to sit the drummer down and tell him to leave 35 percent of his kit in the van if he wants his bandmates to join him onstage. It is also where you have a choice of no sound check or a sound check while the crowd is filing in. This choice is not as easy as it sounds—while a fast sound check in front of a few hundred people is not that bad, the soundman already hates you because you’re there and now you want him to do his job? I have suffered the consequences of choosing poorly in these instances. The punishment is usually a combination of no guitar or bass in the mix, no monitors for the singer, and half of the PA being turned off during your set.

I have seen countless others suffer the same fate. The most recent encounter was just a few weeks ago when I went to see, as a headliner on the club circuit, the first band I saw as an opener—UFO. As I sat in judgment while watching UFO’s opening act, who were truly dreadful on so many levels, I saw them gleefully commit all the offenses that make soundmen, headliners, and house crews hate opening acts. While their set was quite bad from a rock ‘n’ roll point of view, it was quite good as a tutorial on what not to do to survive the opening slot intact.

For example: If you, the lead singer, are going to drink on stage, make sure you know your band’s gear from the headliner’s gear so you do not struggle with the many choices of where to set your beer down.

Headgear is strictly forbidden (Lady Gaga notwithstanding). Don’t blame me, blame Slash and Buckethead.

Contrary to what you’ve learned on VH1’s Behind the Music and those horrible rock ‘n’ roll schools where you meet drug-addled has-beens with tax problems, never pretend you are playing to a full house when everyone in the room knows you are not. In fact, if the audience to band member ratio is 4:1 or less, ask them their names, thank them kindly, and do not yell anything about having a good time.

That loud squeal you hear is from you pointing the mic at the monitors. STOP IT!

Just walk on stage like everybody else, okay? If your singer mentions the words “make an entrance,” hit him really hard (probably not in the face, but I’ll leave that up to you).

Do not act proud when your girlfriend disappears for 15 minutes or more with a member of the headlining band or someone from their crew. But when she returns, go ahead, kiss her fully on the mouth—I dare ya.

It doesn’t matter that your guitarist is Asian, Samurai headbands look totally lame unless you’re being ironic, sardonic, or Rudy Sarzo from Quiet Riot circa 1983.

Unless you are illiterate and prepared to talk about your plight in between songs, never ever say, “Thank you, Crowd!”

Admittedly, I give opening acts a few extra claps and whistles if they do not suck because too often they are in a no-win situation—there in the name of destiny and no control over any of it except in how they respond to the challenge. (Hopefully with grace under pressure, eh?) If they sound like crap, it may not necessarily be their fault. When it is, it’s usually pretty obvious. And if I got the call to open for someone coming through town—I’d take it in a second. Think of the exposure!

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