When I was in high school I went to Peabody’s Downunder to see Rocket From The Crypt play. My friends and I didn’t have enough money to pay the covers so we wandered the The Flats of Cleveland, Ohio sparing change from people. We ended up by The Odeon where we walked right in because whoever was headlining was already on and no one seemed to care or notice. We pointed and laughed at some boy band that was playing got some change and headed back to our show.
Later that night when we were back at a friend’s house, we were goofing on the night her little sister went bonkers and explained to us that was NSYNC, who were not that popular at the time apparently. I looked into this memory to make sure the last 20 some years hadn’t made that story better than it actually was and NSYNC did play the Odeon that night, and the night before oddly enough.
Five years later to the day I was in Canada to see The Rolling Stones attempt to bring tourism back to Toronto after SARS wrecked it. The Stones had a full day festival with AC/DC, The Guess Who, Rush, The Flaming Lips and Justin Timberlake. This was the second July 30th where I would accidentally watch Justin Timberlake perform live.
When I connected the dates it made me realize this dude went from playing a club in Cleveland, Ohio to a capacity of 1,100 people to an international stage singing with The Rolling Stones for over 250,000 people.
That’s pretty impressive me.