The opening act, or support act, is the artist who performs before the headliner, warming up an audience that is often still finding its seats or queuing at the bar. It is a classic route to fame and a reliably humbling one.
The great mismatch came in July 1967, when the Jimi Hendrix Experience was booked as support on The Monkees’ American tour. Micky Dolenz had seen Hendrix at the Monterey Pop Festival and recommended him, but the teenage audiences had come for the television stars and drowned out the guitar with chants for Davy Jones. After seven or eight shows, including dates at Forest Hills in New York, Hendrix left. A story soon circulated that the Daughters of the American Revolution had objected to his act; it was an invented, tongue-in-cheek cover story. Both acts did rather well afterwards, and the episode remains the gold standard for wrong crowd, right artist.