Indie music discovery and the role of the opening act is something I feel strongly about and don't hear discussed enough.

I've kept a list for the last four years of every band I've seen open for someone else that I then went home and immediately looked up. The list has 47 acts on it. Of those 47, maybe eight have since gotten significant coverage in indie music press. The other 39 are still relatively underground, still touring on budgets that require van life and floor sleeping.

The opening act is in a structurally disadvantaged position — they're playing to an audience that didn't come for them, under time constraints, with whatever PA setting the headliner's crew left from soundcheck. When an opening act wins an audience under those conditions, it's because the music is strong enough to cut through everything working against it.

I've started going to shows specifically for the openers and staying for the headliner rather than the other way around.