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Think about the best local band you saw in high school. Did you think they were going to be the next Beatles? Lookout Records founder Larry Livermore did. In 1988, he watched Billie Joe and Mike play to exactly five kids in an off-the-grid cabin in Mendocino County. They were 16. It was their third show ever. Livermore decided right then to make a record with them. He eventually walked away from Lookout because the music business got too corporate—treating artists "like soap powder"—but not before launching the biggest punk band on the planet. Decades later, they looked him in the eye from the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame stage and thanked him. What’s the smallest crowd you’ve ever seen a massive band play to before they blew up? Let's hear your best "I saw them when" stories.

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The performance is really awesome!!

Before getting hired by Circus magazine, Mark Weiss was just a high school kid stuffing a camera under a baggy sweatshirt and paying the Madison Square Garden door guy three bucks to sneak in. He was literally selling 8x10s out of his locker before landing a gig shooting Van Halen at the Asbury Park Convention Hall on August 11, 1979. He eventually became their go-to guy. By the 1982 Hide Your Sheep tour in Chicago, David Lee Roth was calling Weiss's hotel room to demand he come take photos of him climbing a tree to rescue a stuck kite. It makes you wonder how much incredible, unauthorized rock history is still sitting in some guy's attic because he snuck a camera into a legendary gig. Who are the modern-day rogue photographers doing this right now at your local venues? Drop their names, I want to dig through their archives.

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Credit to: Q with Tom Power

Special collaborations with Soundgarden Matt Cameron

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Credit: The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon

Credit: Rick Beato, Wolfgang Van Halen