Here’s a topic I picked up from Facebook friend yesterday: Who’s the best artist (solo or band) you just happened to catch in concert? I’m talking about an artist you knew nothing about but simply stumbled into seeing as an opener, as a chance encounter on a night out with friends, or whatever?

My answer is The Embarrassment, a band I’d never heard of but saw as the first of 3 bands on a Public Image Ltd show in Chicago in 1981 or 1982. The Embarrassment were these nerdy guys with Oxford shirts, sweaters, and horn-rimmed glasses who put on a short set of incredibly high-energy, guitar-driven, fun (and funny) pop songs. They blew away the next band on the bill, The Effigies, and gave PiL (with John Lydon and Keith Levene playing half the set offstage, in the wings) a run for their money. In the early days of Nerd Rock, The Embarrassment delivered Nerd Rock at its finest!

A few years later I’d see Big Dipper for the first time and realize that the familiar-looking high-octane guitarist/singer from that band was Bill Goffrier, from The Embarrassment!