So i like to say i discovered a few artists long before they blew up or at least to some degree. so i like to think i discovered the following bc i heard them way back, before they blew up and loved ever since...

P!nk...saw the video "There You Go" from her very first album, Most Girls, i think, the one where she denounces bc the music they (production company that first signed her) wanted her to do was not her own and more hip hop. she sings about in later songs. now, she is totally original. but saw that video on a Canadian music station when i lived in Stamford, CT called Much Music. i believe. it was based in Canada. now defunct. saw it, heard it, loved it. went to buy just the single. it wasn't even released yet. before iTunes and stuff of course. so i waited. got her first album, which compared to her now stuff is terrible and loved her ever since.

Bif Naked...not as wildly popular here (US) and not sure if even around anymore, but they gained some notoriety in US. had one very good song on the tv show Buffy the Vampire Slayer called "Lucky". again, from that Canadian music station.

No Doubt...since they were this ska/punk band. now defunct, but music lives on. love them and super crush on Gwen, of course.

I guess American Idol doesn't count.

Only instance I can note is anyone remember the singer Jewel? Back in the early 90s, she was doing coffee shops in the San Diego area. Saw her at a place called Java Joe's. I'm not a big coffee drinker but some friends dragged me there because someone playing live and it would be fun. Couple years later, she hit it big with her album "Pieces of You."

Not that I was following them from the beginning or anything, but I did buy GNR's Appetite for Destruction soon after it was released after hearing "Welcome to the Jungle" on a college radio station's metal show and loving it. Of course they already had a bit of success being signed to a major label and starting to appear in blurbs in metal magazines, but this was before they had any commercial radio or MTV airplay, they didn't become BIG until nearly a year later.

I discovered Metallica when Master of Puppets came out. Of course by this point they were already on their way up, but again no radio or MTV airplay yet, they didn't become kind of big until their next album and not really BIG until the Black Album, by which point I had been listening to them for nearly five years.

It was also kind of funny to see Glenn Danzig become a part of pop culture (probably started with the "Mother" video being played on Beevis and Butthead) after following him since his Misfits days.

one of my college friends from Cali freshman year had a demo tape of Rage Against the Machine and got us all hooked at the time.

i thought Jewel was so cute back in the day. her music was pretty good too. dated a girl who looked very similar to her...

only in the teeth I'm sure.

Saw a lot of up and coming "no name" bands at a metal club I used to frequent right before grunge took off. Pretty sure Nirvana was one of them, but I wasn't paying attention at the time. Plus a few other acts that hit it big in that time period.

Saw Lynyrd Skynyrd/Aerosmith show in early '74. Right before Second Helping and Get Your Wings were released. Ran out and bought first album of each.
Saw KISS as warm up for ZZ Top when Hotter Than Hell had just been released. Went out and bought first two albums.
I was pretty curious about music in the early seventies and was always blind buying albums by artists I, or my friends, had never heard of (at the time). Bought MAN WHO SOLD THE WORLD in '71. Blind bought GENESIS LIVE in 1973. ZZ TOP-RIO GRANDE MUD in '72. STYX-SERPENT IS RISING in '73.
Blind bought first albums of Queen, Blue Oyster Cult, Montrose, Bachman Turner, Rush, Kansas when they were first released.

Back in the early 90's I went to a street festival in Charlotte that had a few musical acts perform on a small stage. One of the acts was a new R&B group. Boys II Men.

I listened to college radio in my teens and early twenties. I can think of the B-52s, the Cars, and the Police. I was surprised when a song by The Pretenders later became the theme for Rush Limbaugh and a song by Inner Circle later became the theme for COPS.

Ditto on No Doubt. They used to play Southern California bars all the time. In fact, the first show for the band I was in, after I got sacked, was opening for them. That tells you how small-time they were.

Not the same thing as bands of course, but I remember seeing a lot of stand-up comedians before they were big. My college would bring in local comedians during lunch at the Student Union. Denis Leary performed almost every other week.

Probably the biggest example for me is seeing Soundgarden opening for Voivod in early 1990. Small crowd at Mabel's in Champaign IL.

I don't know if Tedeschi Trucks is really big, although they have a decent following, I used to see the Susan Tedeschi band in Alston at Harper's Ferry and got to meet her mom and dad a few times as they would hang out at the bar while she played.

Didn't listen to them, but I saw Soundgarden a year or two before they hit big at a free concert at a Junior College. Didn't know who they were but knew I liked the Heavy Sound and dark music.

I remember thinking, wow, i saw them before they became famous.

I liked Nirvana before they hit it big. I saw them open for Dinosaur Jr in a small club.
Also, saw Green Day open for SamIAm at a college quad during lunch time. I saw them and Jawbreaker a bunch in the Gilman days before they made it big.

I don't think they were ever "Huge" but I saw The Red Elvises at a state fair. A year before their music (And their cameo) appeared in Six String Samurai.

Kings of Leon is one for me.

About Nirvana, a record store I went to (since closed) used to have a photo of an in-store they did there. I only remember it because they attached a note to the photo: "Yes, they really did play here, and yes, it was really cool"

Godsmack before they got signed. Shadows Fall were local and I saw them so many times, mostly back when Phil Labonte was singing. Also, was at the first All That Remains show and have the first demo from them. New Found Glory before they blew up as well, they toured through town and played the diy place. Those are probably the biggest I saw that early, so no one too impressive.

I never saw them because I was too young (not to mention uninterested in their music), but in the rural area I grew up in, there was one bar that had live music. Think of those rentable trailer marquees with the DIY letters, where they often run out and have to use a backwards "3" when they're out of "E"s. And it seems like every other weekend, Twisted Sister would play there.

Listening to "Rock of the 80s" format stations turned me on to lots of groups that nobody knew of at the time but got bigger later- a main one is U2 which I heard back in 1983. I liked their stuff then but not when they hit it big later in the decade. I first heard Pet Shop Boys' "West End Girls" in 1984, two years before it hit the top 40- though they made some changes to it then and I've always preferred the older version. Have loved all their other music since then also, they get just about zero airplay nowadays.

I'd also heard of Nirvana as they played around here.