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The year was 1994 and my sister and I had tickets to go see Crowded House in what turned out to be one of their last shows together prior to breaking up. All tickets were General Admission and it was held at the Congress Centre in Ottawa, ON, a local conference centre. Quite a nice place to hold it, actually, because the layout wasn't like your typical concert venue with rows and rows of chairs. In fact, it was all set up like a cozy club with tables, chairs, and candles.
Anyway, after picking up our tickets about three hours in advance of doors opening, we decided to browse around the mall that the Congress Centre connected to. We popped into a Gap store and as we were browsing around, we noticed a lady poking around the leather jacket area. She seemed rather interested in a dark brown suede number, which my sister already had back at home and wasn't terribly pleased with due to its rather shoddy quality stitching.
My sister proceeded to inform this lady of that fact...
"Excuse me. I couldn't help but notice that you looked interested in that jacket. I just wanted to let you know that it's not very good. I've got one and it already looks like it's going to fall apart."
The lady smiled and thanked my sister for her tip. They then had a pretty good chat about clothing and other stuff. We learned that the lady was in town for a concert and that she was an opening act - her first as a solo artist after acting as backup vocalist for plenty of other people.
The lady then told my sister that she had to go back and get ready for the show. We then realized that she meant the Crowded House show and told her that we were going to be there to watch it.
To which she replied...
"Oh, that's great to hear! I'll keep an eye out for you guys!"
Now, back to the venue...
We ended up at a table with a very good view of the stage. After the announcment of the opening act, the lady from Gap showed up with her guitar and a couple of backup musicians. The songs she played turned out to be quite catchy and everyone was pleasantly surprised at how good the opening act was. Even Neil Finn showed up to do a duet with the Gap lady and that was very well received. The Gap lady mentioned that her first album would be released very soon and that she hoped everyone would like it.
After her performance ended, Crowded House took to the stage and the crowd was pretty much up on their feet for the rest of the evening. About a quarter of the way through their set, somebody tapped my sister on the shoulder.
"Hi, there! Good to see you! May I join you guys for the rest of the show?" said the lady from Gap.
And that was how we met Sheryl Crow. | 
