Dan Nigro
Apparently, Dan Nigro, who I saw twice around 2004 with As Tall as Lions at the fun but ill-fated Downtown in Farmingdale, who joked on stage about being from “Massapequa Pawk,” is now one of the world's biggest pop music songwriters. That's kind of inspiring. He probably didn't end up where he thought he would, but he still ended up doing good work he seems to love.
I think a former coworker named Brandon claimed to have signed As Tall as Lions, or at least worked on their management team in some capacity. I don't remember exactly. Small world, though.
ATAL was pretty great. I didn't like them at first, but they grew on me over time. I especially loved their self-titled album and “Goodnite, Noises Everywhere”. I also wrote about “Maybe I'm Just Tired” in an earlier blog post about playlist functionality.