The oddest music venue you have played at - and what went wrong?

R

rob aylestone

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How about this?
Cornwall, England. A large cavern, underground - with a stage and they do music events. Halfway though the lights went out, but power stayed on - so we just carried on very odd, but quite fun really!
I've found an old pile of GoPro clips, so have been going through them.
 
We played a pizza shop one night and as soon as we started the manager shut off all the regular lighting and flipped on a cluster of black lights. If it wasn't for the glow coming off of my shirt I wouldn't have been able to see what I was playing.

Not too odd but the oddest for me. We were "hired" to play a restaurant/bar in downtown Alexandria, Virginia. The restaurant/bar was upstairs. We arrived, went up to check in with the manager. The restaurant/bar was packed and there was live entertainment consisting of soft lounge music from a 3-piece band. The din of conversation was louder than the music.

We were instructed to set up and play in the lower 1st floor room which was totally void of any furniture. Just a linoleum floor and drop ceiling with bare walls. Period.

We were fully amplified and would have been playing loud enough to drown out anything that was going on in the upstairs room, this left us greatly confused. When we questioned the setup the manager simply told us our playing would eventually draw customers down from upstairs as they gradually finished their meals and after dinner drinks. We would also draw customers in off the street as they passed near. We began playing and none of this happened. Not one person appeared.

We'd only played a couple songs before the guys called it quits. I suggested since this was one of our regular practice nights and we were already set up that we should just continue as a practice session and to hell with the place. That didn't fly well so we packed and left.
 
Many years ago the rock band I was in played at a junk yard. The guy that hired us told us it was a farm but the only thing farmy about it was the barn where we set up but it was straight up a salvage yard. It turned out ok and there was a pretty big crowd
 
For the win this was last year...The gig was outside in the high desert in Apple Valley honoring some local veterans on 911... Big ass flag being flown behind the stage with a little bit of tattered edges on the bottom....we'd just taken a break and were heading back to the stage when this happened right before our eyes. It swooped down and picked up a mic stand and Brent's $10,000 dollar Taylor guitar that had been played by a lot of famous pickers. The right bottom front of the guitar was smashed into pieces....When we were picking them up I had the foresight to try and find every piece and save them. A guy called the guitar whisperer was able to put humpty dumpty back together again and she plays and look just fine...you can see the repair if you look close but it is very usable and has a once in a lifetime story and video proof that goes with it.....Crazy

 
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In the Army our Warrant officer bandmaster was something of a character. He had us play for a polo match at a private estate as I recall for the birthday of the estate owner. Huge lawn, horses. It couldn't possibly have been considered a legitimate use of an Army band - we normally played for military ceremonies, public functions with some obvious patriotic theme - I imagine he was trying to cozy up to some rich people. We also played for a puppet show - the Bandmaster liked puppets. We played in a parade in the LA area for Donald Duck's promotion and Army retirement - that actually was an official military function and involved military personnel - did a pass in review, the works with Donald Duck standing next to the military brass on the review stand, it was just kind of an unusual circumstance.

Played one particular gig with a Latin dance band that was a complete disaster starting with listening to the bandleader have a shouting match vacillating from Spanish to English with his wife for around 45 minutes in their bathroom before leaving for the gig to everything that could have possibly gone wrong at the gig starting with being over an hour late because of the previously mentioned marital discord - but it was all on the bandleader who was a knucklehead. About the only thing that didn't happen was an airplane didn't crash into the venue.
 
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Holloway women's prison.
I can't remember if the band even had a practice but it actually went quite well and the women rather liked us. I was amazed at the number of inmates that had babies and very small children, many of whom were born in the prison. It made some of our female singers cry and get all broody. I was secretly hoping there'd be a jailbreak !
 
I've only been into a prison once - and the feeling of being on the wrong side of many locked doors always played on my mind. I'd still probably do a gig in a prison, but I remember that one time, we got loads of little odds and ends stolen - even things like 13Amp plugs. Anything not attached was pinched for some off reason. Do remember the tool box being banned and removed.
 
Actually, before I'd played at Holloway, I'd played at Wormwood Scrubbs. It was scary although I wasn't scared. For some reason, prisoners seem to love looking at the bass player, so I got props !
 
In my last job, I had to do some work inside prisons. I've been in Strangeways, Brixton, Birmingham, and Rampton Hospital.
You need a passport to get in, you have to be searched, and all your equipment and toolboxes searched too.
They want to see a tool list. And if your name's not on the invite list, you don't get in.
It can take half a day just to get you and your tools in.
 
Around 35-40 years ago, I was invited by a young actress to join her theater troupe compounded by her and two clowns. She was also the director of the group. They performed plays for kids mostly in needy communities. By the time one of the requirements was that I put music in some existing lyrics, so I wrote the songs and also I kept seated in a stool in the background of the stage playing the guitar in every performance. I really never considered myself as part of the group; for me I was more like the guitar guy supporting their acting. Anyway, the project was overall a nice action but unfortunately I wasn't in my moment of life for doing this (I was most interested on playing in a rock band) and also it didn't pay anything. The ice of the cake was that being the only person in the group with a car I ended accumulating also the function of driver and roadie AND the performances always happened on Fridays and Saturdays ruining completely my weekends. LoL! Being in my twenties it was not too hard to take the decision of leaving the group within a few months. I remember that the young lady got very upset when I told her that I was quitting. One of her arguments in a desperate attempt of trying to convince me to not go away, was that the performances wouldn't be as good without me playing the "great soundtrack I had written" (her words). As much as I felt myself flattered by her statement (and indeed the songs enriched a lot the performances) I was really decided to leave. Long story short, at the time I owned a Tascam Porta One cassete multi-track recorder, so my solution to help me to abandon the boat as sooner as I could was spend a couple days recording all the backtracks and giving her a copy. Even so she couldn't hide her dissatisfaction about my decision and stopped to talk to me since then. Ten years later or so we met each other casually in the street. She seemed to be more calm then about the fact and talked to me as if never had never happened.

:-)
 
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Playing a steady gig at a cool Irish pub, nothing wrong with the venue, but a drunken patron in a kilt stood on the bar, lifted his kilt, and helicoptered his junk. I’d prefer to not have that memory.
 
Many moons ago the band I was in played a freebie at the behest of the bassist, at a country nudist retreat... and I'm here to tell you, it's not the young lithe people who wander around without their gear on, it's the old wrinklies...:oops:

All of which was fine - a bit disconcerting seeing a naked man leaning over a vat of some type of meal he was heating up, but he was wearing a sort of apron, to keep the dangling bits from singeing...

At some point we were on a break and I was in a van chatting with someone - not attached to the band - and I head "the band" strike up... WTF? I'm here.. I'm the guitarist/singer. If I'm not playing, it's a little dull. >:( So I wandered out back to the stage area only to see that our gear had been commandeered by some nudists who were whanging away on some tune or other. The bassist and drummer were heading for the stage as well. After we dissuaded the nudists from their pursuits and took back control, the drummer complained bitterly about nudist bum sweat on his drum throne. :LOL: I gave my guitar a damn good wiping before playing.
 
Armistice said:
Many moons ago the band I was in played a freebie at the behest of the bassist, at a country nudist retreat... and I'm here to tell you, it's not the young lithe people who wander around without their gear on, it's the old wrinklies...:oops:

All of which was fine - a bit disconcerting seeing a naked man leaning over a vat of some type of meal he was heating up, but he was wearing a sort of apron, to keep the dangling bits from singeing...

At some point we were on a break and I was in a van chatting with someone - not attached to the band - and I head "the band" strike up... WTF? I'm here.. I'm the guitarist/singer. If I'm not playing, it's a little dull. >:( So I wandered out back to the stage area only to see that our gear had been commandeered by some nudists who were whanging away on some tune or other. The bassist and drummer were heading for the stage as well. After we dissuaded the nudists from their pursuits and took back control, the drummer complained bitterly about nudist bum sweat on his drum throne. :LOL: I gave my guitar a damn good wiping before playing.
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Strangers picking up your ax on the bandstand uninvited is incredibly rude, naked or not.

I’ve played society gigs where drunks would try to get up and sing. The rich can still be trash.
 
We used to do some very nice posh shows, where the audience would be heard saying We came up from Monte Carlo in the yacht boa boa. One of these we were loading out and I handed the drummer his sunglasses in the cable trunk. They're not mine he said, I forgot about them till prepping next show and came across them. My daughter in law said they were some crazy Japanese make and I googled to find out they were limited edition Gold and Platinum - and were mega expensive. I called the yacht club and told them I had them. I called again two months later and nobody had even enquired. I think she still has them!!
 
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