When I was a kid we used to go to ‘the club’ on a Weekend. My abiding memory is of the bingo which the whole family, parents included, detested. As a 7yr old the kid the idea of standing still and not breathing for half an hour was torture.
The place was a bear pit like the OP describes for performers. They were of variable quality, my favourite was a large lady who turned up with a portable tape deck with songs on a cassette, still with the original voices on and possibly taped form the radio (probably not but I like the idea). She then proceeded to murder each and every one of these songs. Halfway through the second set the batteries began to fail mid song and we had to wait for her to put four more D cells in and away she went. She was t even the worst. There were some amazing ones though but god forbid any band to be ‘a bit loud’.