Smallest and Grottiest Venues you've played!

[BigRedX]

The worst place I've ever played was a benefit for an adventure playground at the adventure playground. We had been told we'd be playing "in the clubhouse" which turned out to be a half-completed brick structure with no doors or windows, just openings in the brickwork. It differed only from the dens I used to make on building sites in my youth my the fact that the bricks were held together with mortar! The band was very DIY post-punk and of limited musical ability. Half way through the first "song" the "stage" was invaded by the kids who commandeered the mic and wouldn't let us anywhere near it. The rest of the "gig" consisted of us playing various riffs while the kids shouted their own lyrics down the mic. When I got home all my equipment was coated in a thin layer of mud which took several hours the following day to wash off.

The worst proper venue that I've played was what used to be known by my band as "the gig on top of the wardrobe". This was The Old Malt Cross Music Hall in Nottingham back in the mid 80s. These days they have a reasonably decent-sized stage, but back then it was just about big enough to fit a three-piece with a tiny drum kit and small combo amps. It was also about 6 foot up roughly in between the ground floor and the balcony. The front was panelled wood so it looked like you were stood on top of a large Victorian wardrobe. The venue was run by two incredibly miserable gits, who seemed to hate everything about having live music on in the pub. You had to set up during lunch time while disturbing the customers as little as possible. You then got about 5 minutes to sound check in between chucking out at the end of lunchtime and them locking up for the afternoon. The only reason bands put up with it was because there were very few other venues in Nottingham at the time.

In comparison the 12 Bar Club has a massive stage and is most accommodating to the bands it puts on:

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[Bassman Steve]

[quote name='Bassman Sam' timestamp='1380756638' post='2230320']
The worse place I played was the Royal Hotel, Redcar. The stage was so small, to fit on it, I had to take a light fitting off the wall so I didn't hit it with the headstock. I was playing a Washburn Status headless at the time.

The venue was at the front of a run down hotel which we were allocated a room each for the night. There was no door on the communal toilet and shower room and the rain dripped into the bedrooms. When I finally drank enough to try and get some sleep in this sh*thole, I got into the bed and it was damper than a puddle of p*ss and smelled as bad.

The drive back to Essex from Teesside was memorable for the stink from my bleary eyed bandmates as we tried to get warm from the van heater. The joys of gigging.
[/quote]

Ditto!! Played there in 2003 and the pub manager kindly crowbarred the planks barring exit to the 'hotel'. It had been shut and condemned and we were told that there were probably ok beds and water somewhere in there and to help ourselves. You paint an accurate picture of the night that followed in there.

[JTUK]

Played a few ...wont do it now.
We tell the venue how much space we need and if they need to build a stage, how big it must be.

[lojo]

Did a pub gig last week, all the photos have the "toilets>" sign above my head, then weren't near thank God, just the sign.

[Ticktock]

[quote name='discreet' timestamp='1380794106' post='2230559']
A guerilla gig in an office block in Spitalfields in the early 80s. Someone blagged a key from the estate agent - the place got wrecked. I was propositioned by a dwarf wearing a Princess Leia costume. A situation I would have been able to handle better if I hadn't eaten 200 magic mushrooms. Happy days.
[/quote]

Laughing way too hard here..

[rogerstodge]

[quote name='CamdenRob' timestamp='1380782221' post='2230377']
I was in a dodgy metal band when I was 14 and we played some real dives and inappropriate sized venues. The Standard in Walthamstow springs to mind.. All black painted walls with an enormous ramp the went out into the "crowd". It had the smallest back stage room I've ever seen with the grottiest sofa in all existence... Think the smallest we ever played was the Red Eye in Islington, the stage was literally about six foot square.

Played quite a few needlessly large venues as well, played once at the Oval in Norwich with the same dodgy metal band. Had a massive stage and one of those floor to ceiling metal grilles at the front, presumably to protect us from the raucous crowd made up solely of the other bands and their girlfriends...

Rob
[/quote]the standard walthamstow !!! Fantastic venue

[Roger2611]

The Charles Bradlaugh in Northampton was an awful venue, the band played upstairs which was basically a galleried bar with the band playing one side of the gallery and the audience stood the other side, a good sixty feet away with a 20ft drop in between audience and band....we went in there again recently and they have filled in the hole built a brilliant little stage and.......don't have live music on anymore!!

[lefrash]

The smallest Gig I've done is the Market Bar in Inverness. If there was a 5th member of the band they would have to play from the toilet! Its honestly tiny, but its an aboslutely brilliant night!

[chriswareham]

Smallest venue I've played was a place in Brighton. It's the upstairs room of a pub, and looks like it used to be the landlords living room. Proper PA and a great gig the first time we played there. Went back a few months later with a Belgian band we were touring with. Turned out the landlord was having a violent row with his wife, and we were told in no uncertain terms that we should bugger off. The Belgians disappeared briefly, then told us to get out of town quick when they reappeared as they'd slashed the landlords car tyres. I was expecting a knock on the door from the boys in blue for weeks, since the hire van was in my name.

[chriswareham]

Grottiest venue has got to be the now derelict Sir George Robey in Finsbury, closely followed by the also long gone Camden Falcon. At the "ropey Robey" the drains had backed up and flooded the dressing room. A previous band had even abandoned one of their cabs that had been overrun by the tide of filth. The Falcon was just neglected, but the sound woman (who was in a dub reggae band) worked wonders with the crappy PA to get a truely great bass heavy sound.

[chriswareham]

Oh yeah, and I've also literally played in a toilet. It's a converted Victorian public convenience on the edge of a park somewhere in Kent. Struggling to remember exactly where, but Maidstone springs to mind and I'm sure someone on here can name it.

[gjones]

I played at this place a couple of years ago [url="http://www.scotsman.com/news/is-this-the-city-s-roughest-pub-1-1200639"]http://www.scotsman....t-pub-1-1200639[/url]

And recently I played at this place (which interestingly has the worlds tiniest stage and a toilet called 'The Tardis'). [url="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1029938/Man-cleared-IRA-killing-71-witnesses-saw-nothing.html"]http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1029938/Man-cleared-IRA-killing-71-witnesses-saw-nothing.html[/url]

I don't want to play either of them again please.

Edited October 4, 2013 by gjones

[fumps]

I played a local gig in a pub called the "The Little un" it was a tiny pub with a meaty reputation. We had done a few gigs in a pub just over the road & decided to accept this one as a last minute thing. The stage was tiny & some of the local inbreeds were more impressed that we had the bottle to actually do a gig there. It was all going really well we had a few people dancing and then "Bam" a bloke who was dancing in front of me got headbutted & I got blood in both my eyes.......

After doing the local gigs in the Pontefract, Castleford, Wakefield area it was hard to shock me after that.

Years later I did a lets say unlicensed DJ gig at a News years eve party in a disused church close to Leeds university. When I was on the decks I looked over to see two ladies & a young gentleman engaged in a game of hide the sausage.......In full view of well everyone. It was a good night though.

[Bassmonkey]

[quote name='fumps' timestamp='1380882040' post='2231818']
I played a local gig in a pub called the "The Little un" it was a tiny pub with a meaty reputation. We had done a few gigs in a pub just over the road & decided to accept this one as a last minute thing. The stage was tiny & some of the local inbreeds were more impressed that we had the bottle to actually do a gig there. It was all going really well we had a few people dancing and then "Bam" a bloke who was dancing in front of me got headbutted & I got blood in both my eyes.......

After doing the local gigs in the Pontefract, Castleford, Wakefield area it was hard to shock me after that.

Years later I did a lets say unlicensed DJ gig at a News years eve party in a disused church close to Leeds university. When I was on the decks I looked over to see two ladies & a young gentleman engaged in a game of hide the sausage.......In full view of well everyone. It was a good night though.
[/quote]

Made me laugh Fumps - played South Emsall too.....not ace. Done the Wakey Ponte Cas circuit too. Some interesting experiences but mostly ace! Some good people out there

[Bassmonkey]

[quote name='Adrenochrome' timestamp='1380785837' post='2230408']
Played regularly at a small venue between Leeds and Bradford where the electrickery varied between <200 and 260 volts (we checked it once). As long as all the amps survived (they often didn't without a fuse change) you had a good gig.
We then had all our gigs there pulled because we played a venue in the next town 2 miles away...
[/quote]

Where was that Jon? assume Pudsey/Rodley/Farsley? PM if you like - just interested thats all Andy

[fumps]

[quote name='Bassmonkey' timestamp='1380884014' post='2231856']
Made me laugh Fumps - played South Emsall too.....not ace. Done the Wakey Ponte Cas circuit too. Some interesting experiences but mostly ace! Some good people out there
[/quote]
Yeh I'm from Ponte carlo originally it's a funny place to grow up. South Emsall is just precious. Hemsworth is a top place too lol

Edited October 4, 2013 by fumps

[Mudpup]

"I was in a dodgy metal band when I was 14 and we played some real dives and inappropriate sized venues. The Standard in Walthamstow springs to mind.. All black painted walls with an enormous ramp the went out into the "crowd". It had the smallest back stage room I've ever seen with the grottiest sofa in all existence..."

I played there many times back in the day......i just remember going a bit weird when i stood and played in exactly the same spot as Phil Lynott had stood when i saw him a few weeks prior playing with Grand Slam at said venue. Had a great fight in there once too - real barroom brawling that John Wayne would have been proud of (the singers 50 year old dad was barred for life for trying to strangle a Hells Angel that night). Happy days

[CamdenRob]

[quote name='rogerstodge' timestamp='1380819402' post='2231095']
the standard walthamstow !!! Fantastic venue
[/quote]

[quote name='Mudpup' timestamp='1380899001' post='2232162']
I played there many times back in the day......i just remember going a bit weird when i stood and played in exactly the same spot as Phil Lynott had stood when i saw him a few weeks prior playing with Grand Slam at said venue. Had a great fight in there once too - real barroom brawling that John Wayne would have been proud of (the singers 50 year old dad was barred for life for trying to strangle a Hells Angel that night). Happy days ��
[/quote]

I remember our guitarist had an early wireless system.... kept picking up the cab office next door... put me off using a wireless for life.

Edited October 4, 2013 by CamdenRob

[Adrenochrome]

[quote name='Bassmonkey' timestamp='1380884079' post='2231857']
Where was that Jon? assume Pudsey/Rodley/Farsley? PM if you like - just interested thats all Andy
[/quote]

Eyup, it was the Thornhill Arms, even funnier as Steve the gaffer was supposed to be a sparky. We had all our gigs taken away at one point because we also played the Golden Lion in Pudsey. This was in Angel Of Sin days, Delirium never went down as well at the Golden Lion.

...and yeah we played the Little 'Un with some interesting locals...

[PaulWarning]

the Attic in Leicester, up 2 flights of decaying unlit stairs to a small room with a full PA, to cap it all my GF came up to me to inform us that there was no power in the 'ladies' just half a dozen candles

[fumps]

[quote name='Adrenochrome' timestamp='1380899559' post='2232170']


...and yeah we played the Little 'Un with some interesting locals...
[/quote]
Yeh I think most of them had webbed feet.

I live right next to Rodley now in Leeds.....just as interesting lol

[Bassmonkey]

[quote name='Adrenochrome' timestamp='1380899559' post='2232170']


Eyup, it was the Thornhill Arms, even funnier as Steve the gaffer was supposed to be a sparky. We had all our gigs taken away at one point because we also played the Golden Lion in Pudsey. This was in Angel Of Sin days, Delirium never went down as well at the Golden Lion.

...and yeah we played the Little 'Un with some interesting locals...
[/quote]
Of course. I remember that. He told me about it. Had some peculiar ideas about having the monopoly on bands in west Leeds. Ha ha. Bryan from AOS still drums with us.

[steve-soar]

Kidderminster Market Tavern, cow sh*t all over the floor. Set the PA on fire.

[KingBollock]

It was a political party club in Bedworth. I can't remember which one and I don't want to guess because one of the others was one of my favourite venues to play.

To get the gear into this place you had to go up a narrow, very rickety and slippy, external staircase. The stage was in a very odd position. It was quite a long and narrow room but had a wall sticking half way out across the middle of it, cutting the room in half. The stage was built across one of the corners made by the bisecting wall. So the stage was tiny and you could only play to one half of the room and the dance floor was behind you.

[rushbo]

[size="3"][color="#000000"][font="Calibri"]I love stories like these...[/font][/color][/size]
[size="3"][color="#000000"][font="Calibri"]It's a bit of a lengthy read, but here's something I wrote for my (now sadly neglected) music blog about a nightmare gig somewhere in Bolton, many years ago...[/font][/color][/size]
[size="3"][color="#000000"][font="Calibri"]It’s 1990. My hotshot Indie outfit ‘Little Red Schoolhouse’ are just about to release an album. We can fill most Pub/Club sized venues in a twenty mile radius of Birmingham; we’ve had John Peel airplay and appeared on local radio so many times, we’re blasé about it. We think we’re hot sh*t, in other words. We need to prove this to the world, so we do what every other band does and hire a transit van and take our music to the people (maaan). And on this occasion, we take it to the people of Bolton. I’ve spoken to the survivors of this ghastly experience and no-one can tell me why we thought Bolton was going to welcome us with open arms or why we chose this particular venue, but with a song in our hearts, the four members of the band, plus our legendary Roadie/tambourine virtuoso ‘Wildman’, climbed aboard the van and headed north on a cold winters night. A few non-threatening flakes of snow pitter-pattered on the windscreen, but spirits were high. We got to the venue –the name of which has been cruelly excised from my memory - and we unloaded our equipment. The stage area was upstairs. As a rule of thumb, the stage area is ALWAYS upstairs, or in the case of one storey buildings, in the basement. Either way, there are always stairs. So we wrestled the equipment upstairs and surveyed the scene. It was a typical back room of a pub – there was a five inch high wooden platform at one end of the room which was the performance area which would probably been suitable for a small boy playing the accordion but it was still larger than we were used to. Cheerfully, we set up…drumkits were built, amps turned on and guitars tuned – so far, so good. [/font][/color][/size]
[size="3"][color="#000000"][font="Calibri"]Eventually, we caught sight of the landlord of the pub- a pimpled youth who looked too young to get served in a bar let alone run one. He was accompanied by an elderly lady we took to be his mother and a barmaid in her early twenties. No one came up to say hello, so we got on with it. After a while, Andy, our lead singer/guitarist went up to the baby faced barman and asked where the PA was. Babyface pointed to two speakers, suspended from the ceiling. ‘Those are speakers’ said Andy, confused… ‘The PA is what you plug stuff into…’ the Barman scratched his head and muttered something about ‘the contract’ which none of us had seen. In fact, the only contact we had had with the bar was a phone call where we were told to turn up promptly and send some posters. The same posters which were sitting unused on a chair on the stage. It was at this point that I began to feel uneasy. I then looked around the bar. The only evidence of any ‘promotion’ for tonight’s event was a chalkboard behind the bar with the words ‘Tonight: Little Red and the Schoolhouse’ which made us sound like the backing band for a local prostitute. Anyway, Babyface was adamant that we should have bought a PA amp and stomped off to try and find us something ‘from out the back’. After about twenty minutes, he emerged with a desk mounted microphone about the size of a telephone directory with a curved horn protruding from it…the kind of thing a 1920s taxi controller would use. When we pointed out that Andy would have to lie on the floor and sing with one finger on the ‘talk’ button, Babyface seemed to think this was a viable option. [/font][/color][/size]
[size="3"][color="#000000"][font="Calibri"](It is at this point, gentle reader that I have to tell you a little about myself. When it comes to alcohol, I am a lightweight. Whenever I gig, I treat myself to a bottle of Budweiser to take the edge of any nerves and that’s it. On this night however, I decided that blissful oblivion was the way to go and my single, pre gig beer became two, then three…and so on).[/font][/color][/size]
[size="3"][color="#000000"][font="Calibri"]But back to the story…Babyface was dispatched to find something we could use to sing through…at this point, even a rolled up newspaper would have done. He came back with the kind of microphone that came free with a 1970s music centre. The lead was about five feet long and held together with sticky tape. To make it work, it had to be plugged into the spare input on Andy’s Fender guitar amp which gave the vocals a certain ‘Stephen Hawking’ ambience. We also had to gaffa tape it to a cymbal stand, much to our drummer Gary’s chagrin. But we soldiered on. There were about 20 people in the bar when started to play, including the obligatory drooling drunk. Fortunately for me, at a table by the stage were two rather attractive young ladies, who got the full benefit of my ‘hot stage moves’ (cough). We struggled manfully through our hour long set, said ‘Thank you Bolton and goodnight’ and I trotted off to see Babyface for our fee. ‘You ain’t finished’ he replied in a charmless bark. ‘Bands that play ‘ere play for an hour an’ ‘alf…it’s in t’contract”. I replied that we hadn’t seen ‘t’contract’ and that we had an hours worth of material and that’s all. ‘Then ya dunt get paid’ came the reply. I relayed this information to my colleagues and unsurprisingly it was greeted with less than joy. After a brief discussion, we decided that rather than repeat numbers we had already played, we would play the Velvet Undergrounds’ ‘Sweet Jane’ for 30 minutes. 30 minutes exactly. I decided I needed something to make this egregious occurrence slightly more palatable and marched to the bar and ordered two large whiskeys which I downed in about 20 seconds. Now, I was ready.[/font][/color][/size]
[size="3"][color="#000000"][font="Calibri"]We lurched into the cyclical chord progression. Andy decided he was just going to sing and left his guitar on the stand and improvised often profane variations on one of Lou Reeds’ finest works, whilst glaring at Babyface, who seemed oblivious to it all. By now, I was steaming drunk and barely capable of playing the incredibly simple bass line. Occasionally, I would stop to steady myself on the drumkit or reach forward and steal the drinks from the table of the two nice young girls, who now looked at me like I was a basket case. Our drummer and guitarist diligently plugged away with murder in their eyes. About twenty minutes into this interminable dirge, I decided I needed a rest and found a suitable place for a lie down…a ‘bench’ about 18” wide. Perfect! I gingerly manoeuvred myself into a horizontal position and continued to plunk away whilst grinning inanely and looking at the ceiling. Something felt wrong…and then it occurred to me that I was lying on the railing at the top of the staircase and to my immediate right was a thirty foot drop to the ground floor. With all the elegance I could muster, I got back into an upright position and carried on, pausing only to yell ‘Sweeetchaynee!’ into the toy microphone. This herculean effort and my lack of multi-tasking skills meant that I had no idea what bass notes I should be playing and had to stare intensely at Derek the guitarists fingers on the fretboard of his Strat to have any idea where I was in the song. After EXACTLY 30 minutes, in the middle of a chorus, Andy yelled ‘STOP!’ and walked straight over to the bar for the fee. But Babyface was nowhere to be seen. Andy asked the barmaid where he was and she opened the door to the stockroom…there was Babyface in the middle of a passionate and noisy clinch with the woman we took to be his mother. It was at that moment I decided I needed another drink. Whilst at the bar, I was slapped hard on the back by the obligatory drooling drunk – obviously feeling I was a kindred spirit – and with his face about an inch from mine he yelled that we were ‘the best thing he’d seen since Hendrix!’ Given that he looked about 30, he was either a precocious gig-goer or, more likely, King of the Bullsh*tt*rs. Anyway, he bought me a drink and then fell down most of the stairs. [/font][/color][/size]
[size="3"][color="#000000"][font="Calibri"]To make matters even more bizarre, one of the twenty punters turned out to be the music critic from the local paper and collared us for an interview. Andy decided he wanted nothing to do with it and sat on his amp, drinking heavily and shouting at Babyface who was still French-kissing his septuagenarian 'girlfriend'. The intrepid reporter placed his portable tape recorder on the beer soaked table in front of us and I immediately broke it. He carried on. Gary and Derek tried to keep it together and said all the right things, whilst I just sang Judas Priest songs into the microphone of the broken tape machine. At the end of this mercifully brief ordeal, he asked for an address to which he could send a copy of the paper. Quick as a flash, I grabbed a beermat and wrote something on it. Obviously not my address as we never saw a copy. Probably just as well. [/font][/color][/size]
[size="3"][color="#000000"][font="Calibri"]The next hour is a blank. I have no idea how my gear ended up in the van or if we ever received the £50 from Babyface. My next memory is sitting on the wheel arch in the back of the van feeling cold and nauseous. ‘I need a Pee’ said Wildman. ‘Me too’, said Derek and Gary. Rather than pull into a service station, Andy immediately wrenched the van to the side of the road and flung open the doors. By now, the light scattering of snowflakes had turned into a blizzard and we were ankle deep in white slush. On leaving the van, the three intrepid travellers had to go down a fairly sharp incline to get to the nearest tree to pee against. All well and good on the way down, but due to the weather conditions and the inebriated state they found themselves in, no one could get back to the van. They would get halfway up and then slip down like contestants on some unholy episode of ‘Total Wipeout’. I was alerted to their plight by the screams and profanities which shattered the peaceful night air. I fell out of the van to see what the commotion was, to be greeted by the sight of three soaking, mudsplattered figures yelling at me for a hand. I am not proud of this, dear reader, but I laughed so much at their condition, I was completely incapable of reaching down and pulling them up. Eventually, they scrambled back to the roadside. I think Gary may have punched me, as I found a large bruise on my side at a later date, but my recollections are hazy. Andy stayed in the driver’s seat, fingers gripping the wheel, staring intensely ahead….[/font][/color][/size]
[size="3"][color="#000000"][font="Calibri"]We crawled home. We got about ten miles from Birmingham when a pointless argument over some piece of trivia broke out. Wildman, drunk and belligerent started to bang on the metal side of the van shouting ‘let me out you bunch of f**kers’. So at 5.30 on a snowy, windswept winter’s morning, we left one of our dearest friends at a bus stop in the middle of nowhere, safe in the knowledge that he wouldn’t see any evidence of public transport for at least two hours. It took about two miles for good sense to prevail and we turned around and picked him up, still standing at the bus stop, shivering, with just a Sonic Youth T shirt to keep him from hyperthermia. The rest of the journey was travelled in total silence. [/font][/color][/size]
[size="3"][color="#000000"][font="Calibri"]Mercifully, I was the first to be dropped off at home. So, at six thirty in the morning – half an hour before I had to get up to go to work – I extracted myself woozily from the van. After removing my amp, two basses and a plastic carrier bag full of leads, spare strings etc, I steadied myself against a rather lovely Oak tree on the traffic island in the middle of my street and puked over my Chelsea boots. Full of self loathing and feeling like I had moments to live, I brought my gaze upwards from my ruined footwear to be greeted by the faces of the postman, the milkman and my next door neighbour, just arriving home from the nightshift. With all the dignity I could muster (i.e., no dignity at all) I dragged myself and my gear (leaving the bag full of leads, spare strings etc under the tree) into my house. I made myself the strongest coffee I could keep down, ironed a shirt and went to work.[/font][/color][/size]
[size="3"][color="#000000"][font="Calibri"]On arrival, my colleagues took one look at my deathly pallor and put me on a chair in the stockroom with a telephone in my hand. Here, I dozed all day and if a member of the management team was in the area, I was nudged awake and began barking a non-existent stock order to a non existent supplier. Propped up with Tea, doughnuts and Guarana, I made it through the day. Just. When I got home, I retrieved my plastic bag full of leads, spare strings and now, melted snow etc, from under the tree, cleaned my Chelsea boots, applied some styling mousse to my hair and got myself ready. Well, I had a gig in Liverpool that night….[/font][/color][/size]
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