Famous band plays small venue unannounced. Has it ever happened?

[Accidental_Martyr]

@Don_Draper

I tried finding a cite for it, but I swear I read an interview with Dolly Parton once in which she described visiting a friends’ house in California. Her friend lived down the street from a gay club which happened to be hosting a “Night of 1000 Dollys” (basically a Dolly Parton-themed drag queen ball.) There was even going to be a Dolly Parton impersonator contest. Feeling a little mischevious, Dolly went to the club and entered the contest.

The kicker was that not only was she not recognized as the real Dolly, she lost the contest!

Dolly Parton on Gay Rumors, Losing a Drag Queen Look-Alike Contest and New...

[don_t_ask]

I saw Eric Clapton, probably in 1976, doing a warmup gig for a tour at Hemel Hempstead. It was so small that you could walk over to the bar, buy a drink and walk back to stand 10 feet from the front of the stage and watch him play.

[Siam_Sam]

There was a place in West Texas where Linda Ronstadt reportedly got up and sang a few tunes when she just happened to drop in one night. I was not present that evening, but by all accounts, come closing time they cut her microphone off mid-song. A friend who was there told me people were telling the old clodhoper building manager, “What are you doing?!? This is Linda Ronstadt!! You’d normally have to pay big bucks to get her to sing on your stage.” To which the old bastard said words to the effect of, “Well, I ain’t never heard of no Linda Ronstadt and ahm tahred and wanna go home, so y’all git.”

[Fleetwood]

@njtt

It did, but having been present at one of those gigs I can tell you it was not a small venue by the standards of the time. It was the same hall that was usually used for concerts, and at other times I saw many other bands and artistes that were big at the time play normal “announced” concerts there: Led Zeppelin; Deep Purple; The Rolling Stones; Pink Floyd; The Kinks; Jethro Tull; Emerson, Lake and Palmer; Leonard Cohen; to name just a few of those who are still fairly famous. The Wings gig was odd not only in being unannounced, but in taking place on a Wednesday afternoon rather than a Friday or Saturday evening. (I only found out about it because I saw people lining up when I was on my way back home after a class, and because I saw I guy I knew on the Entertainments Committee, whom I was able to ask what was up.) Nevertheless, the hall was about as full as it got for a normal weekend gig. IIRC, I think it held about 2,000 people. That was a large venue back in '72.

Maybe on college campuses. Led Zeppelin alone played some big arenas in 1970: Denver Coliseum (11,500), Boston Garden (>12,000) , Madison Square Garden (21,000), Pacific Coliseum, Vancouver, BC (19,000) and The Montreal Forum (17,500) among others over a couple of North American tours. Many more venues greater than 5,000. Venues by location

[IvoryTowerDenizen]

While not a really small venue, Billy Joel once announced a show at the Paramount (Huntington, Long Island) on a Wednesday morning for that evening. Plus, he just popped into a local elementary school for an impromptu show last week.

[campp]

The 1975 Rolling Stones tour announcement… On a flat bed truck playing Brown Sugar: The Rolling Stones' Tour of the Americas '75 - Wikipedia

[GrandWino]

Whenever Pearl Jam plays around Chicago, Eddie Vedder usually ends up playing an unannounced solo show at one of the local Cubs bars (Cubby Bear or Murphy’s for examples).

[Shalmanese]

Beck played at my local taqueria in 2005.

[Bumbershoot]

I saw John Fogerty go onstage and play some Creedence songs with Duke Tumatoe & the Power Trio at a small blues bar in northern Indiana. It was the late 80s, around the same time he played CCR songs at the Vietnam veteran’s concert in Washington DC.

He had refused to play the songs for years before that, due to his legal problems with Fantasy Records. There were maybe 200 people there and I was very close to the stage. It was one of the best concert experiences of my life.