Weirdest venue I’ve seen any act perform was in my current city’s downtown, where they used to occasionally block off main street for a free festival and concert. (They do it more rarely these days. I’d like to say never, but last St. Patrick’s day they did have one but didn’t have any acts I wanted to see.)
Some other cities do that as well, but what makes this weird is that there is a working train track only a hundred feet or so from the place where they put the stage. It’s so close that they actually tie off the automated gates so they don’t fold down on the concert goers (I’m assuming that the stage and equipment then block off the tracks).
But the sound of the bells is not tampered with. So occasionally you’d have a bell adding its noise to the song when a train was about to pass.
The most famous band I’ve seen there is Modern English, but I’ve also seen Taking Back Sunday and Authority Zero perform there.
Another Greg Kihn mention: he played free gig at Justin Herman Plaza in front of the now-defunct Vaillancourt Fountain. This venue was later the scene of U2 free concert where Bono spray painted grafitti on the fountain.
I didn’t see it, but there are people who claim Led Zeppelin played in front of an audience of around 50 at the Wheaton Youth Center in suburban DC. As far as I know it’s never been determined that it actually happened.
My girlfriend at the time and I saw Jan and Dean at a dinner theater. Her (my girlfriend’s) mother was the manager, and occasionally we would get free tickets to shows that didn’t sell very well because they wanted to get as many butts in seats as possible so the place wouldn’t look empty. We saw a few shows that way, but other than this one, they were all theatrical productions. Musicals, comedies, and such.
The only time I’ve seen an up-and-coming act that later blew the heck up wasn’t at a strange venue, merely a small club. I saw State Champs open for someone in a 200 maximum capacity club in Orlando, and they later went on to have 2 top 40 albums and headline the last full scale Warped Tour.
And 200 is pushing it since I’ve only seen it that full a few times, and then it’s so packed you can hardly move and can’t see if you’re standing in the corner despite the club being small. Usually, including the night I saw State Champs, there were more like 100 there.
That said, I’ve seen a few already-famous acts play there, including Fountains of Wayne, Dashboard Confessional, and New Found Glory. I’ve actually seen Chris Carrabba of Dashboard play there 4 times, twice as Dashboard, once with his former band Further Seems Forever, and once with his Americana band Twin Forks, but during that show he did cover 2 Dashboard songs as well as El Scorcho by Weezer.
Not really a “strange venue”, but I saw shows by Neil Young, BB King and Soft White Underbelly (aka Blue Öyster Cult) at The Saddle Rack in San Jose. Lots of established acts played there but what made it unique was they had a mechanical bull behind the dance floor that you could ride while the show was going on if you were so inclined.
In 1967, The Who embarked on a cross-country tour of the USA, playing at whatever gig they could book. One of their stops was at the gymnasium in Shawnee Mission South High School in suburban Kansas City, where they performed as the opening act for The Buckinghams.
I visited the venue for a different event, so it doesn’t really count, but it was weird enough to deserve a mention anyway; a horse racing arena in a tiny town in Ireland, with a population under 2000 people, which once hosted Eurovision.
I saw Jeremy Steig at a hotel bar. I was curious, since he’s the only act with two entries in Lillian Roxon’s Rock Encyclopedia. It was the wrong venue for a jazz-oriented act; no one was there.
Cheap Trick performed at the pool/beach at the Monterrey Beach Hotel in Las Vegas.
I was touring tiny colleges (southwestern Michigan has like a dozen of those), and saw a hand-scribbled note: Tonight at the Small Gym: CHASE!
“Chase? Like, the band Chase? Trumpeter Bill Chase?”
Guy giving me a tour: “Uh, I guess so.”
My favorite jazz fusion band had written their second album*, but were clearly treating this like a rehearsal. The brass players were all holding sheet music with one hand. It was crowded (the band took up half the tiny low-ceiling’ed gym) but amazing.
Last year stand up comedian Lewis Black performed at Channel 24 in Sacramento, a music venue with not much actual seating, but instead a big dance floor in front of the stage. There was a good reason for it, though. He was originally scheduled to perform at the Crest Theater, a proper theater that would have been more appropriate for stand up comedy. But the entity that was operating the theater went bankrupt, and a whole bunch of shows got canceled, and his managers were left scrambling to find a replacement venue at the last minute.
Genesis at Ahoy Rotterdam in c.1998. The venue itself wasn’t strange–it’s an established arena for concerts, etc.–but it was such an odd appearance for a band as big and famous as Genesis.
It was after Phil Collins (temporarily) left the band and was replaced by singer Ray Wilson. This tour was in support of the “Calling All Stations” album.
It was festival seating and there were only maybe 1,000 people there. It was so crazy being able to walk right up to the edge of the stage and be almost right next to Tony Banks.
This was the European leg of the planned tour. The North American part to follow was soon canceled after the dismal sales results of the European shows. Just so odd to see Genesis in an almost intimate show.
Similarly I had seen The Tubes perform in a bar on the eastside of Indianapolis sometime in maybe the early '90’s. The bar probably had about 400 people in it. Between sets some of the band was just hanging out—at the bar or out front having a cig—I remember sitting at the bar with Prairie Prince (Tubes drummer) and chatting about this and that like we were just two guys at a bar.
I honestly expected AI would find the exact time and place of this show but—no luck. (ISTM that that’s just the kind of thing that AI is good at finding). I don’t remember the story really but there was something like tax troubles or debt troubles that led to such a well-known band playing in a bar.
Little known story: John Lennon wasn’t paying attention while he was playing that day and kept getting too close to the edge of the roof, in danger of falling off, so Paul kept yelling out “Get back! Get back!”.
)
