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Unusual Rooms

jdh3000

jdh3000

May 16, 2016
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#1
8C9248C8-726B-4A75-A372-FFDC6F1B7248.jpeg

This has got to be the most unusual room we play. I'm not putting the venue down... It's a great old historical hotel, the management and staff are great, but the room was not designed for amps and PA's.

As you can see the stage is a concave, and it's very difficult to get any kind of a decent sound.
You can practically whisper on the stage and it be heard way at the other end of the room.

The stage is from like back in the 20s or so and intended for brass, woodwinds and acoustic ensembles. It's a big old ballroom converted into a huge lounge.

We're normally fairly loud... but we have to keep it down here.

It's not our usual type of place and we didn't know how we'd be received, but with all the things working against us we held a crowd and got several bookings.

Do you have any places that you play really different than what you are used to?
 
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#2
I was in a band that played a six month residency in a bar/dance hall where the stage was one musician deep and ran all along the long side of the room, facing directly into the bar (and the mirrored wall behind the bar). It was a 13 piece big band. Imagine 13 musicians strung out along a wall. I was on one end; by the time I heard the trumpet players at the other end, we'd already finished the tune. Acoustics? There WERE no acoustics!
 
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#5
Many (that is to say, circa 1969/70) years ago my band played in the lounge of the Islip Mcarthur airport terminal. Every wall was glass, so you could get a 360 degree view of the whole place...we played a lot of harder rock at the time, think Tull, Stones, etc..every note would ring for what felt like 2-3 seconds, even when we tried to turn down..A night in hell..Since then, that airport has grown and redone to be nothing like it was back then..
 
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#6
bigjohnyeti said:
Many (that is to say, circa 1969/70) years ago my band played in the lounge of the Islip Mcarthur airport terminal. Every wall was glass, so you could get a 360 degree view of the whole place...we played a lot of harder rock at the time, think Tull, Stones, etc..every note would ring for what felt like 2-3 seconds, even when we tried to turn down..A night in hell..Since then, that airport has grown and redone to be nothing like it was back then..
Click to expand...

Oh man, that glass reminds me of another lounge I played about 15 years ago, we were a rock/country mix, we could get loud or keep it down according to where we were playing... but we had just hired a new guitar player who thought he was still in a metal band and didn't know how to turn down... The front of the lounge was surrounded by glass that rattled easily... I thought we were going to break it...
The new guitar player was loud so the other one thought he had to crank up to match him.

We were filling in for another band for two weeks and they needed a band, so we didn't get axed right away, but we never got called back either.
 
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#7
We used to do some gigs at a venue that had a dome over the dance floor. If you stood in the centre and clapped your hands you got the most amazing slap back echo with lots of repeats, it was weird.

Another venue we did was totally surrounded by glass to take advantage of the view, it made for interesting sound for sure. We had to keep a really low level so as to not excite the room acoustics otherwise you ended up sounding like you were playing in a cathedral.
 
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#8
I was just looking for pics and can't find them, but we played a place that was a converted church and the stage was right up front underneath a vaulted ceiling. The ceiling over the stage was about 4 feet taller than the open area in front, and the result was that it amplified our sound and shot it directly back onto us with a noticeable delay. Terrible sound on stage, but reports from the floor were basically that it sounded fine. :D
 
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#15
Winslow said:
Someone should start a "flatbed trailer bandstand club." :D

I've mentioned a couple of my flatbed adventures here and here.
Click to expand...

Oh the stories... Ones that move, one drummer fell backwards and was only saved by the leg of his stool getting caught between the wood and steel, and the back on the throne... my foot has gone through holes... balancing acts going up and down tractor ramps... equipment falling or being knocked off... fun times!
 
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#17
And speaking of glass all around, I played hotel gig in 1976. The building was round and all the rooms were pie shaped. The lounge was on the roof. It shared an all glass rooftop with the swimming pool. Half was lounge, half was pool. I don't even have to go into to acoustics issue, that is obvious, but the real issue was the humidity produced by the pool accumulated on the glass ceiling and dripped down on us. We actually had to cover all our gear with plastic tarps between the nightly gigs.
 
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#19
Grand Central (train)Terminal in Manhattan, about 30 years ago:
At one end, there is a balcony, where some organization held a black tie affair.
My 9 piece band played the gig; the place is so big that, when a song ended, the echo came back at us after we'd completely stopped:
Must've been complete noise if you were downstairs in the middle of the terminal!
 
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