Wackiest "stage" you ever played on.....

[mohrds]

on top of a bus

Was it moving?

 

[Florinda4]

Back deck of a houseboat on Richardsons Bay in Sausalito, CA. Guitar player's friend invited us for dinner and a jam one warm summer evening. Playing jazz standards and bossa nova in the moonlight, guitar, URB, drums... by the time we were done (2 hrs), there around a hundred sea kayakers with lanterns floating in front of us all around the deck listening. Really unexpected and magical.

 

[Waltsdog]

I auditioned for a band once where they had a dropped ceiling in a basement. Apprently everyone in the band (and the house) was less than 5 foot 9 - the height of the ceiling. I'm 6 foot 3. They popped a ceiling tile out, and I had to play with my head trapped in a 2 foot by 2 foot square. The band was good - kind of a Devo-esque thing. I didn't end up taking the gig - other reasons, but it would have been fun to try to figure out along term solution for reheasals.

I've definitely done the basement thing being of similar height, no fun staring at ductwork all night.

The 12 bar has an upstairs so from the stage you get a nice view of peoples ankles, you can see it better from this angle. It's a weird stage.

 

[SubNoizeRat3691]

We did a cover set. ON TOP OF A MOVING BUS... it was during a Parade, and one of the local venues has a Burger Bus setup. Grill in the back, prepared inside, and there were tables set up on a deck on top to eat and watch w/e was playing.

Someone thought it’d be a good idea to throw a generator in the back, and all of us play up top. It was fun, except for a few phone/power lines...

 

[dirtychinchilla]

12 Bar in London (Denmark street) has the wackiest stage, not sure how to explain it but basically you play with your head 2’ through the ceiling.
Not my pic:View attachment 2914154

I've played here! I can't remember there being a 2' ceiling though. I played there maybe 10 years ago. We had this weird skinny stage in a very tall room, but no suspended ceiling in our faces.

I think it's shut now

 

[jaymelewis]

Plywood boards stacked 4 ft in the air on top of plastic storage tubs in someone's backyard. I though someone was going to die.

 

[Paulabass]

Long gone club in Toronto (Hotel California). The stage was exactly far enough from a brick wall for a waitress to walk by. The microphones were less than three feet from it., and the p.a. faced 90 degrees from normal, to the sides.

 

[tedsalt]

The Red Bull in Corning, Iowa. They had a quarter round platform that our vocalists/guitar/keys would set up on, then the drummer and I shared a pool table with a piece of plywood on top pushed up to the side of the quarter round. He had a full kit, and I had a Sunn folded cab with a Fender Bassman tube amp on top of that next to the drums behind me, so I had probably a 2'x2' area to stand and play ...

 

[Ric Vice]

Horse show,
The stage was normal but the floor was dirt. Very dusty and cloudy. Also a
a theater in Missouri where Jessie James was shot.

 

[AngelCrusher]

Not sure how whacky this is, but on a major tour one of the stops our booking agent had for us was a stir fry restaurant. They would make you the stir fry and then you went up there and played the show. What made it whacky to me,was this was a major label tour, so you would not expect such a gig. Plus the stage was basically standing over people eating stir fry.

And sure enough, in the back room when I looked at bands that had just rolled through and there was huge names (at the time) like Incubus, Nickelback..etc. It's funny to think about seeing a band like Incubus rolling into a stir fry restaurant and playing a set.

 

[Sean Walters]

The Grand Salon on the Queen Mary. I was 13 playing the upright.

 

[Bassbeater]

Coconut Club in Hollywood. The low ceiling had exposed plumbing and when the room heated up with people the plumbing would drip condensation onto your head. So nasty.

 

[HolmeBass]

I went to that place a few times when I first moved here. Had a great time, it was a bit odd, but they always seemed to have decent bands playing there. I think they closed down about 5 year ago.

Yeah, they are closed now. We played for someone's birthday party, it was a private party they had reserved the whole place. People had a great time, and everyone could bring their whole family.

 

[PunkNerve]

A few tables stacked on top of each other for a primary school play.

 

[two fingers]

I played in a boxing ring once. There's a pic of this somewhere but it's a polaroid.

Ha!

You reminded me....

I played for "pro wrestling" once. Think WWE only local...... and even more ridiculously horrible than the original.

There were more musicians amd "wrestlers" than audience members.

We would play between "matches".

The "wrestlers" had scripts and did the whole bit. Trailer park fights over girls. Beer cans smashed on heads. "Wrestlers" whobhad to be draghed out by "cops" wearing bikini tops and daisy dukes. It was even more awful than you can imagine.

I literally stood behind a curtain to play because I refused to allow for even the possibility that anyone could produce photographic evidence that I was involved in this freakshow.

 

[morgansterne]

I was in an alt rock/punk band and we played at a battle of the bands in an unused shopping center around 2005. Just a cavernous flourescent lit space. The audience sat in the middle on folding chairs (there were a couple hundred people there). There were at least a dozen bands there, we set up in a circle around the audience, each with our own complete PA setup and amplification.

I didn't bring drum mics, not knowing we were supposed to be filling a space the size of an empty Wal Mart! we lost to a cover band of middle aged guys playing Hall and Oates covers.

 

[Waltsdog]

I've played here! I can't remember there being a 2' ceiling though. I played there maybe 10 years ago. We had this weird skinny stage in a very tall room, but no suspended ceiling in our faces.

I think it's shut now

Yeah, I believe it's closed now along with most if not all the stores on Denmark Street, which is a shame.
It's been a long time since I played there (around 2005ish) but I'm pretty sure there were at least 2 rooms and the one with the weird stage was at the back on the right almost in a cellar kinda thing.

 

[Chris76]

A friend and myself tried starting a production company in the late 90s. We rented a warehouse to put a show on and had 9 bands from around dc and maryland booked. We built the stage which when it was finished wasn't half bad. It was level, carpeted, and big enough to fit a six piece comfortably. Unfortunately we were not structural engineers. By the time the last band hit the stage (what was left) there was 2 thirds of it left. Needless to say the last band finished off the stage and played their last 3 or 4 songs on the floor. Gotta love punk rock.

 

[Altitude]

There was a club - now closed - in Dallas' oh-so-hip Deep Ellum entertainment district that was called July Alley. These geniuses built a "loft" stage above the bar, but it was 'under engineered' so stage floor had a noticeable bounce and sag when loaded with a band's gear. I did a whole gig waiting for the floor to collapse, but it never did.

I remember that. No David Lee Roth antics on that stage.

 

[PaulJSmith]

There have been a few over the years. Played on plenty of flatbed trailers, and moved plenty of pool tables and dart machines aside to play in the corners of small bars.

Worst stage was probably at The White House, a roadside dive outside of Taylor Springs, IL. The bar area had a dirt floor , and they'd added a section onto the side of the building where they built a rickety plywood stage. Everywhere I stepped I could feel the stage shift and flex. I popped myself in the teeth several times before learning exactly where to step when approaching my mic. I only weighed about 165 pounds back then, but felt the stage would collapse under me at any minute.

Close runner-up was a place in South St. Louis County called The Beach. It was a building built on stilts to keep it out of the flood waters of the nearby Meramec River. They had this rickety old small freight elevator to take equipment up the side of the stairs to the building, and it was struggling to get my bass rig up there. The stage was built into one corner (God, don't we love corner stages), and was constructed like an outdoors wood deck, complete with 1" spacing between the 2x4 top boards. That was fun keeping the gear upright on.

Weirdest stage was a place called The Lincoln Lounge in Troy, MO. We played in an old narrow golf simulator ... literally inside of it. Drummer set up in the very back, and me and the guitar player set up in front of him. We both had small rigs then, but my 2-tier keyboard stand did not care for the angled floor coming up out of the machine to the "tee box" at the front where the mic stands were. A bizarre experience for sure.