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Weirdest place your band has practiced...

#41
Ugh - Gin - how in the world can you drink that stuff, hehe.

The weirdest place for me is my actual place - a small bedroom above a garage, it's basically a long space with a sloped ceiling - we have a hard time standing in a circle, yet we're only a 3-piece. The first day I played with my mates, I jokingly suggested the name "The Tilted Heads" - the space you can stand upright is rather limited. Only a fireplace to heat it up, and a hardly functioning door - never needed to tune that much..

All my other numerous bands used to play in neat, central heated rehearsal rooms - so it's kind of new to me to play in such a weird place :)
 
#43
DukDukGuus said:
Way, WAY back in the mists of time, when Neil Young's "Harvest" album had just come out, my band thought it would be great to play in a barn, just like the guys on the album cover. In the picture, Neil's barn had a stage. And electricity. And it looked almost... clean. Around here there a lots of old barns, many that haven't seen any use for decades. So my guitarist and I ask a buddy if he would mind if we jam in his barn. No problem: bring extension cords. We haul his Twin Reverb and my Acoustic stack all the way out there, up the barn ramp, set everything up, string the extension cords, let the tubes warm...

WHANGGG! He hits the first chord, I whack an open "E" and the entire barn fills up with about a zillion bats. (I guess they were simply trying to harmonize with "Old Man," but we kinda freaked out.) There's guano raining down on us, on our amps, everywhere. But we kept at it, practicing and eventually even staging shows in barns. Now, two lifetimes later, I own a barn and have my studio upstairs. TONS of outlets. Heated, air conditioned, carpeting, more gear than any twelve bands should own, beer fridge. But to have THOSE days again? Shoot.
Click to expand...

great story:p
 
#44
DukDukGuus said:
Way, WAY back in the mists of time, when Neil Young's "Harvest" album had just come out, my band thought it would be great to play in a barn, just like the guys on the album cover. In the picture, Neil's barn had a stage. And electricity. And it looked almost... clean. Around here there a lots of old barns, many that haven't seen any use for decades. So my guitarist and I ask a buddy if he would mind if we jam in his barn. No problem: bring extension cords. We haul his Twin Reverb and my Acoustic stack all the way out there, up the barn ramp, set everything up, string the extension cords, let the tubes warm...

WHANGGG! He hits the first chord, I whack an open "E" and the entire barn fills up with about a zillion bats. (I guess they were simply trying to harmonize with "Old Man," but we kinda freaked out.) There's guano raining down on us, on our amps, everywhere. But we kept at it, practicing and eventually even staging shows in barns. Now, two lifetimes later, I own a barn and have my studio upstairs. TONS of outlets. Heated, air conditioned, carpeting, more gear than any twelve bands should own, beer fridge. But to have THOSE days again? Shoot.
Click to expand...

I absolutely love this post. Maybe it's because Harvest has been one of my favourite albums for years now, and will continue to be. Maybe it's because I know exactly what you mean by wanting to play in a barn like on the cover picture. Maybe because it reminds me a little of my story. Beautiful. Peace.
 
#45
I used to play guitar when i was 18 (now i'm 26). We used to rehears in a laundry storage room of an old soviet hotel ( i used to live in Eastern Europe). It was a triangle shaped room with a tall celing, we had some stupid soviet made gear and the sound was crappy 100%. Then we rehearsed in an old house with a fireplace. The house was actually really small but it had a couch and some chairs and we also found TWO CASES OF CHEAP BOOZE there, it was the time of our lives...all we needed where strings, food, and party :)
 
#46
Hands down weirdest was one of my first bands, after we lost our rehearsal space we rented evening use of a plating business.
Toxic chemicals everywhere.
The owner, as we got to know him, was severely brain damaged from years of exposure to them. It was not pretty, and we got out fast.
 
#48
bobalu said:
Our Guitar player owns a (family) furniture store and we practice in the warehouse out back. We have to wheel our gear through the showroom though and I'm so paranoid that I'm going to ding some expensive chair. We have to go around and straighten all the display pictures/paintings before we leave at night, 'cause the bass just rocks them crooked!!:bassist:
Click to expand...

I keep reading this and trying to imagine what an adult furniture store would be like.
 
#50
One band I tried out for was practicing in a fabrication shop. They had an office built inside the shop with a plywood roof and they were practicing on top of it. Access was via an extension ladder. They used a fork truck and pallet to move equipment up/down.
 
#51
The best place I ever practiced was in the huge back room of a record store in a strip mall. Our guitar player was the store manager and the owner let us rent the back room out for unlimited practices for $75 a month back in the early 80s.

We could store gear there and have enough room for an entire stage setup if we wanted. It was heated with a separate back entrance, parking, and a bathroom.

We just had to wait until the record store closed at 9:00 p.m. to start playing. The other big advantage was that we had access to all of the new and old records in the store and a stereo to play them on to check them out and learn songs.
 
#53
practiced below a pizza shop.....where we had full run of the kitchen---i gained way too much in that band.... and the owner collected firearms.... he had a cage full of ammo, and guns in the basement... and even something for target practice....(it was about the size of a bowling alley downstairs).... water ran down the walls by the breaker box...our drummer lost his apartment and lived in there for a while.... weird stuff. I also practiced below a woman's clothing store.....the basement had old coal shoots... and it was a massive place... used to have nice parties there :)
 
#57
We practiced in a public toilet once. Worst acoustics you can possibly imagine.

We also used to practice in an old dentist's rooms which turned out to be haunted. We used to hear a lot of weird stuff while we were practicing and packing up. Things like stuff falling over in the next room, you go to pick it up and it's still as it was left, people coming up and down the stairs and so on. Don't miss that place at all, we never lingered long after practice, that's for sure.
 
#58
Back in the early 80's, my friends and I put together an originals band. We had a line on a room in an old factory but needed to wait a couple of months to get it. Our drummer was dating some girl who's step-dad ran an auto body shop. He said we could use a back room at the body shop. He couldn't get a car into it and it was a pain to store stuff in.
We'd rehearse there 3 or 4 times a week. When the guy who ran the shop was out doing stuff, the workers would lay down their tools and come in and watch us play. It was like giving 3 or 4 eight to twelve hour shows a week ! We loved it.
However, the guy who ran the shop finally clued in that his shop was not as productive as it had been before we started rehearsing there. He gave us the boot just as the room in the old factory became available. By coincidence, there was an auto body shop on the ground floor of the old factory as well ! They didn't watch us play but they did paint the place for us !
 
#60
we used to practice in a movie theater... our drummer was the manager there and would let us in through the back doors of the place after the last show at midnight.

great acoustics.. but we always had to bring a sheet of plastic to set up on and play, otherwise all our cables and gear would be sticky.

was nice tho.. we could play all night if we could stay awake and nobody to complain about volume levels.

now we practice in the basement of my nearly 100 year old house... the ceilings are literally at head level... so you really want to play sitting down, otherwise you'll hit your head on the beams, pipes or heating vents.

-J
 

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