Worst dive you’ve played at

[MustangWally]

#2 was an upstairs bar above a biker bar. Downstairs was always a riot, Harley's being ridden through the bar and so on. Our bar was slightly better and we supplied security so we at least had some control, plus the bikers were our friends so we could always call on them if things got way out of hand. Usual sleaze/brawls and so forth but the crowd were generally great - they loved us and we loved them. Hated the smell of the carpet though, especially after the place had been locked up during the week.

 

[bassbrad]

Any time I ever stayed in a "club condo" for a gig, it was actually great. But the THOUGHT of all those band folks going through that condo kind of squicked me out. But I guess it's way better than thinking about what goes on in hotel rooms generally.

I played in a trio for a while doing hotel lounges, the guys thought I was crazy to buy and wash my own sheets. It was worth it.

 

[Gravedigger Dav]

Oh, this one is easy: The Keg, Ridge Road West, Greece, NY, 1975: All drinks in plastic cups. Barstools screwed into the floor with big bolts so they couldn't be picked up. 100% bikers. The ladies would get in front of the band and simulate sex with each other. You could see the guys behind them just waiting for one of us to respond. You only have to see what's coming one time: Where the opening like is "What you lookin' at, bro?" and before you know it, the ambulance arrives. We learned real fast to stare at the ceiling. We played there twice, and the second time was scarier than the first. I went to the BL at the end of the night and pleaded "No mas!" He agreed.

Interesting. I've played a lot of biker bars and I really like them. The patrons have always been friendly and biker bars are the only place where patrons will come out and help with load in.

 

[Jim C]

Lots of really scummy places in the 70's. Maybe just for disgusting I'd vote the Varsity Grill Backroom in College Park, MD. The toilets perpetually overflowed and I remember them just putting picket fencing on the floor on more than one occasion so that you didn't have to walk in the urine. That was pretty disgusting.

I spent many nights there and don't remember the bathrooms that bad (from about 78'-81')
Did see, David Johanson, Johnny Thunders, and a local original band called Razz that was incredible.

 

[Bunk McNulty]

Interesting. I've played a lot of biker bars and I really like them. The patrons have always been friendly and biker bars are the only place where patrons will come out and help with load in.

I don't doubt you. But that s**t was real; it is very strange to play in front of people who consider you to be sport.

 

[mindwell]

The Nasbar in McPherson, KS. Who doesn't love elderly women on meth crashing into your gear, or having to pay the bar for fountain drinks?

 

[devnulljp]

Worst place I ever played was in the 80s. We played a little bar in a very rough part of Glasgow in Scotland called the Gorbals (which even sounds like a disease). It's a horrible place (or at least was, I lived there for a while but haven't been there in decades). Very run down, lots of poverty, crime, drugs, violence.
We showed up and the bar was this concrete breeze block cube in an otherwise desolate area of urban decay, looking like a bunker in a war zone. Everything else had been demolished in a 3 block radius and the rubble was still there. Was like some post-apocalyptric nightmare. The bar/bunker had steel bars on the few windows and doors, and the building was topped with razor wire. Of course the whole thing was covered in graffiti and smelled of piss. And that was on the outside. The smell was worse inside. The evening was punctuated by a number of fights and a couple of stabbings.
It was a horrible night, and I hate you for making me remember it now.

 

[2112]

I subbed in on sax for a gig in an ungodly pit of a dive bar in Carey, OH when I was 19... you can tell it was like 400 years ago because they didn't get all frothy about letting an underage guy into the bar.

The place was just sketchy AF. I don't know if it's still there or even what the name of the place was... it could have been "Grease Manor" or "The Grease-a-torium" and it would have fit perfectly. What I do remember from that night is that the gig was in the middle of a huge snowstorm and the 65-mile drives to and from each took 3 hours. Such memories!

As I said in a different thread... I LOVE playing in dive bars!

 

[dalkowski]

The worst I ever played had to be The Rat in Boston (don't go looking for it, it's not there any more, and don't get me started on Kenmore Square 2020), but based on all I'm reading here it might as well have been Tavern On The Green.

 

[mwbonsall]

I’ve played a lot of dives. The worst was Eddie’s Place, Picacho AZ in the late 70’s. It was leveled to make room for freeway improvements, best thing that could happen.

Mark

 

[corinpills]

The worst I ever played had to be The Rat in Boston (don't go looking for it, it's not there any more, and don't get me started on Kenmore Square 2020), but based on all I'm reading here it might as well have been Tavern On The Green.

Awww, the Rat had it's charms. I played and saw some great shows there. It was about as much of a dive as CBGB, just your standard awful smelling box with a stage. When I was about 18, I regularly played with some older guys at a semi- legal biker bar in part of an old air force base near Reading, PA. It didn't even have a name that I recall. It was just smokey and dangerous and we played " Born To Be Wild" in just about every set. I have really clear memories of trying to load an SVT out through the crowd, very, very politely. There were a lot of enthusiastic amateur chemistry hobbyists that frequented the place. 4 sets, 100 each and all the Rolling Rock you could drink.

 

[DavC]

Clarksburg , WV ( my dad was born in the hills of WV in grandma's bed , so no ill will to WV ..!! ) .... but , OMG ...

bar was a couple double wides sorta welded/bolted together ... the owner was shot in the bar the night before we arrived ... his name - ' JR ' ... would was close to the time JR got shot on Dallas ,... am i showing my age yet ...!??

needless to say , we had a few assorted weapons in our cases ... and on our persons when getting paid ..!!

a friend had just played nearby ... getting his brand new RX7 squished in between to large pickups .. ! the rotary lost

 

[shadven]

I have fond memories of the dive bars I’ve played. The Rat in Kenmore Square, Boston. CBGBs NYC, The American Legion in Salisbury, MA, The Emerald (St. Petersburg, FL).
The winner might be the Northend Boat Club in Newburyport, MA. After the “licker sisters” did their bachelor party show on the dance floor they went into the bands dressing room behind the stage (we where still playing on stage) and for five whole bucks you could f**k them .... the guys lined up and watched the ones in front of them before it was their turn. The whole scene made a lasting impression on me. For the record, I did not participate. I was 17 years old

 

[PWRL]

The place my band usually played was the kind of place where people were there pretty much to get lit. There were also a couple biker bars in the area where we played several times, but never had any trouble. Plastic cups and cans, though. The nicer places we played were usually out of town.
It's funny, the biker bars we played were usually fine. One in particular was really cool, and the owner was a genuinely cool guy. The place I wanted to get out of was an Irish bar where I knew people whose drinks got spiked and the owner would punch people out if he didn't like the cut of their jib.

I felt like I had a good time back then, but I wouldn't go do it, now.

 

[Playbyear]

The worst I ever played had to be The Rat in Boston (don't go looking for it, it's not there any more, and don't get me started on Kenmore Square 2020), but based on all I'm reading here it might as well have been Tavern On The Green.

The Rat (Rathskeller Pub) was also legendary. Some really big bands played there on their way up. I played there just once, but saw many bands there. It wasn’t that bad, but the old Boston basement stink took some getting used too.

I took my wife there on a second date to see the Flesheaters... all their gear was stolen before the show. They played with borrowed gear and rocked it. Great show.

 

[Ric5]

about 20 years ago I was playing in a blues trio in Michigan, we did a gig at a local bar and it was OK … then we booked a 2nd gig … in between the gigs they changed management and the new management chased off the existing clients … so we show up and the bar tender manager tells us they don't do live music … the guitarist shows her the flyer for our band on the wall so she lets us load in. We set up and play a few tunes … at this point there are more people on stage then in the bar … 3 band members, and there was a bar tender and one client. and those two wanted to listen to the juke box. So the drummer and I said we were leaving. I went to use the bathroom and there was no running water … I never went back there

 

[Budbear]

In the past 55+ years I've played in a lot of dives, including a couple of Goodfella type bars when we were naive teenagers, where the owners always asked us to play louder so, unknown to us at the time, the FBI bugs couldn't pick up their conversations. But, they paid us well and, as you can imagine, there was never any trouble in those places. (I'm laughing to myself as I type this. Good times). But the roughest place I ever played was either 1965 or '66, in a dive, in a tough neighborhood of Brooklyn, that was called 'The Paradise'. It was owned by twin brothers from Germany and catered to merchant sailors. The main reason that this place was so popular with the seafarers was the whorehouse above the bar that Hans & Günther also owned, and their ladies worked the bar. Needless to say, there were always 2 or 3 fights each set when those drunk & horny sailor boys let loose. That's where I learned that when a brawl starts you just had to play faster & louder to distract the non-combatants.
Fortunately, there was a resident bouncer about the size of a Sherman Tank, who was always very protective of the musicians and had the amazing ability to stop a fight immediately by taking the 2 pugilists by the neck, one in each hand, and cracking their skulls together, thus knocking them out & simply tossing their limp forms out the side door into the street. That would calm things down for a short time until the next donnybrook. This happened anywhere from a half to a dozen times a night. There were never any weapons displayed but there was a lot of blood and lost teeth. We worked that joint quite a few times. I'm glad I never had to clean the place.

 

[JimmyM]

Oh man, I've played some rough joints. I played this one called Vito's, formerly Nunzio's. On the menu they had broken leg of lamb. To enter, you had to go down two steps...socially and morally.

 

[maxschrek]

Ziggy's in Chattanooga TN.

 

[Thegrandwazoo]

There's a sorta-kinda Irish pub/punk bar here in my homEtown that fits almost exactly with the OP's description of that particular dunghole. It's had a hundred names over the years, but I won't name it (not certain what it's even called presently). I used to play there regularly, like once a week. It was a dangerous place, particularly given my proclivity for indiscriminate psychedelics usage in those days, haha! They paid okay, though, and never gave a tinker's damn what you did while you were there, which was fine by all of my degenerate musician friends and me.

I also used to hang out with a few members of a local chapter of a motorcycle club (I'm not a biker, I just ride bicycles and dual-sport/dirt bikes, but I'm a Deadhead and Deadheads and bikers always seem to get along), and they would regularly ask me to get a few guys together and play parties at their clubhouse (a complete pile of a place, a row of open toilets behind a plywood partition and the dish sink being the only running water, numerous roof leaks, a caulked-up garage bay door painted black being the wall behind the one foot tall stage, beer consisting of three cheap domestic brands at a dollar 'suggested donation' each and liquor being excellent quality semi-secret moonshine at 10 a pint and 15 a quart) or their farm (a wild, WILD place on about 150 heavily wooded acres a half hour from anywhere, a huge dilapidated old farmhouse full of couches and a bunch of semi-permanent army tents/cots outside along with a great big picnic shelter to play under when it was nice out, and literally anything goes- I've seen things there that genuinely scared me or freaked me out, and I'm a TOUGH nut to crack), those were wild times.