The stage where I played once was right where the front door used to be at a bar; otherwise, nothing weird here.

One of my earliest gigs was in a VERY rural area of South Dakota. I mean, the bass player and I had to drive (in his car that he's fixed up to look like Starsky and Hutch's car) a couple hours on nothing but gravel roads flanked by alfalfa fields until we came upon this spot -literally- in the middle of nowhere. It was a white building that kind of looked like an old school house. It was painted white and it was just out in the middle of a field. We had to take down a barbed wire cattle gate to drive into where the building was. All the grass around the building was waste high. I guess we must have been early because we were the only ones there. The rest of the band was a couple of cowboys who had hired us to accompany them.

After a few minutes, we saw some dust coming down the road....a pickup truck turns into the gate. A cowboy gets out and starts unloading some kind of miniature threshing machine and proceeds to go about cutting a big parking lot out of the grass surrounding this building. After about 20 minutes, the whole thing is done. The cowboy comes over and greets us...and then leaves.

So, now we know, for sure, we are at the right place. But still, there's no one...just us.

It's getting to be within about a half hour from the time we are supposed to start playing music and still no people are anywhere in sight...and I mean, there is NOTHING but alfalfa and and endless horizon in every direction. Then, out of nowhere, we see dust coming down the road....LOTS of dust. Within minutes, there are about 100 pickup trucks coming from every direction.

People get out and there's moms and dads and kids. People carrying pies and cooking pots and table cloths...everything.

Within a half an hour, we are set up next to an OLD upright piano that was inside the building. We plug the bass amp and PA in....no power. Oh, yeah! There's NO power lines coming into the building at all!

So, now what? NO PROBLEM.... One of the cowboys unloads a gas generator from his truck and starts it up. The light's slowly come up and then voila -power! Pretty soon, the smell of BBQ beef and beans and all kinds of food was in the air! Kegs of beer and cowboys sipping whiskey outside while the rest danced and ate. Millers were swarming every lightbulb! It made a kind of country & Western light show!

That party was one of the most lively events I've ever played to this day -I mean in a sense of just how it all came together and how people create ways to do things. It's one of my funnest memories. I was 15 years old at the time and I was playing my brand-new Rogers Memriloc drums!

And, being that I grew up just 13 miles away from Deadwood (not the tv series, the REAL place), I can tell you almost endless strange stories about gigs there, too!

Sound-wise, the strangest place I've played is the "Cyclorama" building in Boston. A gigantic, circular, brisk room built in the 1800's. Massive echo chamber.

The weirdest place I had to play drums was on the edge of a wharf. My throne was about 2 feet from the edge, plus my newly refinished Gretsch kit was sitting in the hot sun. Hurting Cool stories guys!

Strange? In the late 60's we played the Cafe' Wha (N.Y.C. Greenwich Village) a lot. The stage was in a store-front display window. My back was to the street and people would tap on the window, hoot and make all kinds of comments all night long. Sometimes there would be more people listening to us on the street than there were inside the club! Maybe not 'strange' but unusual, yes.

John

My old punk rock band played on a flatbed truck as part of a Christmas parade. We basically played the Ramones "Merry Christmas, I don't want to fight" and Chuck Berry's "Run Rudolph Run" over and over again. It was the ONLY time in my life that I have ever needed double braced hardware. We were fine on the straights, but at every curve in the road I had to play with one hand while holding my cymbal stands with the other so that they wouldn't fall off the truck.

A few years ago I was the house drummer of a jazz jam in Montclair, NJ. We played in the basement of a restaurant that was sold off to an independant buyer. It was basically a series of huge walk in freezers. The place was nicknamed "The meat locker" It was about 60 gegrees in the winter, and about 80 degrees in the summer. The pipes from the restaraunt above would leak and stink up the place terribly. Teenage bands would often play the place on weekends and little by little destoyed the place with graffiti, broken bottles, and garbage. The owner didn't care at all and actually wanted to start charging us rent to perform there! I met a lot of great musicians there, improved my playing and had some laugable, but memorable experiences.

I loved that story. I wished I was there to hear you tell it in person. Clapping Happy2

I played inside of a inflatable indoor golf driving range. It was a pressurized tent in Wisconsin. The sound was horrible, lots of echo and slap back.

Also in Washington I played this place...http://www.myspace.com/thecastlek