Famous Bands Playing To Tiny Audiences

[Voley]

I once DJ'd right before Brandon Block at a university gig. I set the dancefloor up nicely for him with plenty of people dancing away ready for him to do his thing. Then he comes on giving it the big 'I am', and plays 'Oh La La' by the Wiseguys and everybody fucked off to the other dancefloor.

This pleases me greatly. He's such a wanker.

 

[Orang Utan]

He’s a reformed man these days, drink n drugs got the better of him, but he got clean and now he works for St Giles’ Trust helping people rescue themselves from their own rock bottoms. So fair play to him for that.

 

[spitfire]

We had him and his mate (Alex P?) at Mass once, they were a bit messy but nice enough tbh.

I have told this anecdote on here for sure before.

Was at NUS Ents annual conference in Oxford, 1994. Oasis were the headliner and it was just as they were about to break I think...anyway,, I think there was about 12 of us watching them. Didn't do much for my rave addled brain but did come to like Definitely Maybe eventually.

Also had Coldplay at Mass, again, about 30 people in..promoter insisted they were going to be huge. I pshawed.

I no longer work in the music business.

 

[Buddy Bradley]

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The Doors at The Whisky A Go Go.

I just watched this great little documentary about The Rainbow, which was owned and run by the same guy that ran the Whisky - all about all the bands that came up through those little venues, really interesting if you're into rock'n'roll history:

 

[editor]

Human League at a Palm phone launch in Brick Lane in 2008 Human League live in Brick Lane -
And also Blur playing a BBC2 Awards bash that I was (bizarrely) a judge on.

 

[Hollis]

Eddie Tudor-Pole - some pub in Walthamstow. Had a chat with him afterwards..

 

[Spandex]

I've mentioned this before, but at Sonar 2003 we danced to a DJ set by a 'LCD Soundsystem'.

When we got back to the UK we saw LCD Soundsystem were playing down the road from us, so we went along and dropped pills ready to relive our Barcelona experience in a local club. Only we found it was a gig, with a band playing, to about 20 muso blokes sipping pints checking out this new act. I've never stood out more obviously, running around with a big smile on my face and dancing like a raver. Great night.

 

[rutabowa]

The Duchess of York! I was at that too

I saw Royal Trux there, with David Behrman of the Silver Jews on maracas. not the same level of famous but it was for me.

 

[Hollis]

'The Tea Set' featuring Syd Barret and Roger Waters playing a private house party in 1965... can you imagine.

 

[what]

Just seen this reversed tonight.
Went to see the Goldborns in a basement room at The Paddington Railway club. Completely full but that was only 35 or 40 people.
Right in the centre of the crowd was Paul Weller

 

[Serge Forward]

I once saw a Joy Division gig in Bolton. There were about 12 of us in the audience.

 

[Dogsauce]

I did see Ed Sheeran playing on a small balcony at Leeds Cockpit as part of the ‘Live at Leeds’ multi-venue all day thing about a decade or so ago. I was waiting to see someone else in the main hall. About twenty people watching. Didn’t figure out it was him until recognising him on the telly a few years later. He had a kind of boyish charm/charisma and kind of get how he got somewhere.

 

[Dogsauce]

Eddie Tudor-Pole - some pub in Walthamstow. Had a chat with him afterwards..

Supported him at a charity New Year’s Eve gig a few years back. There were probably less people there than in your pub, the organiser lost hundreds, think paying punters were in single figures in a circa 500 capacity venue. I don’t think I even bothered watching the other bands as there was lots of other stuff on that night so I disappeared after playing and came back at the end.

 

[mojo pixy]

I did see Ed Sheeran playing on a small balcony at Leeds Cockpit as part of the ‘Live at Leeds’ multi-venue all day thing about a decade or so ago. I was waiting to see someone else in the main hall. About twenty people watching. Didn’t figure out it was him until recognising him on the telly a few years later. He had a kind of boyish charm/charisma and kind of get how he got somewhere.

I saw le Sheeran play at an open mic called Up All Night, upstairs at the White Hart on Whitechapel Rd. Way before he was famous, doing his loopstation thing. The room was pretty full but - seems weird to say it now - he was just another open mic rando with a couple of mates.

(ditto Things that Make you Feel Old thread... )

 

[Dogsauce]

I practically lived there between the ages of 16-17. Mostly punk/hardcore gigs.

Somewhere I still have some of those Calendar flyers from the Duchess listing what was on for the month. Mostly from around 1990, I was going down there for greebo shit like Mega City 4 at the time but saw better stuff in subsequent years and played a few times.

Think they have a blue plaque for Nirvana playing and sleeping there on the building, which is now some dismal clothes shop (can remember when it was being converted from a pub there was a banner on the front declaring ‘Oakgate Developments - breathing life into the city’ which was sort of the opposite of the truth). By that point it wasn’t a great loss, just tribute bands and randomly thrown together battle of the bands nights for terrible local acts.

It got killed off by two things - in the mid 90s a lot of people got into club stuff so traditional gigs went down the toilet. Also the Cockpit opened, which was a bit larger. Keenan, who ran the Duchess, said that he used to put on a lot of bands ‘on the way up’ and that they’d usually come back and do another gig just after getting well known which would fill the place and cover his losses elsewhere. But when the Cockpit opened which was around twice the size those bands would go there instead, so that income disappeared. Tbh I didn’t think it was that great a venue in terms of layout, but I saw some good stuff there.

 

[belboid]

I knew I had it somewhere

 

[BassJunkie]

I used to frequent the Princess Charlotte in Leicester no matter who was playing.

As a result I got to see Blur on their first tour. And Verve, later to become The Verve when All In The Mind had just been released.

However, on one night, I can't remember why, I was on a bus passing the Charlotte. I noticed a small queue outside. Written on the blackboard was "Radiohead". I remember thinking "Never heard of them". I wonder what happened to them.