the “[big indie band] in [ridiculous venue]” meme
The other day I was talking to a fellow DJ who was telling me about seeing a band in her neighbor’s kitchen. I told her I bet she wants that band to blow up big because then she could say “Yeah, you know, I saw those guys when they played in my neighbor’s kitchen.”
Is there something wrong with me that that was what I thought of immediately? But what’s the best “[big indie band] in [ridiculous venue]” story?
The Human Giant guys in their Other Music video thought that “Devendra Banhart in a dumpster on 32nd St.” was the tops.
What’s your best “[indie rock band] in [ridiculous venue]” oneupsmanship line? It can be real or fake.
My best is “Yeah, well, I saw Sufjan play a bar mitzvah in the Holiday Inn banquet room on Staten Island” (fake) and “I saw Mates of State play in a classroom at an art school. There wasn’t even a stage!”[1] (real)
[1] note: definitely in my top 3 best shows ever. completely amazing and surreal. tons of art school kids dancing around. that’s my camera case, which was resting on my torso, about 3 feet from Jason’s drums.
June 5th, 2007 at 8:59 pm
Phil Elverum at Stanford’s coffee house in ‘99 was tops.
June 5th, 2007 at 11:53 pm
i saw phil elverum, jason anderson, and their norwegian driver in their vegetable-oil fueled tour bus under the freeway (i think it was 80) in san francisco last fall. it was after a show at ATA, a tiny venue in mission. it was around midnight and it was raining, but there were lots of us packed in and the walls were wooden (!) and phil’s drawings were hanging everywhere, so it felt like being in a tiny, warm cabin on some remote mountain, but one with a giant freeway overhead. and with a norwegian guy on drugs singing about the evils of the fashion industry. jason anderson made all the hipster kids do a sing-along as he covered the cars and greenday. he hugged lots of people at the end. phil did his phil-with-acoustic-guitar thing.
June 6th, 2007 at 8:46 am
I saw the Violent Femmes and the Flaming Lips play a high school ‘mixer’ in a tiny gym of an all girls boarding school. The big controversy was whether or not the VF were going to play Add It Up since there is a ‘bad word’ in that song. They did. We all squealed with delight while the chaperons scrambled to pull the plug.
I also saw the Sloppy Joannes play the Rodeo Bar on Halloween. They were dressed as men and went completely undetected as far as I could tell. No one in the loud, drunk, rowdy, costumed crowd seemed to know that they were listening to Norah Jones with a fake mustache (she really did look like a dude!)
June 6th, 2007 at 12:33 pm
their not necessarily a “big indie band” but i saw the oneAMradio at “the solar house”, basically a townhouse where the upstairs was used solely for shows. there were like 15 people, it was pretty cool.