What's the smallest audience you've been in at a show for the biggest band?

It's OK if the band was not yet big at the time you were in the audience,
or if the band is past its peak in popularity. Just try to maximize
biggest band to smallest audience ratio.

Probably Franz playing the Adelphi I guess.

http://www.triumphpc.com/mersey-beat/beatles/aldershot.shtml
The Beatles playing to a dozen people in Aldershot in 1961. Strictly speaking off topic because I wasn't there, but probably the biggest discrepancy between audience size and the band's eventual popularity.

saw modest mouse upstairs at the middle east in cambridge mass - capacity around 100

saw 2 Hootie small club shows

my sister took me to see lol phish in like 91 in portland oregon when i was visiting her at lol college - there were prob 200 people there

White Zombie, maybe six or seven people (including Barry Hennsler from the Necros), snowy night in Detroit, c. 1987

Springsteen and Billy Joel in a theater
Billy Joel in a small college auditorium

I don't even like Billy Joel

billy loel

12-15 people for Will Oldham, Proud Larry's, Oxford MS, I think it was 1995.

my sister took me to see lol phish in like 91 in portland oregon when i was visiting her at lol college - there were prob 200 people there

did Artis the Spoonman play with them?

I don't know if the Shamen ever counted as big, but I don't think their show at the Adelphi when they were still an indie-psych outfit was even full.

U2 in a church hall in Sutton, Co. Dublin in '78 - maybe 60 people there? they did 'Dancing in the Moonlight' and a Stranglers song (can't remember what one, maybe Peaches?) - dreadful then, dreadful ever since.

Sonic Youth, 1986, 25 people.

Rashied Ali and Prima Materia, 1997 or so, 6 people.

Not that big, but probably Skunk Anansie in some Camden sweathole before they were signed. They were actually pretty good back then, tons of energy.

I saw Violent Femmes at an afternoon show in Boston in 1999 with about 10 or 20 people in the audience.

I don't know if this really counts, but when Rush came to the Austin a few months ago, they played at the Frank Erwin Center. It was far and away the smallest venue I've ever seen them play in, but there were still thousands of people there. Still, it was pretty amazing to be able to see them in such an "intimate" location.

Under 200 for Amy Winehouse.
Around the same for Lou Reed/Pete Townshend.

Does an in-store appearance count?

I saw Swervedriver play at Newbury Comics in Cambridge, Mass. when they were touring for 99th Dream. There was a very small crowd there. Even though they only played about 4 songs, it was easily the best show I've seen them play.

I was one of 30 or so at a Blood Brothers show in Dublin a couple of years ago. If they were still together and played today, the place would probably be packed with emo kiddies... I'd take the smaller crowd any day.

nirvana in a record store - maybe 200 people
elliott smith in a bar - a dozen people there?

Modest Mouse in someone's basement in Columbia MO with probably 50 people.

My Morning Jacket opening for Lifter Puller at some bar in Louisville KY during Derby Week around 1998 or so. Can't really remember the crowd cause I was trashed (lol Derby Week) but I feel like half the people weren't even there for the show, they were just at the bar. (Place had a bunch of different rooms and an outdoor patio.) No stage, the bands just set up on the floor. Maybe about 75 people.

There's a few other ones I can think of where I saw a pretty big band in a small place but where the club was actualy packed. Like GBV at the old Cicero's Basement Bar in St. Louis.

also have seen Cluster and Silver Apples in pretty small crowds of about 20 people each but they're not "big" in the way this thread is talkin about

did Artis the Spoonman play with them?

― gabbneb, Saturday, November 15, 2008 1:47 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

am i right in assuming this is the spooooonmaaaaan - i dont think so - maybe we missed him tho? there was def some awful gay terrible jam band opening who for some reason i can still picture to this day

Secret Prince show on the roof of a hotel for less than 150 people.

I probably will never see a better show though.

Also, saw a pre-fame Against Me! play in an anarchist bookstore in Florida when it was just a dude with a guitar and a guy playing drums on a paint bucket, to like 25 people

yeah, xxp. they played 2 portland shows in 91, in spring and fall, but the latter was with him

yah i think i was there in the spring - tho it easily couldve been 92 or it couldve been the fall and i saw the spoonman and dont remember - long time ago

White Zombie, maybe six or seven people (including Barry Hennsler from the Necros), snowy night in Detroit, c. 1987

― xhuxk, Saturday, November 15, 2008 10:37 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Pretty sure I was at this one. It was a awwwful show.

Do bands I played with that later become famous count?

Because we had later-to-be NME darlings like the Gossip and the Cribs and people like that as support bands playing to rooms of not many people, but it was some time before they took off.

Also, lots of soon-to-be-big British bands playing their first US gigs at, like, Knitting Factory or Maxwells.

sure that counts!

dude from my old band opened for Yeah Yeah Yeahs to like no one at Brownies

Mansun at a radio session in 2000 - twenty people, some of whom were parents

tv on the radio @ a loft party - 70 people maybe

My parents hired U2 to play my sweet-sixteen last year, so there was just the three of us in the audience.

decemberists to maybe 40 people

tv on the radio - 100 or so

lol dave matthews - uh 500 or so i was waay wrecked

bubba sparxxx for 15 pplz

Blithe Sons in a run-off ditch/corrugated underground pipe, in Wisconsin, maybe 12-20 people fit in teh pipe. i had to pee really bad.

White Stripes at the Gold Dollar. About 50 people.

Good thread. Saw Yeah Yeah Yeahs play to about seven or eight people in DC, obviously way before they became megastars. THey were awful.

Nirvana, Southern Bar 1991. It's googleable.

Or:

1991 1st December The Joyriders and "Teen Spirit"

This charity show organised by The Joyriders in aid of the Edinburgh sick kids hospital was advertised on flyers handed out after the Nirvana gig at Calton Studios on the 29th November. The flyers stated "and very, very special (American) Guests". Nirvana played 5 songs acoustically, under the name "Teen Spirit" to about 20 people.

the DBs @ some shitty club in Boston (the channel?) 1984 -- two people in the audience, me & sally cragin. plus the bartenders etc, so maybe 6 tops.

Modest Mouse in someone's basement in Columbia MO with probably 50 people.

THE RANCH! See also: Deerhoof, Bright Eyes, others?

Amputee Set

Again, not ever too huge a band but Masters of Reality played a little joint called The Point in Atlanta touring behind Sufferbus and maybe 100 or so people were in the room with Ginger fucking Baker.

Modest Mouse in someone's basement in Columbia MO with probably 50 people.

THE RANCH! See also: Deerhoof, Bright Eyes, others?

― Tape Store, Saturday, November 15, 2008 5:09 PM (18 minutes ago) Bookmark

I think this is pre-Ranch

MM were supposed to play KCOU Springfest, got lost driving, missed the gig, but ended up playing some random punk kid's house party in the burbs

Saw Jonathan Richman in Lawrence, KS (the Bottleneck?) in 1999, 40 people in the bar of whom maybe 20 were listening to the Jonathan.

lol that reminds me I saw him play in the dining hall at the Mizzou commons

Forgot about seeing Cat Power in 96 or so (also at Barristers in Memphis) opening for Guv'ner and Bardo Pond. There were maybe 25 or 30 people there. Best show I saw at Barristers was Brainiac, though. They were great. Jeff Buckley did a set that night, too, which is why this show is being mentioned in this thread, I guess.

Does seeing Jeff Buckley in his rehearsal room count, coz if it does, I pwn you all! ;-)

All-American Rejects on a ten-band bill @ Fitz in 2002. Maybe a couple hundred people in attendance, but they were split between the up and downstairs clubs (five bands in each). On top of that, the show was big enough that many of those folks were in the other bands or were their friends and family.

I've mentioned this one before, but my school won a radio contest in 98, and the prize was an *Nsync concert during lunchtime on our football field. IIRC, only my class (the freshmen) got to go, so it could only have been about 200 people (students + faculty). Although the seniors shared our lunchtime, so it may have been 350-400.

my bloody valentine, tla, philly, '89: less than 50 people in a big concert hall.

Last I checked, the TLA was not a 'big concert hall'

Was the Long Beach club called Bogart's, in that huge & mostly deserted mall?

Yes, that was the name! Thanks Nick.

The shins maybe. O!IW had just been released and I think the band was still operating out of whichever SW town they were from. There might have been 12 ppl there. To be fair, modest mouse was playing an hour away in a college town and I suspect that hurt drew a lot of corny fuxx0rs.

Or maybe a very bitter, aged Cracker some time around '02 or '03. By the end there couldn't have been more than 32 people in the 450+ (I think) venue. I only went because I got in for free somehow.

I've also seen Gong a couple times in clubs, and they've played Glasto!

my bloody valentine, tla, philly, '89: less than 50 people in a big concert hall.

Last I checked, the TLA was not a 'big concert hall'

it's no carnegie hall, but wikipedia puts the room cap at 810. with < 50 people there it probably seemed more cavernous than it actually is...

oh yeah I'm reminded I saw CAt Power at the Hemlock in SF a few years ago (maybe four years ago), probably 25 people or whatever the capacity is there. this was a special show though, not something where people didn't know who she was. tickets for it sold out very quickly.

a couple of other shows i've seen w/ fewer than a hundred people present

death cab for cutie
rilo kiley (about 50 people there, my band opened)
devandra banhart/joanna newsom

My parents hired U2 to play my sweet-sixteen last year, so there was just the three of us in the audience. ― Øystein

Oh Øystein, ya poor thing, still living with yer parents... and having no friends...

Saw Nada Surf play for maybe 30 people at a club in Melbourne, FL. This was like 5 years after "Popular," so maybe it's not too surprising.

Stereophonics, playing to 7 people in the Drum and Monkey, Ipswich just before they released their first single. We got bored after a few songs, so three of us went to play pool in the room next door.

Saw PWEI to a crowd of maybe 150 at a uni bar in Canberra Aus in 1990or 91 when "This is the day" came out.

Saw the Smashing Pumpkins at a pub that I'm pretty sure only holds about 500 max and it wasn't remotely full. The next time they came out, they played a stadium.

Apparently a workmate of my bf saw Genesis once in the US in the 70s and only about 300 people showed up.

The Power Station on a 1998(?) comeback tour at the Fillmore in San Francisco. I was reviewing the show, I swear. Wikipedia tells me The Fillmore can hold 1250 people -- there could not have been more than 100 people there-- it sort of felt like I was watching a soundcheck. I remember a crazy drunk frat boy in a polo shirt yelling out "HARVEST FOR THE WORLD! HARRRRRRVEST FOR THE WOOORRLLD" (which they did not play). At some juncture, a woman jumped on stage and wrapped her arms around Andy Taylor -- it took security an uncomfortably long time to realize (or I guess care) that something was amiss. Robert Palmer ended the show with a very sarcastic 'Thanks for coming out. Until next time-- Yippie!"

Everlast at Slims in San Francisco before 'What It's Like" took off -- there were like 20 people there. 6 months later, same venue, sold out.

Ani DiFranco played my hippie college a few times -- our biggest hall could not have fit more that 500 people.

Kid Rock, Bottom of The Hill in San Francisco, many months before Bawitaba took off. 20 people, max.

Was the Long Beach club called Bogart's, in that huge & mostly deserted mall? I saw the Chills and Eleventh Dream Day (and one other band) there.

Hey, I was at that show too! I saw Let's Active there right around the same time.

Couple more I forgot to add... The Replacements at Al's Bar (Hootenanny had just come out) and Robyn Hitchcock/Peter Holsapple at some student union cafe at Cal State Fullerton.

Do you remember who the third band was Chris?

Also, the Dream Syndicate never got huge, but I saw them play in this short-lived retail store in Pasadena around 1980 and there couldn't have been more than 15-20 people there.

I saw Peter Case at the CalPoly Pomona student union but that was probably a pretty big show for him.

Oh yeah, and Richard Thompson at a free Earth day festival in the SFV 5+ years ago, not very many people watching (40 or 50?).

Went to see Genghis Tron in Belfast last night. There were probably fewer than 50 people there. Security and the barman told us that the promoters fucked it up; there was no advertising, etc. Sucks, but at least there were no tall mofos to block my view.

lol that reminds me I saw him play in the dining hall at the Mizzou commons

― dmr, Saturday, 15 November 2008 22:37 (5 days ago)

This was a great show by the way. Playing in a school cafeteria made him act even more like a kid than usual, dancing like a goofball for forever.

I was part of an audience of two or three at a Vertical Horizon show

the I-Beam in SF (more-or-less across the street from Amoeba

The 'more' being down the street opposite Cole...

SF folks, I saw Pavement in 1995 (height of popularity?) at the Kilowatt when they still had live music. 200 people max?

Not quite exactly on topic, but I remember seeing Of Montreal a bunch back in college, when they were playing before 20 or so people at a time. It's amusing they're playing in front of 40 times that now.

Oh and I saw the Zombies on a recent tour (2002?) play to about 100 people, which I thought was pretty funny. Ok, they only deserved that many people because they're just sad now, but you know...

saw modest mouse upstairs at the middle east in cambridge mass - capacity around 100

― ketchup bro (ice cr?m), Saturday, November 15, 2008 1:35 PM (5 days ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

gasp! i saw this show. it was good.
i don't know how big the rapture really are, but i saw them at brownie's which i remember as really small but could be wrong.

hmm..nothing too big...i saw the strokes open for the doves in front of about 150 ppl....julian was drunk and walking around after they played and tripped and almost burned me w/his cigarette. they got really mad during their set because the crowd wasn't into it enough. but they played well.

i saw um...gong in front of not a lot of people. and ian hunter in front of almost nobody.

Saw Royal Trux with a crowd of maybe 75-100 folks in St Louis in '99.

Just wanted to say that I love this thread. Too bad The Go-Betweens weren't ever big else I'd have something to contribute.

I also saw a sparsely attended Sonic Youth gig. I saw them in early '87, on a quick Midwest tour they did to try out the Sister material. They played Oberlin with Big Black. A few hundred, Big Black putting on a far better show. The next night, we interviewed them in Pittsburgh at the Katz and Kids deli. They weren't too happy with the previous gig. But they were great fun to interview. We followed them down to the Electric Banana where they played for 20 or 30 people, mostly WRCT deejays. They sort of gave up on "Beauty lies in the eye," couldn't get it to gel. None of the Sister songs worked that well, except for White Cross. And that really colored my opinion of Sister when it came out. Saw the end of the tour that autumn (in Cleveland) for a much bigger crowd, and they were fantastic. I think they closed with Beat on the Brat. Seems like the songwriting and studio process is far removed from performance for them.

!!! I was at this show and have a flyer for it on my wall. $3 for Oberlin students, $6 for the public.

i saw built to spill play at under acme in NYC during the tour for "there's nothing wrong with love"

there were about 20 people there. it was a school night.

oh, doug martsch needed a light for his marlboro red. i lit it for him.

Thanks for the refresher about Bogart's... what a weird scene that was, and the geography re: the I-Beam. Fond memories.

Ned, you could borrow my early concert-going years if you also take the 57 times I had to sit through the Elvin Bishop Group and/or Tower of Power in my high school years, even if TOP are considered cool now.

Then we can do the gigs we missed, or the gigs that we saw that are on the thread of performers/performances that other people would go back in time to see. I'm older than (at least most of) you-all here, stick around long enough and you can do this too!

Were Luna ever considered big? My band supported them in Leicester once, there were about 12 people there, at least half of them for us.

At their peak, they could sell out the Fillmore here in SF.

o gigs we missed is such a massive bummer

I was a sound guy at my alma mater, so there's too many to name.

Probably the best example was Counting Crows in early 1994 at the UC Irvine Student Center, a week before their debut album came out. They played to about 20 enthusiastic people. Their manager was a complete asshole. "We played with VAN MORRISON last night."

Had Korn not cancelled, they would have played to about 50 enthusiastic people at the same location a week before their debut album came out. I do remember talking to Jonathan Davis on the phone who was like "yo. yeah bro, we just need to make sure we can support a low end sound system if you know what i'm talking about, yah"

Hahah, I remember interviewing someone else in the band around the same time for the New U. Them days.

i just remembered i've seen mercury rev, sloan and smog in audiences under 100, but they were radio live-to-airs that had some invite-only people watching. there was a polly harvey one too that i didn't see

not sure these really count

Do you remember who the third band was Chris?

I *think* it was either The Silos or The Rave-Ups (or someone like that).

Also, the Dream Syndicate never got huge, but I saw them play in this short-lived retail store in Pasadena around 1980 and there couldn't have been more than 15-20 people there.

A lot of those early Dream Syndicate shows were like that - the audience would basically be the other bands, an assortment of Robacks, etc. In the late 80s, I saw Steve Wynn play a daytime solo show to maybe three people at the UC Irvine student union.

haha, UCI Student Center, the place to see bands play to 7 people before they become huge

Hey, Japanther is playing there at noon tomorrow.

I remember similar shows at UCLA's Cooperage. That burnt pizza smell was so pernicious, even your clothes smelt like burnt pizza after you left.

The Fields of the Nephilim were supposed to play at the Cooperage once in 1989. I wonder what that was like.

dark plates in a metal abyss
the bread is made of charcoal
your last meal... blacken this

MoonPIE!

Speaking of college student center shows... I saw The Raveonettes at the Cal State Long Beach student center on either their first or second tour of the US. Maybe a dozen people there who stayed for the whole thing?

I know I posted this upthread, but I'm still astonished by the Mercury Rev gig I went to last Sunday...

The thing that took my breath away about the show is that they are incredibly well known (ie. this is no 'before-they-were-famous' experience) and yet still only managed to get 100... 200 max to come and see them. As my friend who went to the gig with me remarked, 'I feel as though we've just seen a band of world renoun play my local village hall'.

I saw Howlin' Rain in the new Stereo, Glasgow last year when the audience consisted of little more than myself, the support bands and a record company rep. who had managed to blag his way in.

Not a 'big' band per se, but a pathetic turn out nonetheless and they definitely deserved and could have done better. A pitifully poorly promoted show was to blame.