The Great Refund Debate

Michal Kaščák and his band VBPS found a very convenient venue in Trenčín

Where’s the weirdest place you’ve watched a gig?

TOP SHOUT

Definitely from my drum chair at the first ever public concert of my punk band VBPS on the WC stage in the city of Trenčín’s House of the Army.

As it is a barracks, they have some of the biggest toilets in Europe, and our “stage” was located in the area of the pissoirs (urinals) where there was enough space for the band, the audience, and also any “boys in need,” as the toilets were open as usual, which made it a real punk event. The gig was also streamed… to the main hall at the event.

The promoter of the gig was Slovak underground hero Luboš Dzúrik, and the toilets were our only condition to play the show. It was a huge success, and since then we have played several ‘gutbuckets’ in Slovakia and also at Macedonia’s Taksirat festival where the promoter, Login the Great, launched a new format of show in Skopje, using the WC in the MKC venue. Last year, I saw two bands performing there during the PIN international music conference.

Michal Kaščák | Pohoda Festival / VBPS

We were doing a lot of shows in a bunch of weird venues here in Kiev, including a helipad, an abandoned film studio, Hillsong Church, and the aviation museum.

But the best venue I’ve been to was for a Björk show in Dalhalla – an open-air theatre in a former quarry in Sweden. Sergii Maletskyi | H2D The weirdest gig location was for me back in 1994 when I organised Quart Festival in Kristiansand. We did a night event at an old military cannon location called Møvik Fort Batterie Vara. The venue was a bunker built to protect one of Europe’s largest cannons during World War 2. The fort was built to control Skagerrak between Norway and Denmark. Toffen Gunnufsen | Slottsfjell The weirdest place has to be deep below Bond Street tube station. The standard of music was fantastic. About 20 people were entertained and everyone contributed. Ed Grossman | Brackman Chopra LLP

Skipping a couple of my own (including playing on a truck at a demo in Amsterdam, and a riverboat deck in Moscow where the gear had to be winched precariously over a stretch of water), it’s got to be Pere Ubu at Chislehurst Caves in 1978. The band were at their ferocious best. We punters arrived by special coach. And the gig became an instant legend. I guess the record company picked up the tab. Good move. Nick Hobbs | Charmenko

About 16 or 17 years ago, Kaizers Orchestra played Pulpit Rock high above a Norwegian fjord. It was a two-hour treck to get there and similar coming back – cold, icy, snowy, scary. But awesome. Martin Elbourne | The Great Escape

Silent Disco made for some special locations. The weirdest one I co-produced with Greenwich Comedy Festival was Arthur Smith performing standing on the roof of the Old Royal Naval College, with his audience watching and listening through headphones from the grounds. Of course, any passers-by stopped to look up as well. Is it a bird..? Nope, just Arthur Smith. Sytske Kamstra | IPM

Inside the caves of Gibraltar for Suzanne Vega. John Giddings | Solo

I once saw Kasabian perform in the Cabinet War Rooms – Winston Churchill’s underground

ADVERTISING bunker in Westminster – meaning the sound had nowhere to go except bounce back off the reinforced concrete walls. It was 18 years ago, and my ears are still ringing. Gordon Masson | IQ ARTWORK Perhaps not the weirdest but definitely memorable: Gogol Bordello at the Grand Kremlin Palace in Moscow. Tobbe Lorentz | UTA The weirdest combination of venue/genre was the Midsummer Opera Gala at the Drive-In Theatre in Düsseldorf 2020 – opera performed with a full symphony orchestra on a parking lot transformed into a “concert-venue for cars.” The pop-up venue was an immediate reaction right at the beginning of the first lockdown in Germany. D.LIVE installed and developed this drive-in concept and over 90 events took place. 100,000 visitors were able to watch films, experience concerts, and dance in their cars. We staged live concerts, shows, a pole vaulting competition, boxing, and DJ sessions, as well as weddings and an Easter service. But for me, the most fabulous evening was the Midsummer Opera Gala by the Deutsche Oper am Rhein. Seventy people performed excerpts from popular operas such as Carmen, The Barber of SeThe entrance to the Cabinet War Rooms in London ville, La Traviata and Nabucco on the huge cinema stage, for a sold-out crowd of motorists. The opera audience brought their own picnics with cloth napkins, fine foods and wine, opened the sunroofs of their cars and listened to the classical sounds of the singers and the orchestra underneath the stars of the perfectly mild summer evening. Sounds kitschy but everything just came together perfectly that night!” Daniela Stork | D.LIVE Does my front room count? I was 19 years old, a vet nurse, living in the vet’s mansion with a bunch of other nurses, and I threw a big party for a friend’s 18th birthday, including two bands. The house was a listed haunted house and had beamed ceilings that meant only short people could stand upright.

Not so much watched, as had the dubious honour of having to coordinate the arrival of Mr Blobby and his entourage at Noel Edmond’s Garden Party at Doncaster Racecourse in June 1993. They arrived in five helicopters (Blobbycopters) – one for Mr B, one for Mrs B, one for Baby B, and two for the luggage) – and the resulting crowd hysteria that was generated meant I had to ensure that we had a full team of Blobbyguards to get them safely around the venue.

We did it all again in August ‘93 at Haydock Park Racecourse, and I knew then that I’d reached the peak of my career. Tone Østerdal | Norwegian Live Music Association

Blobby blobby blobby! Sharon Richardson | K2 Agency

Jon [J.C.] Corbishley | The Safety Officer

Although blessed with some of the most spectacular outdoor concert venues in the world up here in the far north, I must say that the weirdest and most memorable gig location I have ever visited is the Emanuel Vigeland Mausoleum in Oslo. The dark high-vaulted room is covered with fresco paintings named vita (life). The theme of the vita is eroticism and man’s sexual instinct. It’s life and death, heaven and hell, sun and blazing fires of hell. It’s deeply disturbing yet extremely beautiful. Because of the delicate fresco paintings, the mausoleum is maintained at about 14 degrees Celsius year-round. Due to the resonance in the mausoleum, sound has a 19-20 second delay, which really adds to the experience – for both artist and audience. Truly spectacular! Over the years, artists such as Diamanda Galás, Supersilent, and Sondre Lerche have held gigs here.

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