Tir Na Nog Irish pub, Daytona Beach FL.
Equally the coolest and grossest little dive bar you've ever been too... Open since the 80s and they just got a ceiling last year (not kidding). One of the only venues in the area that not only welcomes original music but specifically requests little to no covers.
In my first year living in Florida (I'm from PA) I was in an experimental dub trio and we booked said pub for New year's eve. This place is hit or miss, with no rhyme or reason whatsoever it could be packed shoulder to shoulder OR just your bandmates and the bartender. This was one of those especially 'dead' nights and the total attendance consisted of my band of 3, 2 wives, 1 bartender, and maybe 1-2 random walk-in's throughout the 3 hours/2 sets we did. We were bummed at first but then we looked at it a different way: we got a whole bar to ourselves, free beer all night (venue perk for bands), paid $75 (their minimum on 'no sale' nights), and got to play whatever music we wanted as loud and late as we wanted. If we wanted to rent out a bar in this area for a private party it would have cost us $1000+ lol.
A different band I was in was asked to play a large Comic Con in the Jacksonville area. They put the music after the event was over so everyone left and we thought we drove over an hour and set up our full (theatrical) get out for no reason at all. We played about 5 songs to 5 people before saying "eff it" and decided to pack up. All of a sudden all of the 'famous' people in attendance (voice actors, stuntmen/women, etc) came back over, hammered, from the bar across the street to which we rapidly set back up and ran our entire 12 song set to a fantastic reception. Met a voice actor from prominent 90s Nickelodeon cartoons, the lead stunt woman from Black Panther, and a few others. Really cool night.
When I was 16 I played in a loud screamo band and a local firehouse was hosting a benefit for a child in the town who had cancer. They asked a few bands to play, mostly older gents playing country and classic rock. We told them flat out that we are loud, obnoxious, and not a fit for the venue/situation AT ALL. They told us they didn't care and had us anyway. About 30 seconds into our first song a random guy at a dinner table walked up and just turned the pa off lol. Luckily our singer also played sax and began belting as hard as he possibly could un-mic'ed. We finished that song, realized it wasn't going over well, played one more short song before thanking everyone and apologizing and packed up our gear. We were so loud that the poor sick child had to be taken outside (We did warn them of this and even played quieter then usual. If an old age home books Slayer, do you blame the band or the venue?). Within six months of said gig word got around that the child made it through his treatment successfully and got a clean bill of health... To which my a-hole cousin (guitar player in said band) proceeded to say, "well, on a positive note... Sounds like we rocked the cancer right out of him!"
