A few years ago I was perfoming a series of dates in Norway with my band (we're from the U.S.A.). The dates had been booked by a local agent, and in order to make the most of our trip (twelve shows in thirteen nights)there was a real range of venues. On this particular day we were playing at an enormous community center -- a 747 could have landed in the place. Unfortunately, the promotion for the event had been minimal, it was a Sunday, the weather was kind of lousy, and all told there were maybe a dozen people in the place. We played the first set, hoping to see some more people stroll in, but at the first break there were still only a handful of people there.

We used our break to encourage each other, and to reinforce our conviction to play as if there were thousands of people hanging on every note. Just as we were about to go back on, the manager of the center happened to stroll by. He heard us pumping each other up ("no matter how small the audience, they came here to listen to us, and by God we owe them the best show we can put on!"), then cleared his throat, gave us an embarrassed look, and informed us that we were playing to the cleaning crew, who were really looking forward to going home! Needless to say, we cut the rest of the performance short, thanked them profusely, and got the hell out of there.