Alas, I am not in a band. When I was in college I basically lived in a venue. We put on shows in our living room once a month or so. It's technically a fraternity, but that was more of our university approved "cover" for a venue than anything else. The house was largely populated by musicians although some of us were there for the more organizational aspects. All of our "social dues" went to paying bands and upgrading equipment, there were no parties just shows. It is a large space, with a stage and full sound system, and they still have shows. And every spring we throw a big all day event that we dump roughly 5k into. Unfortunately I can't make it back to Philly for it this year. I occasionally ran the sound board, although it was not my strongest point. I mostly had oversight duties at the shows, dealt with bands, security, equipment setup/procurement, maintenance, and promotional stuff. I've gotta say, it was a lot of fun and I learned a ton. Probably more about DIY stuff (carpentry, plumbing, electrical work, etc)than sound, but practical knowledge all the same. Hard to get homework done when there's a band blaring and 400 people packed in your house to worry about, but in the end I got through with no trouble and learned a lot more in college than my comp. sci and math degrees entail.
Some particularly memorable moments are when one of the concert-goers set off 5 smoke bombs during "Wesley Willis" (one crazy crazy man) and we had to evacuate the building until the smoke cleared, and explain to the police that we had everything under control while a mob of annoyed west-philly residents stood out on the sidewalk. Or when "Man or Astroman" was playing with a tesla coil on stage and it shocked one of the monitors and fed back into the amp, which then caught on fire. (We thought it was only fair the cost of those items be deducted from their contract.) Some very well known bands have come through, like the "Dead Milkmen", although that show was "before my time" there.
I did play clarinet and then tenor sax for about 12 years but never in a band (aside from a quartet for a while), mostly just jazz and classical stuff. I haven't picked the things up in a while though, college (and that house) started draining my free time and I sort of fell off the wagon.
