Yeah it happens from time to time...
My most memorable pairing of artist & venue was seeing Tool - The Flaming Lips & Failure back in '94 @ the Riverside theater in MKE.
That was pretty epic to say the least,and the sound was great where we were (front row ~ center in the balcony/they removed the seats on the floor & that was all GA).
Also seen a lotta shows in MKE @ the Eagles ballroom,which is a pretty nice mid-sized place to see a show.
One of the best of those was Alice In Chains - TAD & Sweetwater back in '93.
Down in ATX there were some pretty nice small to midsized venues to see shows at too.
AMH is nice enough,though they could'nt do shows with any big pyrotechnics or such. Stubbs is pretty cool too.
The Backyard is also kinda cool also,really too many places down there thru the years to list them all.
I guess what I'm getting at is venue size often correlates to the size of the city your in (as well as the popularity of the artist in question).
IE: If you live in a bigger city (and the artist you're seeing has a large following) it only stands to reason that the venue size is going to be bigger as a result.
The flip side is some artists totally bypass small/midsized markets as they cant properly accomodate the crowd said artist would likely draw.
But from time to time great shows will happen in the oddest venues one can imagine.
Heck one time I saw Pat Travers play for free behind a music store down in ATX (Lightning Music on 183 IIRC),that was waaayyy cool,LOL.
FWIW
Bret P.