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ASK ANYONE who’s ever booked a DIY space why they work outside the club circuit and their initial response is always the same: there aren’t many all-ages venues in Boston.

Mike Apichella of the Baltimore band Human Host, who played at the HOSS last April, searched for all-ages venues for a former band, Charm City Suicide, to no avail. "We could never get booked in Boston because we tried to stick to all-ages shows," Apichella remembers. "There was nothing around. It was always Franklin and all these suburbs at halls."

"One of our members was a high-school art teacher and many of her students were able to see her perform at basement shows," writes Deborah Bernard, drummer for operatic-synth sirens U.V. Protection, in an e-mail. "We even had six or seven of them perform with us as our ‘entourage’ at a show."

Although the Middle East is testing monthly all-ages shows right now (Q and Not U next Wednesday, Hot Water Music on November 11, Ted Leo/Pharmacists on December 8), they’re "low intensity" — no hardcore. "It’s very difficult to make any money over the headache you might incur," explains Shred, the Middle East Club’s PR guy and booker. "If it’s all-ages, and not 18-plus, you kind of get parents involved."

"I’d much rather go on tour and play basement shows," says Junius drummer Dana Filloon, who brought the Faint to the Amory. "With a DIY venue, anybody can come. You don’t even have to charge any money. You don’t have to deal with business." Says Shred, "I couldn’t book a band that might play a house into the Middle East. They might not draw enough people. At a house show, the expenses are zero. Here, we have overhead."

Although people still go to clubs when there’s an act drawing them there, the combined cost of $12 covers, $4 beers, and $1 tips per beer adds up quickly. "You feel like you’re being ripped off a little bit at clubs," explains Dan Wars. Basement shows charge entrance fees, but the cost is usually minimal, only four or five bucks, and often negotiable on a sliding scale. (This, of course, is another thorny issue in dealing with law-enforcement officials, since proper zoning and entertainment licenses are required to collect money for an event.) Whatever cash is collected goes directly to the bands; touring bands normally get the largest cut, since they’re scraping to get by on the road. If everyone’s paid and there’s still change, sometimes a leftover $20 will remit a utility bill or restock the toilet-paper supply.

Since basement shows aren’t driven by revenue, they can be stages for the obscure, the absurd, the unsung, the unknown, the unseen, the experimental. They can feature esoteric subgenres like tech grind, grindcore, crusty hardcore, Nintendo-core, video-game metal, math metal, synth-noise, folktronica, folk-punk, and melodic post-punk without worrying that the turnout will be too low to cover expenses. A mop-topped cartoonist who dons a carrot-colored elf-like costume and bangs a tambourine? That’ll be April 7. An animal-mask dance party with a noise band who perform indoors under a tarp? May Day. A blue-robed sideshow freak who sticks pins through his cheeks? June 13.

JUNE 13 WAS the day the Amazing Eddie Daniels wriggled out of a straitjacket, stepped on shards of broken glass with bare feet, and lay shirtless on a bed of nails at the HOSS. Then he pierced his cheek with a six-inch needle and — grossing out many of the 30 or so kids in attendance — pulled the pin through the other side.

A sideshow performer appearing as part of a matinee showcase, Daniels wasn’t the most bizarre act to appear at the HOSS. That honor could very well go to the phallus-obsessed French performance artist who blanketed the dingy basement with tarps, presented an art-noise musical scored by a programmed CD player, and then literally let himself go while dancing naked with his young lover. "They did some real pissing," recalls HOSS booker Dan Shea. "They did fake shitting, bloodletting. There was lots of Catholic imagery and lots of baby imagery." On the HOSS’s Web site, there’s a picture of the nude fiftysomething, bloodstained and unspooling a roll of toilet paper.

But make no mistake: the HOSS wasn’t some weirdo cult den. It was an underground music venue that booked more than 75 shows in 11 months. Since at least three bands appeared on every bill, and more often four or five, the HOSS likely hosted about 275 bands in its less-than-one-year existence.

HOSS acts mostly fell into about five genres: art-noise/art-punk; punk; hardcore/screamo; garage-rock; and indie pop. The venue saw the largest turnout last November, for K Records songwriter Mirah: 250 people paid; even more actually attended. (The door, Shea ruefully admits, wasn’t always monitored as well as it should’ve been.) Problem was, only about 60 or 70 people fit comfortably in the cozy cellar. So people were everywhere, spilling out the doors and listening from upstairs. "A lot of people hated that show," recalls Shea, a 25-year-old with sideburns the size of Manhattan. "They said I should’ve turned people away. I’m like, ‘I’m not turning people away from my basement.’" That night, Mirah and the two women she brought with her to perform netted $600.

But that was abnormal. Typically, with a $4 or $5 cover, performers at the HOSS brought in much less. Having been the bassist for the Panda Squad, a now-defunct indie-pop sextet, Shea empathized with penniless musicians. "I tried my hardest to pay bands," he says. So he committed to compensating everybody, even if he paid them out of pocket. John Wilkes Booze, Kill Rock Star’s organ-grinding soul-eulogizers, got $75; K Records’ proggy-garage-rockers Old Time Relijun earned $125.

For Shea and his "seven to nine" roommates, renting the HOSS was a conscious decision to settle in somewhere that could double as a venue. "I always wanted to open up my own club or something, but that’s not happening. I don’t have any money," says Shea, a Dorchester native who also organized events at the X Haus, a Mission Hill screamo site that was condemned more than two years ago. The Panda Squad had once performed at the House of Suffering, a Brighton residence that threw punk and hardcore bashes. In the fall of 2003, the House of Suffering kids were moving, so Shea and his roommates replaced them.

Rechristened the House of Suffering Succotash, the Brighton basement debuted under its new moniker on September 6, six days after its new residents moved in. A week later, there was another show: a Chicago husband-and-wife duo, the Like Young, and the Jamaica Plain trio Mittens. A week later, another: Virginian avant-garde collective Harm Stryker and noise-spazz Slick Pig, a 16-year-old from Newton. By October, the HOSS was open twice a week, providing space for touring performers from locations like Baltimore, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Montreal, the United Kingdom, and Spain.