I've got one.
One of my band's first few paying gigs, the drummer knew some guy who booked the bands at an upstairs bar. Super cool venue, and set up really well for live music. It was about an hour away from where we live. (This will be important information for later)
We were told there would be sound provided, and a sound guy- a pretty rare thing for us.
Well... we arrived at the venue, and find that the guy who booked us was in florida, (the gig was very much NOT in florida) and had not told anyone that we were playing. The staff was very confused. In hindsight we should have just cut our losses, gotten something to eat, and gone home. But we were going to play, damn it.
There was no pa set up. No sound guy. The bartender didn't know what light switches did what. Luckily, we had brought our trailer, so we had all of our sound. We did however have to lug all of it up two flights of stairs.
To make matters worse, there was a VERY loud DJ playing downstairs, so nobody at that bar even knew we existed. Our biggest crowd of the night consisted of four people sitting in a booth in the back of the room for about twenty minutes.
Our keyboard player was a gear nerd and had inexplicably decided to bring a metric ton of dodgy vintage gear, including a mostly broken, off brand rotating speaker which was completely redundant because it didn't rotate and he played through a guitar amp anyway. Well, half way through our second set, he discovered any and all drinks were comped for the band. He then proceeded to do a shot of rumpleminze after every other song. This of course got out of hand pretty quickly.
We played fine, got through the gig, but Mr. Keyboard guy, who we found out later was on some sort of medication he should definitely not have mixed with alcohol, (in addition to being about 95 lbs soaking wet) was absolutely hammered. He told our drummer that he was "going to kill him" when he was asked if he was okay, and then fell into his amp and non-rotating speaker.
Overall, it was a miserable gig, and we were very thankful when it was done. But little did we know, the nightmare had just begun...
During load out it became very clear just how loaded Mr. Keyboard was, as all those shots of rumple he had consumed came home to roost at once. Remember the two flights of stairs we had to traverse? Well, he was carrying the guitarists amp in one hand, and a case in the other, half running toward the stairs, and fell. If he would have fallen on the stairs, he would have gone all the way down with the amp on top of him. We had to stuff him in the front seat of the vehicle and tell him to STAY before he hurt himself or ruined someones gear, which confused and angered him. Meanwhile, the drummer was waiting at the downstairs bar to get paid, so me and the guitar player had to load everything out ourselves, including the metric ton of dodgy vintage keyboard gear. He had even brought along his rhoades, because of course he did.
Finally on the road, I was very angry, and just wanted home, a beer, and bed. That turned out not to be a reasonable wish. It was extremely foggy that night, and we had to drive 45 on the interstate, and the drive which should have taken less than an hour turned into a two hour crawl. About 30 minutes from home, Mr. Keyboard awoke from the stupor he was in and began rolling down his window. The driver goes "hey if you have to puke, let me know because I've gotta pull over." No verbal response. I was sitting behind Mr. Keyboard, and I began to feel a light mist on my face. I thought it was actually mist until I smelled rumpleminze. I got covered in liquor puke before I knew what hit me. I yelled "what the f*** man!?" He turns around and just says "what?" slumps over, and passes out. I had to ride the last 30 minutes in the car, furious and covered in half digested alcohol.
We obviously fired him, and to this day, I don't think he really remembers why.
Tl;dr: played a gig, no one showed up, got puked on in the car on the way home.
