Wow, some scary stories,and I'm glad mine was merely a flustering experience..

Seems like my original post got a bit truncated.... So I'll make the ending short..

About 10 years ago I would get together every week with 3 other fellows, and we would work on a repertoire, some folk, some C/W, some early rock & roll, and some pop. We would volunteer to play at retirement homes about 3 times a year.

One fellow's mother was involved with the Masons and got us a 'paying' gig at their annual dinner. We arrived, listened at the door before we went in, and there was a soprano singing hymns. "They're going to get a surprise when we come in'" I said to the others (we were in jeans, those at the dinner were in formal wear).

We were finally let in and set up our borrowed PA system, tuned our instruments, and waited. There was an after dinner speaker, who went on and on interminably, and the audience was getting more and more fidgety..

Finally the speaker finished, the MC said something like "Now we have some musical entertainment while you replenish your drinks." With that, we were on, but as we started, 80% of the diners wer on their feet, heading for the bar, the washroom, and just talking to their friends. In spite of the monitors w had, we could barely hear ourselves. I'd had a couple of noisy experiences before then, so I knew that we'd just have to keep on plugging away, but a couple of the other band members were quite flustered and began missing words, chords, timing, etc.

We finally just concentrated on singing to the 2 or 3 tables where there were people actually listening to us, and managed to get through our set. For this we were paid the amazing sum of $65.00 (our first paying gig)..