Well, these stories certainly cheer me up! My gig from hell was a writer's conference, believe it or not. The leader of our songwriter's organization talked a group of us into doing a "songwriters in the round" for free--instead of $, we were supposed to get a free meal and to participate in the conference for free. Well, we got there: there was only one mike (and no pick-ups) for five of us, and the gig was for the cocktail hour, during which the crowd all talked at once at the top of their lungs and ate all the food before we could get to it. I compensated by singing the dirtiest songs I knew, since no one was listening anyway. And then the organizer denied any knowledge of the deal for free admission to the conference: she didn't even want to comp our parking fees. But at least they didn't throw things!

I've also had the misfortune to be present at several fairly prominent musicians' or groups' "gigs from hell": the gig (by a well-known songwriter) where the venue did no publicity, there were about six people (several of them non-paying friends of the owner), and we were told not to walk outside because it was a bad neighborhood; and the bluegrass band who showed up at a folk club where they'd previously been well received to find it had changed management and was now a biker bar; and the festival where the singer-songwriter stage was adjacent to a larger, high-decibel stage (amps turned up to 11)which kept drowning them out. Having witnessed these debacles helps put my own misfortunes in perspective.