My band played at First Night, Pensacola, Florida a few years ago. It was a bad experience. We were supposed to be the opening act at 8:00 on the main stage, but the sound man/stage manager didn't even show up until 8:15 and wasn't finished setting up until 8:45. He decided that instead of moving everyone's scheduled time back or cutting sets short to get back on schedule he would just write off our set and go on to the next band. His attitude was "You're going to get paid anyway, so what's the problem?" Nevermind that we had friends who had come out just to hear us play. We complained to the organizers and they did arrange for us to play a short set at another stage, but it was definitely a "consolation prize".

A few weeks later First Night sent out evaluation/critique forms to all the folks who had participated. We suspected that if we turned in a brutally honest critique we were dooming our chances of being asked to play the next year but we did it anyway. We were right. We weren't asked back.

Bruce