Well, I haven't sung professionally that much, so my horror stories aren't as horrific, nor as hilarious, as some of the above. However:

Back in the early 1980s, I sang with a band in Albuquerque that was made up of four engineers from Sandia Labs, one of their wives and me. We did parties -- wedding receptions, Christmas party, company picnic -- that sort of thing, always for people associated with the labs in some way, meaning almost all of them were scientists and engineers.

So this one gig was for a Christmas party on the air base in a big "cafetorium," which was a cafeteria but had a stage with big, heavy black curtains so it could double for a theater. The band set up onstage and when the appointed time came, we began to play.

And nobody danced.

The entire first set, no one soul danced.

I was deeply bummed, and during our first break, I told the other band members I felt so awful that the folks didn't like us. They looked at me with great surprise. What made me think that?

Well, I said, no one's dancing. No one's doing anything except staring at us and drinking. They aren't even talking to each other much.

Not to worry, they said. The just need to loosen up a bit.

(Translation: Wait 'til the booze kicks in...)

Indeed, this was the case. By the second set a few had started dancing and by the third set, not one was still sitting at the table. They were drunk as hoot owls and having a smashing good time.

At the end of the third set, this one very mousey-looking fellow who had been staring at me a bit throughout the last couple of hours, walked unsteadily up to me and stood in front of the stage as I was winding up my mic cord. He started saying something to me, but he was so drunk I couldn't understand a word. So I just smiled nicely and nodded and kept winding.

This encouraged him, so in his best Joe Cool move, he leaned casually up against the "wall" and kept talking. Only, it wasn't the wall he was leaning on, it was this huge, heavy black curtain. He began slowly sliding down it, his arm stretched straight out beside him, going down, down. And he didn't even NOTICE...just kept laying this line of bullshit on me the entire way down to the floor.

I had tears in my eyes from trying so hard not to laugh in the poor guy's face. He was sort of rolling around in the curtain, beginning to notice that something wasn't quite right, when two of his buddies came up and hoisted him to his feet. Neither of them seemed too well able to pass the field sobriety test, but at least they hauled him out of there before the barfing that was sure to follow started.

I don't think he ever knew what had happened. Bless his heart.

WyoWoman