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This might've been covered already, but what was the worst show you've ever played, and why?

My old band The Sweet Fuck All opened for The Immortal Lee County Killers in Vancouver -
Although it was funny, a bum from Vancouver's infamous east side brought his guitar up to accompany the Killers; only 12 people showed up to see this band; and ours.

I've played to less than 12 people a bunch of times.

The worst gig was probably when the guitarist of the main band refused to let me use his amp (after their drummer had said I could) and so the sound bloke agreed to link my pre-amped pedal straight to the desk, but then that stopped working. So I used a spare, shitty little distortion pedal he had lying around. The sound was awful, I could barely hear myself, and when a string went out of tune I couldnt hear well enough to get it back in tune and there was a huge pause while I twatted about with it while everyone stared at me. After a while I got annoyed and played the rest of the set out of tune.

Somwhere in the early 90's i got asked to play a show with a local punk band. Their drummer was a pro skater and had to leave the country for some skater reason so i got about 48 hours to practice the songs with the band. I had only been playing drums for something like 3 months and these punk fellas where hella fast for me.
Listened to a taperecording of the set and practiced with the band almost trough the night.
After all the practicing i was convinced things should, appart from a few nervous mistakes, go reasonably well.
This was one of those large/deep stage venues where old people play cards and amateur theatre at wednesdays.
Monitors where only for our singer and bassplayer. No drum monitor.
I was sitting way back, like 6 meters and i did not hear A THING wich was awesome.
As i had only been a drummer for a short time then and never having played a show before thoughts of moving the drumkit upfront or sideways did not come up at that time.
I quit songs early or stopeed playing 10 seconds late after seeing the others where tuning their guitars and stuff like that.
Makes a good laugh after a few years though.

Peter

It depends on your definitions of "bad" and "worst." For example, I once played a show to zero people. It was an art installation thing that was supposed to be a week long, and nobody was in the building except for other artists, busy working on their rooms. Occasionally they'd stop by and we'd talk, but there wasn't any audience. Still, I had a good time, and ultimately was paid $10 for participating in the event. It was my first paying gig.

So by some people's estimations, this would have been a bad show, but it actually went rather well.

What I think of as my worst-ever gig was at the execrable CB's 313 Gallery, the supposedly freeform, alternative, experimental space operated by a certain club in NY which people who haven't played there tend to think of rather too highly. Once again I had essentially no audience, but a number of factors combined to make for a particularly bad experience. 1) No one else on the bill stuck around to listen to my set, although I sat through theirs. 2) I recorded myself, a fact which was observed by the staff, who made an effort to shake me down for a "recording fee" they'd not mentioned in advance. 3) The no audience factor did bug me this time, due to the above, particularly that the other bands didn't hang around. If I'm playing to no audience, I'd think that I'd at least be able to play to my peers, but not this time. Also, they sucked.

So that was a bad experience. Up until that time, I'd thought my worst show experience was at the Lemp in St. Louis, but at least there there was a (tiny) audience, and I did a set good enough that I later released it.

worst show: the time when i only managed to squeeze 21,344 notes into the big guitar solo instead of the usual 21,650

sheesh. maybe about 4-5 months ago.
we set up on the slippery floor in front of the stage.
all i had to put my drums on was a tiny little rug,
which was absolutely useless. all that could fit
on it was my kick drum. everytime i would hit anything
it would slide really far away. my snare stand fell apart,
my floor tom fell over, and i pretty much broke every
drum stick i had. there were alot of people watching, too.
this is just the one of the many, many terrible show i am
having to played in.

Otto Bar in Baltimore - one of the other clubs didn't open, so they moved all the bands to our show (which now totalled 8 bands for the night). Iron Cross was one of the other bands, and the local skinheads decided they didn't like the new venue, so during our set (one of the first of the night) they threw tear gas grenades into the club. Then, they beat the bouncers up as they were running out of the club.

My old band played a show with Pram and the Rock A Teens and there were literally about 10 people there not including the bands. My band played what I consider to be prog-punk and we would do 1 song sets. This was the last show we played together. It broke up my band.

I played in some kids backyard with a sit in bass player, I tuned to a tuner but the rest of the band didn't. our first song was incredibly out of tune, like almost a full semitone. Then it took me over ten minutes to tune and I couldn't I had my drummer tune for me and then we played and after that point there was no redeeming that show.