We were a 4 piece, sometimes 5 piece “wedding” band, in the late '80s around Sacramento. I was playing bass at the time. We'd do high school dances, parties, outdoor festivals, and a bar gig here and there. This particular gig was a retirement party. We had to do it as a 4 piece, as our main guitarist traveled for his job and couldn't play the gig. Day of the gig comes around, we're getting loaded up, and discover our monitors are locked in the absent guitarists' apartment. Oops. Then our other guitarist gets his hand slammed in a car door. Double oops. Our singer says he knows a guy who can fill in, an old pro friend of his, but it'll probably cut our songlist by half. Okay, it's just a retirement party. Won't play for that long anyway, right? Little did we know...
We get to the venue, this clubhouse-type place with a multipurpose room at one end. Pretty big room with vaulted ceilings, dance floor, and a fireplace. No stage. Our “guest” guitarist is waiting for us. He's already drunk. We'd barely met the guy, and he's already bitching about the absent stage. We start to set up against the wall on the dance floor, and he notices we don't have monitors. He starts bitching again. We told him we'd just put the mains behind us, as it was a low volume gig anyway. He seemed okay with that, thou he kept grumbling.
We played a so-so first set, complete with party-goers backing into mic stands and knocking over music stands. Without monitors, it's difficult to separate the stage area from the dance area. We'd just started our 2nd set when a patron stepped up to our “guest” guitarist, wanting to ask about a song. The patron knocked over the guitarist's beer that was sitting on top of his amp, and it pours INTO his amp. The guitarist immediately righted the spilled beer bottle, but the damage was done. He twisted knobs and pushed buttons, but the amp was dead. We suggested running thru the PA, as the mains were behind us. Nope. The guitarist was enraged. He packed up his stuff, loudly cussing and cursing at band and patrons alike, yelling he'd never been so insulted or treated so badly as he stomped out. We were absolutely speechless. We were looking at our singer, asking him “thought you said he was a pro...?” Singer was equally bewildered. Never saw this side of his guitarist friend before. Needless to say, we didn't get paid. Our contact cited a MAJOR breech of contract, and we really couldn't argue...
Myself, the drummer, and the singer have stayed in touch, and we just laugh about that night over 20 years ago now. We've all agreed on one thing: we should have canceled that gig after our 2nd guitarist injured his hand. Murphy's Law was definitely in full control that night.