My worst gig ever was a few years ago. We were playing two shows that day, one earlier and another in the evening but at a venue quite a ways away.
First gig goes fine, everyone loves us. Then we pack it all up and try to get to the second venue, hit traffic, don't have a place to load in from, and just generally don't have a nice time. We were supposed to be headline band that night, but because we were late, missed sound check, and the first band was already playing... They bumped us to last on the bill after the band that was supposed to close down the joint.
It gets worse... The band who was supposed to be after us played long, like too long. I think they didn't realize we had showed up and were playing two sets to make up for us. At any rate, by the time they tear down, and we setup, it was after 12:30pm, then the sound guy who is pissed we missed our earlier check basically gets frustrated, pretends to do a quick check and then promptly hits the "suck" button. FOH sound was terrible. By the time we finally got introduced and got the go-ahead to play, it was after 1, and the place was emptying out pretty good.
Anyway, all of the above made me pretty off-center. I played the worst show of my life, and the rest of the band didn't do much better. Timing was off, I was so tired I was missing whole parts, my kick foot wasn't cooperating, it sounded terrible, and to make matters worse the band who played before us had one of the best drummers I'd seen in a long long time. She was amazing, perfect time, not a note out of place, more feel than I've ever had... You get the idea. And of course, that band is there watching us along with the few drunks left at the bar.
We went through the motions to a mostly empty room and I certainly felt like a fool. I made sure to compliment the drummer before me... She wouldn't even look me in the eye, let alone attempt to console me... It was that bad.
The only silver lining at all was that the amazing drummer from the other band is now my private lesson teacher. More than a year later I saw an ad she posted for lessons, and I figured who better to take my playing to new places, right?