The best projectile anecdote comes from Chicago’s Beats By Otter, who “was having one of the best nights a hip-hop DJ could have,” opening for Kool Keith to a packed club in Minneapolis. “It was cake! Then they asked me to get on the mike and announce that he was going to be a no-show. His rider had called for something like 350 Ziploc baggies with two chicken wings in each one. The wings, which apparently were for the crowd to wave during part of his show, did fly.”

Predictably, nights gone awry often involve over-indulging, as one anonymous house DJ told us. “A few years back, I was deejaying a warehouse party in Australia. Nearing the end of my set, a friend came over and offered me a pill. Forgetting that I hadn’t eaten anything, I took it and continued spinning. Soon, I realized that it took all my concentration to keep from dancing and wandering away from the turntables. A few minutes later, I couldn’t stand up. I deejayed the rest of the set on my knees.”

As thrilling as it can be to travel to distant lands to party with strangers, it can also be risky. Chicago’s Dani Deahl found this out the day of her first gig in Cancun. “The Federales pulled us over and, going through the car, emerged with a bag of drugs that obviously didn’t belong to us. We were driven back to the police station and guarded while the promoter negotiated. Eventually, we were let go, but at a price. The officers got $500 cash and were promised half the door money at the club that night.”

Making new, attractive friends is often a perk of working in nightclubs, but not always, says Chicago DJ Willy Joy. “In Boston, I was asked by a friend to play this National High School Model U.N. Convention on the MIT campus. There were some pretty amazing high-school–nerd stereotypes, with one exception—the girl with no shame in her game. She was dropping it like it was SCALDING. I was pretty sure that I was going to jail when she came up and grabbed me. I escaped by getting her into some kind of esoteric conversation, finally ending with: ‘Seriously, how old are you?’ At the end of the night, I got chastised by the organizers for ‘dancing’ with the girl. If there’s a name for the dance move where you try to run away from the jailbait trying to grab your junk, I’m not familiar with it. To top it off, they stiffed me on money.”

Sometimes DJ gigs are just painfully awkward, as Boston DJ Bobcat learned. “I was asked to spin a memorial celebratory gathering for this girl in the scene,” he says. “Everyone just wanted to hear great music and dance in her memory. Before I began playing, the promoter said a few kind words and everyone held up candles in the girl’s honor. I wasn’t looking at my record because I was so moved and confused about what was going on around me. When I finally started playing, the needle hit candle wax, which had dripped down all over my first record! You know what that must have sounded like—unpleasant at best. And I was sober.”

Click here for DJ horror stories from Dimitri From Paris, Drop the Lime and more.