Many times...
...and most of them were good. In many bands, I've had varying levels of success, in one, we used to support Martha Reeves and the Vandellas and had a stint supporting Mark King (from Level 42) - however, it was long before this that I was in a three piece band, we only played local pubs and clubs and we were just doing it for the laughs.
We'd stopped playing together for about 6-7 months, through a variety of reasons - family, home life etc... when I got a phone call from a pub in Kent - we'd obviously left a card or tape (remember them?) behind for them to listen to some time before.
They explained that their village was home to the largest custom bike show in Europe in a few days time and as usual the village was jam packed with bikers wanting live music etc... and that they'd been let down at the last minute by a band they had booked and asked if we could fill in. They also mentioned that as it was short notice that they'd pay accordingly ;-)
I phoned the other two in the band and they agreed to do the gig.
The only problem was that we hadn't played together for a while and were quite 'rusty' together.
We also (stereotypically) summised that as the pub was to be full of bikers that they would naturally be expecting 'heavier' music than we were playing.
We had one hastily arranged practice, then the next day went to the gig.
We were to play for 4 hours - much longer than we were used to, but hey, we sucked it up and got on with it - 'rocking up' (and by that I mean wacking the gain up to 11) our usual set of 'Sultans of Swing' and 'Keep on Running' to pander to our stereotypical perception of the kind of music that gentlemen who prefer riding motorcycles to driving cars would want to listen to.
In fact, Sultans of Swing was our 3rd song of our first set.
The pub was heaving - a pub that could usually have handled say, 150 people had about 450 bikers in it.

Not by our third song it didn't.

There was probably about 10 people left in the whole place - including the staff who had little choice but to stay and listen to us murdering cliched covers of once popular bands.
The landlord, of course - and quite reasonably, refused to pay us.

He and the bass player had a row about payment - I shoved my gear in the car and buggered off in embarrasement as fast as I could, not wanting to show my face, let alone get involved in an argument about being paid for quite easily the worst gig I had ever been involved with!
The bass player went on to play in a Beatles cover band touring the Balearic islands for a year or two before becoming a session player playing on records that you most likely would know - Inspiral Carpets is one that I remember, although there were others that he would point out when they came on the radio.

Thankfully, we all got a lot better over the coming years, but that gig in particular always made me strive to be the best that we could be - if we still had that sort of response, then it would surely be time to throw in the towel!
(dchurch bah, Fri 19 Aug 2011, 13:59, 1 reply)

Can you work that magic for the polis and crowd control? Better than water cannons, just bring in dchurch...

(boozehound is drinking your bar dry, Sat 20 Aug 2011, 11:22, closed)