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You assume I play mid week. And I'm only 5 or so years behind you...

Even in the 00s, decent cover bands were packing out pubs. These days, if you get anywhere near half full, the landlord will talk about it being 'full' and the best night they've had for months! I was talking more about the 80s / 90s original bands, when if you put on any reasonably credible rock show you would expect a couple of hundred paying customers (more in many places). Unfortunately, those days are long gone, due to a mixture of changing fashions, more alternative forms of entertainment and (above all) people having less disposable income to spend on going to see bands. You still can get decent attendances in some places (especially in more affluent areas), but it needs to be more of an event and tends to favour certain genres or tribute bands of one kind or another.

I am in my mid 50s. The days of frequenting random gigs mid week are 30 years behind me. The generation that you need for that are teenagers to mid twenties and like it or not they get their information from the digital space.

Aim lower - at the local level here at least, door tax is less than a tenner, and the pints are £5-6. Still no effer want to get off their fat one (and their heads out of Instagram's backside...), but that's our fault for not being all "HEY, WE'RE IN A BAND, WE'RE GOOD, YOU SHOULD COME AND SEE US" all over the socials, because it's bloody gross and quite ikky to have the begging bowl out, whoring ourselves to hell and back again just to try to coax a few folk to come and see a band.

Spray with Febreze, and borrow a friends Conservatory for a few days.

You must consider them along with the rest, as the final result is the sum of all the parts. Another consideration is boundary cancellations, which occur when the distance from the speaker to a boundary is 1/4 wavelength, and/or when the difference in the distance from the speaker to a boundary to the listener totals 1/2 wavelength. These cancellations typically are manifested relatively close to the speaker, which is to say on the stage. They diminish as you get further away. It's why your on stage sound can seem bass weak while it's too much in the audience. It's the source of the myth of wave propagation, the notion that one must be a certain distance from the source for a low frequency wave for the dB level to reach its full potential. Accounting for it and the rest is why you need to do a sound check standing where it matters most, in the audience, or as close to it as possible, when setting your EQ. As often as not perfect tone on stage can be boomy out front.

I've recently picked up a Pedulla which is a lovely bass. Problem is that the case smells damp and musty. I'd normally just leave it in the sun for a few days, but this isn't an option (as I live in Bristol, not Bali). Does anyone have any foolproof and preferably non-messy methods to make it smell a bit nicer?

You have the Aerodyne Pickups? I have a pair ( of pickups) if you need them. Incidentally, I fitted DiMarzios into my Aeridyne as I wanted a humbucking J Bridge Pickup. I contacted DiMarzio Tech Suport about their wiring diagrams as they differed from received wisdom. For the first time, my tone pot did something. I have now reworked all my passive basses, even those that do not use DiMarzio pups.

Hi Folks, Is anyone travelling to Sunday's Bash from the Kent area??

But without the Internet, how will you tell strangers they don't need the Internet?

Ron Brown has since disappeared… his daughter went on to talkbass 6 years ago saying that she had lost contact with him. Apparently he was last in the Texas area after moving away from La when the major session scene modernised in the mid 80s. He would be around 85.

I do. I just tend not to blindly pay £25+ for tickets, £7+ plus a pint and £15 plus on transport on a whim. Like most people.

This is what I'm starting with. Thanks again @Aidan63

Ron Brown is probably the pioneer of the LA post Jamerson sound. We would not have Felder without Ron Brown, Felder had mentioned in an interview with Jake Feinberg that he was given his big break by Ron Brown when he asked Felder to substitute for him on what I can only guess was the IWYB session.

Dude, just go to a venue and watch a band. You can live life without the Internet. 😁

This is getting very circular. How do I find these musicians? Talk to my middle aged IT mates? Ask my kids? How do they find the bands? Streaming and social media, they don’t read the NME or listen avidly to John Peel (largely because he is dead), they don’t join bands by taking the little serated number from the add in the local corner shop. Like it or not the world has changed and it’s digital. I don’t do social media as I genuinely have concerns about the political and social ambitions of the big tech companies so streaming is the least worst option.

Do you think that you are missing the point? No is the answer. Do I think people are going to start buying records and CDs again and restricting their social lives to pubs and working man’s clubs? No So we can’t re write history. We can utilise technology. Even in the glory days I have read enough autobiography from people in smaller bands like The Fall, Spacemen 3 etc to know that they earned very very little from sales of recorded music.

Go to more gigs and buy directly from the musicians.

Sounds like you already have your answer, to be honest. I imagine any differences with the other ones will be minimal to you, and indistinguishable to an audience. The 'quick recording' thing I don't get at all. It takes me 2 minutes to set up a proper mic for a recording.

So how do you suggest that we listen to new bands? There are many bands who only release their music on-line, are you saying that we should ignore all of them? Even if the bands can afford to release their music on a physical medium often the cost of sending them out can make them prohibitively expensive. CDs aren't too band but the postage and packing cost for an album on vinyl can double its price, and if you want it to reach its purchaser you have to package it well and send by a reputable service. Here in the UK it may well preclude sending to most foreign in destinations as I described in a previous post. That limits sales of CDs and vinyl to those at gigs. Download sales on Bandcamp, which is about the main source of legal downloads for most bands these days are generally insignificant for new bands. To give you an idea of how insignificant they are last year my band's Spotify streaming payments alone were far greater than our Bandcamp income. Download sales on Bandcamp are generally good for the first week or two of a new release and then tail off to nothing with the occasional sale of our entire catalogue to someone who has just discovered us. On the other hand our income from Spotify is steady and continuous, and that's just from Spotify and not taking into account any of the other streaming services. Also great as Bandcamp is, the audience is mostly other musicians and a few die-hard music fans. Unfortunately these are are not sufficient for most bands to grow their audience in any meaningful way. To do this you have to be on a streaming service.

Do you think musicians have a fair payout for streaming music?