It certainly was this difficult 15 years ago, in fact, it was worse. No emails then. No Facebook, no websites only your phone, land line of course and good old Royal Mail who faithfully delivered promo material and demos that were totally ignored. The only way to find gigs was to read the gig pages in the music press or possibly word of mouth then it was off the the library to read the Yellow Pages to try to find addresses.
At least now you can easily find venues to be ignored by!