magee

Hope you get sorted with the amp. As to your original question I use a CTM-100 with a Barefaced Two10 and it sounds brilliant - all thumpy and warm.

I bought Paul's Ashdown CTM-100. There were problems with postage and a small problem with the amp - neither issue was Paul's fault. He was in touch the whole time, kept me fully informed and was keen to do whatever he could to resolve the amp issue. Deal with total confidence, Paul is a gent.

Absolutely this, and you see it so often. We all know the bits that are a bit different - a three bar phrase there, a two beat bar there. Audiences who know the songs love hearing these little quirks and it's just lazy to ignore them.

Definitely adapt to the band's style because: - I'm playing in a three or four piece with no keys: we have to make it sound as good as it can sound with what we have. This is always more important than copying what someone was playing when they had four horns, three keys players and a small orchestra at their disposal (example: I mostly play the riff in Superstitious because the guitarist/singer is doing chords. The root note on-the-beat pattern in the original is funkier but someone has to play the riff!); - the punters don't care* about bass line specifics, they care if it sounds good. My bandmates and I will make our own judgement on that, trusting our own musical sense. 'Because it's on the record' is not as good a reason to play a note as 'because it sounds good'. *Obviously any really prominent parts I leave as is because the punters will expect it (I don't mess with The Chain, for example).

I completely ignore lyrics - I just hear the sounds of the words. It's pretty extreme - there are songs that I've been listening to intently for 30+ years and I probably couldn't tell you a full verse's worth of lyrics. If I like a song or band it's always because of the music, and I think that's true for most people. The chances that someone in that band happens to be a world-class poet are vanishingly small, and no lyrics sheet I've ever glanced at has changed my mind. I'm with @Krysbass, if I want brilliant wordsmithery I'll look for it in a place where people have focused on and fine-tuned word-writing as their only goal: poetry or a novel.

It sounds worse than it is - it was very much an occasional fun band, we never expected to get paid. He emailed us a while after one of the gigs to say that it turns out we were getting paid, it was £150 and he'd just taken it cause he was so broke. There were four of us and he gave one guy his share of the money cause he was a student but not two of us because we had jobs. There's a sort of logic to that, and we had expected to do the gig for free anyway. By this stage it wasn't even that high up on a long list of things we were fighting about and the band was obviously falling apart, so it didn't really even get discussed.

I joined this v odd band because a mate was singing in it - we dressed up as vikings and played '80s anthemic pink torpedo rock to bemused people out for a quiet pint. It was fantastic fun as the singer had an amazing rock voice and the guitarist was a brilliant player of that riff-heavy, blistering solo style. Guitarist was a bit odd, though. I worked hard to arrange my work and young family life to make it on time to rehearsals. He had v little else going on (self-employed, no family or really any other commitments) but would breeze in 45 minutes late to a three hour rehearsal - every time. Drove me nuts. He was stone cold broke - so bad he couldn't contribute to rehearsal costs sometimes and actually just took a whole gig fee once without consulting us because he was so strapped. But he always drove a new Merc on lease 'because it gives the right impression'. We never worked out who he was trying to impress. He had other quirks, like being a bit of a conspiracy nut and carrying his thoughts/convictions to pretty extreme ends, but he could be lovely too. It all came to a head one night in a pub with a full-wall plate glass window looking out on to a side street. His gear gave him grief and he wasn't loud enough on a big solo so he got in a huff and unplugged his guitar. He walked out the door, took his guitar by the neck and started battering it on the ground, Pete Townsend-style. Trouble was he wasn't very strong (or the guitar was very well built), and not much happened. It stayed intact. So the rest of us keep playing on, just cycling through the chords as we and the bemused punters watch through the window as this guy in a viking outfit and Christina Aguilera wig ineffectually leathers his guitar at the road outside. We, and the crowd, were pissing ourselves. Best bit was when a homeless guy came up and tried to take it off him, thinking it a terrible waste. He came back in sheepishly, picked up his spare guitar and finished the gig. The band dissolved in acrimony not long after because of a bitter dispute about the ethics of giving to charity. Odd all round.

It's much smaller than your other venues, but you could try Swing on Hope St: https://swingltd.co.uk/ One of the Glasgow Uni unions? They sometimes close off for gigs: GUU and Queen Margaret Union. 23 March is out of term time, so might work. Cottiers. Good luck.

@steantval getting jealous about your Free tribute band. I've love to do that, I'm surprised (and pleased at humanity's good taste) that there was enough of an audience for it. I'd do one of them in a shot.