Nicko

If you did this with any other income you would be considered to be evading tax.

I'm not sure of your maths here. 2 x £50 = £100 per month x 12 months = £1200. You could only claim the capital cost of the vehicle if you only use it for band work. If you own the equipment you cannot retrospectively claim it's cost, but if for example you bought a spare bass or a new cab you could.

It is actually a requirement to declare hobby incomes if they exceed £1000 in a year to HMRC.

When you submit a tax return they automatically do a calculation. You either owe them money or they owe you money. Depending on the amount of money you can have your tax code for the following year adjusted or request a repayment. Most pub band members probably don't submit a tax return. I did/do but claiming never used to bother with declaring the small income from the few gigs I did or recording the expenses I incurred.

IMO you would need to be doing a lot of pub gigs to be earning more than your expenses, and at that point you are semi pro.

To be absolutely clear, crude oil prices at the time of the "shortage" were around $70 to $80 a barrel. Compare that to prices ten years ago when they were above $100. Wholesale prices only jumped because of the demand. not because of the cost of the product. Of course crude prices were low in January 2020 but we ddn't see that reflected at the pump. This is absolutely on topic - the amount you get for playing a pub is led by the demand and supply. Too few pubs booking from too large a pool of bands is exactly the same thing, as is dep musos demanding more than an equal split of the band fee.

I think you have to analyse it a bit more than that. The point of having a band play in a pub is: 1. To get a repeat custom from the people who want a night in a pub listening to live music. There's a few pubs locally that have the same people turn up every Friday to see whatever band is playing. I've been to them as a punter and played there, and those people are only there on Friday, but they're there every Friday. 2. To keep the punters in the pub once the band has started playing. It's no coincidence that the punters are often completely ratfaced by the time you finish the gig. They've been there for 4 hours. 3. To get a few of the band's regular following to turn up in addition to the regular crowd. The cost of running a pub is largely the rent and staff cost. These things don't change much when a pub pays a band and the band fee comes straight off the bottom line. I suspect £250 a week is, erm, small beer when you look at the total outgoings of the business.

That's true for some Jack, but for me I only play bass as part of being in a band and the enjoyment comes from the fact that there's 4 or 5 of you making music. I don't really have a passion for playing bass in the way that you do and got into it by accident simply as something to fill my time. I don't mind learning new songs, but generally I wouldn't choose the songs that most pub bands play. As I said in my post I don't really enjoy the gigging thing either - it would be great if I could turn up with a bass, play the songs and then have a beer afterwards while enjoying the afterglow of the public's adoration. In reality it feels like a slog once you've travelled done the set up and packed up and the reward of seeing the punters enjoying what we've done is seldom enough to balance the effort. When its a permanent band building a set and seeing the development all adds to the positives and you just don't get that as a dep. I wasn't approaching it from a £ per hour perspective. If you want to make money out of playing you shouldn't be playing pubs as some others have pointed out.

I haven't played a pub gig since pre-covid but the normal fee was around £250. I do have some sympathy with a dep player getting £50 though. I did a dep for a the singer and guitarist from my previous band. They still had maybe 50% of the set list that we'd done before and there was some additional stuff that my band and theirs played. Even then I spent maybe 10 hours getting the ones I was rusty on and the new ones I had to learn up to speed, had one run through with the band and the played the gig (turn up at 7.30, pack up at midnight) so when you add the travel in I was getting £50 for around 20 hours work. If it hadn't been a favour to the guys I knew I wouldn't have done it. I've always found gigging a necessary evil rather the reason to be in a band. As a dep you get all the hassle of gigging and none of the fun of being in a band.

London is too broad so more locally...... I was born in Heston in West London. The most notable people to come from there were were Richie Blackmore (who moved there when he was 2) and Jimmy Page. Ian Gillan was brought up in nearby Cranford. I moved to Feltham when I bought my first house - Freddie Mercury grew up there, and Brian May lived there for a while, and Jimmy Page moved there when he was young as did Vic Briggs of the Animals. I moved to Pinner who's notable former residents include Elton John. Simon Le Bon went to school here although he grew up a few miles away (he still visits my local pub on occasion) and Scouting For Girls are quite local. The Ruts are from Northolt, Billy Idol was born in Stanmore. None of this trumps Mrs Nicko's claim to fame. Her brother used to deliver Elvis Costello's paper. Cait O'Riordan (Costello's one time squeeze and bass player with the Pogues) lived locally and I went to youth club with her brother.

Congratulations @xgsjx. Winner by a country mile and well deserved.

I'm assuming this is the Amplitube SVX add in which is occasionally available for free but sadly not at this time. My recordings are far from professional quality but I have had good results with my bass recorded dry straight into the interface and then through Amplitube with either the SVX or Fender add on - currently I'm favouring the Fender add in for bass and it comes with the added bonus of some useable guitar amps at well below the cost of the bass only SVX add in. The Fender add in is Euro 39 against the SDVX which is Euro 99.

In that section of the song it seems that the guitarist is playing inversions, so while you are playing C/D the guitar is actually playing C/E and D/F#. The guitar then switches to a full Em, then D/F# and G, G. I've not played the song but I was playing against that progression I'd probably play C, D three times then E, D, B, G.

Hmm. I'm moving to a significantly smaller house in 2022 and need to consolidate. As the owner of two basses, one amp head and two cabs I'm not sure I have much chance of competing despite my intention to keep one bass and offload the rest. I recently donated a small bass practice amp and a small guitar amp to a local school. Do I get bonus points for that? Oh, and Happy New Year to you.

Wow, that's an expensive mistake!

That doesn't sound stingy at all. They give you up to 3/4 of the value of a high end guitar and then have to sell it at a lot less than list because it's pre-owned. Where is the profit? The only trade I've done was a bass for a bass at Wunjo. I think they gave me around half the original price of the bass and I was happy with that.

I'm listening to a 30th birthday celebration of Nevermind. It's an album I never bought, and it never really got into my veins when it was released. I know most of the songs obviously but at the time it was all a bit, well, meh. I'm the same with quite a lot of that year's "must have" albums (I didn't buy Use Your Illusion, My Bloody Valentin'e Loveless or Metallica's Black Album either). Looking back at the albums of the year the only ones I remember buying were Out of Time (REM), Don't Try this at Home (Billy Bragg), It's a Shame About Ray (Lemonheads) and Diamonds and Pearls (Prince) and Blood Sugar..(RHCPs). Clearly I was backing the wrong horses.

I agree. Seems to my cloth ears to be in tune but more importantly it's an interesting voice.

I guess the question is whether what you end up with will have cost you more than buying something that's already that spec.

I bought a Squier 70s CV PB as back up for my American Special PB. All of the band said it sounded better. Personally from where I was standing I couldn't hear much difference. I recently did some home recording and the difference between the two DI'd through the same amp simulations was remarkable - but that may have had more to do with the age of the strings. I conclude from this that I use different technique when playing a different bass and it's all in the fingers.

After a very brief listen I would describe it as Ska with a Jazz influence but that might just be because you have a vcocalist that sounds a bit like Suggs and a horn section.

Depends what you're looking for. I play both fingers and pick depending on the song. Heres a few suggestions of different styles that a pick would be first choice: A Bomb in Wardour Street by the Jam. This Charming Man by the Smiths. Jesus of Suburbia by Green Day. Take Me Out by Franz Ferdinand.

OK, Here is my contribution. Its a straight cover of Longview by Green Day. It is most definitely not the radio edit so not safe for work without headphones. It's a song about boredom so seemed suitable in these troubled times, even if it sounds like a bad pub cover. Recorded in Cubase. Initially I used a US Fender Precision but re-recorded using a Squier 70s CV PB which had newer strings and sounded closer to the original. Amp simulation is a Bassman 300 from Amplitube. Guitar is a Patrick Eggle New York again through Amplitube using a Mesa Triple Rectifier simulation. There are no stompboxes at all, but some rack EQ and reverb was added to the guitar. I'm not particularly happy with the guitar sound - the only bit that sound right is the outro. Drums are MT Power drums programmed from tab and I'm not sure it's 100% right but close enough.

Bah humbug😀

I'm not complaining but question whether this is an original that simply uses a vocal sample. It's pretty well done though.