Nothing wrong with being a bit different in music, I was in a punk band in the 80s, we had to play for free in pubs and bring fans who knew our music, the only other way was to hire a hall or venue and organise it ourselves. These days sites like NWB and myspace can be used to find people who like your music and then organise a gig and get em to come to it. A lot of people in some venues only want 'classic' rock covers but to me back then I would rather play our music to a handful of people who liked it than play covers to more for money. Nothing against cover bands, I've seen a few and had a great night, but there's a lot to be said for a good original band so keep plugging away and build up your fan base on here and myspace.

yeah gets a bit much sometimes, when songs can be put up on here again, it will help find people into the music and on myspace do a search for ska, punk etc and add as many people as you can, go through other bands friend list on there and add em, then gigs you do get can be put out in bulletins and messages to people in the right areas who like that sort of music, if you can show a venue your NWB page and myspace with loads of fans who might come to gigs, it can only help. and never mind your age, it's just more experience and good music is good music.

keep plugging away is right, We're always told we're "Classic Rock" and I suppose we are, we tried to include "new" numbers (they were only twenty years old!) and we got E-mails saying "I hope you aren't abandoning the classic blues numbers we've come to love", I like a bit of the punk n reggae but there's nowt wrong with trying your own material and i would come and see a set of originals, trouble is as you say the venue's and the audience make it harder to get your own stuff out there, personally I think it might pay to have two band names one for your expectant covers audience and one for your original project but this causes problems because venue's like to stick to what they know works, what the north west needs is a venue brave enough to set a regular good night (ie not Weds or Thurs!) for original bands, any risk takers out there?