Agent 00Soul

That's really cool. My last band was also instrumental and I loved it.

Are you doing the Bangles' 3-4 part harmonies?

I've been on a garage rock kick lately. The best thing about that is I can usually learn the bass, rhythm guitar, and lead solo quickly. This morning I did Help You Ann by The Lyres.

Another thing to remember: basses, like all wooden instruments, need to be broken in for their sound and playability to be at their best. If you play all the time, this can happen within a year. For most weekend warriors it can take longer. It's something else to consider when judging new vs used (and of course not all used instruments are broken in).

How did you do that? Ebay/Reverb/Facebook, consignment/sale to a shop, private sale?

Good point - the generations who were really into gear are in the downsizing era of their lives now, or soon will be. And the younger ones don’t fetishise gear as much (a good thing IMHO) and could never afford this stuff anyway so never developed as strong an attachment maybe. Either way, it sounds like the numbers of market value are hugely inflated. And they don’t tell you how long an item was for sale before some person with money showed up.

Sounds like market value means much less than it did.

In an instance like that, do you think it would be better to find a vintage guitar shop that takes commission and suck up the lower price just to get it into as many more serious eyes/testing hands as possible?

Reverb etc are loaded with cool old/vintage instruments, some priced to "market value" (which is still a lot of money - like a 1990s ES-335 for 2500GPB or a Rick 330-12 from the same decade at 2100GBP) and others at rock star-only prices (1964 Fender Jag for 6000GBP). Yet neither seem to sell very often. I have several instruments and also amps in my feed that I've been watching for years out of interest without a bite among them. What's going on? Are people hoping that one of the few rich musicians left is going to see that your item is "the one" and buy it? How long do you expect to list high-dollar, but still market value, stuff before it sells? Is the term market value even legit these days? I ask because I have a decent collection myself of instruments and boutique amps that are worth something on paper, some of which were new when I bought them but are vintage now, that I imagine I'm going to have to start downsizing within the next decade.

I stand corrected! But my main point is still valid: that’s a real band. They’ve surely been together longer than the Beatles and Wings put together by now I imagine. Wings is actually a good example of “What is a band?” Colloquially, they were a proper band not the back-up of a single artist. But they changed members all the time and were always on Paul & Linda’s payroll. Then there was his 1989(?) Flowers In The Dirt band, released two albums and toured the world for a few years without being officially given a name. Band or no band? It’s a hugely grey area defined by semantics. And I think the audience and the people involved in/with the group can see different ones.

He only asked for a 2% cut for all that merchandise released in the US during the height of Beatlemania in 1964 (wigs, colouring books, toys, etc). I was just reading about it yesterday. One of the licensors was interviewed and he couldn’t believe his luck. He was laughing all the way to the bank.

Can the US actually do anything to Canada militarily? They’d be retaliated against by all of NATO surely. Economics are another matter of course.

If you are into following non-mainstream music, especially bands, the easiest way to do I’ve found is to join the mailing list of some of the few remaining indie stores left. I especially recommend https://www.resident-music.com in Brighton for this.