Hi. I'm an American banjo player. I've lived in Bucharest for 5 years and man, I'm starting to think the things people told me before I came here were right. "You'll see..." they said, "You can't get anything done."
I don't know how many bass players we've gone through. Our music is not complicated, and you can find hundreds of examples of the style on YouTube. I see, and understand, that many bassists are motivated by money. Nothing wrong with that. But: "Seeking band with activity onstage," "Seeking band with paying concerts," etc.
This is something I haven't yet figured out about Romania. How does a band that doesn't have a bassist have paying concerts?? This is a serious question. How do these people actually get into bands that already have paying concerts? It's like a cop looking for criminals who've already been arrested. A band with regular paying concerts is probably not looking for you, Einstein! I wonder why you've been posting the same message for so long and not gotten anywhere.
I also get this question sometimes... There are no other bands in Romania that play bluegrass (correct me if I'm wrong), and one other band I know of that plays a kind of country music (Desperados). "Do you think something like that will catch on here?" Umm... YES. Romanians, including non-musicians, who hear us love us. Romanian society also seems to eat up anything American (media is our #1 export). The only people who've EVER questioned whether anyone would like my band's music have been musicians. I can't help wondering if this is related to the absence of a free market here for so long. No one here listens to bluegrass because there is no bluegrass here. When someone comes along with a new product in an unsaturated market, Americans JUMP on that shit! E.g. Bill Gates, if you've ever heard of him. But all I hear around me is, "I don't know, no one else is doing that. I don't know if it will work." That's the idea, dude! Someone else will come along and do it if you don't, and leave you behind. The public is more curious than you give them credit for. Or they are simply bored, if you prefer.
My wife is talking about a possible move abroad, and I'm actually resisting it because this style of music DOES exist in other European countries. The public here would love it, but the musicians here seem to be terrified of anything the public doesn't already love. Maybe that's why they're playing American bands' music and not the other way around. That O-Zone hit was huge in the states, even in a language no one understood (I know they're not Romanian, I just mean to say people are curious about things from other cultures). Fanfare Ciocarlia toured the US and Canada last year because people are dying to hear something different and unusual. Don't blame the fuckin public if you only offer them what they already have. That's like saying your cat only likes turkey when you've never given him anything else.
I hope I haven't hurt anyone's feelings. I like to think there are others around here who would agree with me. I just had to get this off my chest.