Well half the problem with decreasing audiences for LT gigs for regularly reappearing artists is, imho, the fact that it only really advertises to people who go there - if you're online and regularly visit here or the LT website, or don't get sent the brochures regularly, how do you discover what's playing? Goes back to my specious "Bulgarian folk trio" comment - the only people who go to the Lemon Tree are the people who go to the Lemon Tree. The Lemon Tree is the only live venue of its size which everyone in Aberdeen who pays council tax has to partly fund - whatever plays there. As far as I'm concerned it should be providing something for all tastes at some point in the year. I don't think it did when it first opened, but it improved in the late nineties and is now declining in what it offers once more to appeal to a far smaller core of regular users. Must admit I've never been able to figure out how the place ran up the debts it did - the high entry prices (well if they can offer a third off to regulars, how much clear profit are they making on sales?), an overpriced bar and as far as I can tell reasonably healthy attendances at most events it should be a goldmine compared to the commercial operations around town. To broaden the discussion a bit, can anybody explain why we seem to pay so much for live music events in this country compared to mainland Europe? When I started to go to gigs 20 odd years ago, a concert ticket for a Capitol sized venue was about the same price as buying the latest album by the act you were going to see, and cosequently lower for clubs. T-shirts would be about the same or slightly less. This rule of thumb now seems completely gone by the board and concert ticket prices now seem to rise in 5 stages, although we seem to pay more than the rest of Europe. Festivals are even worse, explain to me how I can get a ticket for a medium sized (40-50,000) festival in Germany for about 40 (including camping), and here you're looking at over 100. Went on a weeks holiday in Holland/Belgium a few years ago, saw a couple of arena gigs, tickets were in the 15-20 range when they would have been at least 25 over here (more now).