2020 Concerts you saw before COVID / 2020 Concerts you missed because of COVID

*robyn hitchcock, not swedish robyn

Before COVID:

70000 Tons of Metal
Vader (until my back gave out)
Queensryche (twice)
Machine Head (twice)
Lucifer
Ingested
Druid Lord
Soulfly
Overkill

Shit I missed or will miss thanks to fuckin COVID

Decibel Tour featuring Mayhem
Napalm Death
Origin
Sepultura (postponed-TBD)
Decibel Metal and Beer Fest (postponed-TBD)
Welcome to Rockville

saw in jan/feb kerri chandler, yves tumor, juliana huxtable, paypal, ron morelli

would prob attend to already cancelled autopsy, terrorizer, FIRE!

Stereolab postponed/TBD.

xposts i was immediately worried about Robyn and glad to see he's been holed up ok for a few weeks now, jesus i would like to see him play 'God'

i waited almost 20 years for a chance to see Current 93 and there ain't no way that show's taking place now. I'll settle for Tibet making it through this to record more albums

I've added to dimeadozen the Protomartyr show I saw in Chicago on March 12 - it was the start and the end (for the time being) of their current tour.

http://www.dimeadozen.org/torrents-details.php?id=673107

I was finally going to get to see The Make Up, doubt I'll get the chance again

kelly clarkson in vegas
underworld
the 1975

i have never seen underworld and i’m sooooooooo bummed

it's not anywhere it happening yet but if Psycho Vegas gets bumped, I'm going to be crushed to once again have a ticket to see Mercyful Fate and not get to go.

twice in twenty years

My only show so far this year was Wire, in early March, about two weeks before everything started shutting down. It seems like a lot longer.

wll miss harry styles in may.
and still waiting for news regarding bill callahan in june. but not hopeful.

Neadrathal - that is the saddest news

So far it's still on (Aug)

Hoping to hell

Only show I saw this year was in February - Julie Christensen with Chris D. at McCabes. Cool show, the new Divine Horsemen songs sounded great.

Was planning to see a lot of shows in March/April/May: Shopping, ShitKid, Lorelle Meets The Obsolete, Juana Molina, Le Butcherettes, Anna Calvi (her show was already a re-schedule from last year)

Missed Dan Deacon because I broke my leg.

Brittany Howard canceled.

Ween rescheduled.

the last show I saw occurred on the evening that it became clear that SD had to be the rule going forward. I don't want to be specific as to who the performers were for reasons that will be obvious. A double bill: one is an artist in his late 60s whom everyone reading these words knows, or at least knows of. the other is my age, late 40s and my lifelong friend, whose work again should be known to all ILMniks. This guy met me and my crew before the show at a restaurant near the venue, where me and my crew were already talking about how odd it was already and how it may have been completely irresponsible for us to go to this or for the show to take place at all.

He joined us and quickly opined that all this shit was hype…yet he was not saying this from the right, but from the left. He so despises big tech that he believes (or believed then, I haven't spoken to him since) that it suits their interests for people to never leave home and spend all their time in front of the computer. I was a bit taken aback and steered the conversation elsewhere. still, the show was great (venue had been sold out but was only half full) and now seems like it took place many many years ago.

My last show was Wire. The fact of having seen them was already incredible to me, let alone multiple times over 10+ years, let alone right before the indefinite closure of every music venue everywhere. Had also seen 4th Curtis (cool local band), Meshell Ndegeocello doing Prince songs at Paisley Park (omg), Raphael Saadiq w/ Jamila Woods.

Had tickets for Sampa the Great last weekend and Yves Tumor next weekend. My sister was gonna visit next month and see The House of Love with me.

I was going to see The Slow Readers Club in Antwerp in a couple of weeks but now it'll be Oct/Nov probably

Since Sampa the Great was mentioned two posts up...

This looks great: this Monday, the 2020 edition of the Africadelic Festival will be livestreamed through the Instagram page of the Paradiso venue in Amsterdam from 12pm-12am CEST (www.instagram.com/paradisoadam).
Performing artists, among many others: Baloji, Batida, Blick Bassy, Blinky Bill, Femi Kuti, Fokn Bois, Joey le Soldat, Onipa, Pat Thomas & Kwashibu Area Band, Sampa the Great, Yuri da Cunha.

There are also talks and interviews, and a film programme (with free viewing on 24, 25 and 26 May).

Check this Facebook link for more details: https://www.facebook.com/events/248730829661281/
Or here (but not everything here is in English): https://www.paradiso.nl/en/program/africadelic-2020-online-edition/77120/

Q: Do we have a thread for this kind of thing? The Rolling DJing in Isolation Live Streams one doesn't apply here.

I only saw three shows before everything went black...

30-Jan Witching / Yatra @ Century Bar
12-Feb HIDE / The Ire / Fad Nauseum @ Boot & Saddle
22-Feb Warish @ First Unitarian Church

Witching is local and the singer is a pal. They headlined over Yatra, on tour from Baltimore, who have a couple of screamy doom records I like.

HIDE is Chicago industrial music that is quite intense for a two-piece. The local bands who supported were both quite good.

Warish features Tony Hawk's son and I love the album they released last year. I didn't stick around for Black Lips; had I known I wouldn't see a show for who knows how long afterwards, I probably would have even though I think they're spotty and the new country album didn't move the needle much for me.

I have given up on the shows that have cancelled or been postponed, some of them for a year. All I know is that I keep an relatively unabridged updated concert list, a holdover from my days as an entertainment editor for a local weekly in Columbus. (Unabridged means things I find out about through publicists, venues emailing me, and social media. It's not meant to be everything but it's everything that I find out about.) I updated it the other day and was unsurprised to see that all of the May shows were gone but practically all of the June ones as well.

6/10 Steve Earle @ Colonial Theatre
6/27 Doobie Brothers @ BB&T Pavilion

I would probably see Steve Earle live, and it would be kind of a cool "first show after quarantine" thing, but I am pretty sure it is going to be cancelled (it may be already; it's amazing how hard it was to get definitive answers for some shows and a few shows are still listed as selling tickets even though the tours have been cancelled). I really don't care about the Doobie Brothers to be honest.

As for shows that could be my first back, assuming Earle gets cancelled or moved, on July 11th there's a death metal show featuring locals Pissgrave at Johnny Brenda's (I would kill for a cheesesteak from Joe's next door). After that is Bush Tetras supporting The Bongos at World Cafe Live. We'll see what happens...

sampa, blick blassy, batida and baloji are all great live

i was supposed to see Steve Earle live with his play at the Public, I reallly hope that gets rescheduled at some point.

supposedly Algiers will play in early December but it's at a crowded bar so let's see how that works out

both Psycho Vegas and Decibel Metal and Beer Fest got pushed back a year and retained most of the same lineup.

so did Maryland Deathfest. that's pretty cool.

Herb Alpert and Lani Hall at Café Carlyle last December
Handel's "Agrippina" featuring Joyce DiDonato at Met Opera in February

Had no tickets for any upcoming shows. I'm a poor excuse for a New Yorker.

Current 93 in Brooklyn was rescheduled to next summer, I hope that’s conservative enough to be realistic but who can guess.

supposedly Algiers will play in early December but it's at a crowded bar so let's see how that works out
― Fuck the NRA (ulysses), Saturday, May 23, 2020

i saw david byrne on broadway in february, and if that's the last show i attend, fuck yeah, covid covfefe dance dance dance the night away

Spike Lee's filmed version of that show is up on HBO tomorrow btw
https://www.hbo.com/specials/american-utopia

The Elder tour that was supposed to hit Philly the second week of November was cancelled.

The next show I would see isn't until 2021:
1/12 The Schizophonics @ Boot And Saddle

The last show I was was on 2/22/2020.
I have never gone 11 weeks between shows.
There were times in my life I didn't go 11 days between shows.

I hate to bitch since it's way harder on the bands and people who make a living promoting the shows.
I just really want this shit to end.

just saw GWAR at a drive-in show.

wasn't quite the same but it felt nice.

also I was high off of an edible

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SW86jyTsYe4

I have a ticket for Riot Fest, which was long ago rescheduled for 11 months from now, but I'm not actually expecting it will happen

Yeah, it's been really getting me down lately, but given how things are trending now and considering we still have nothing even close to plan for dealing with things, the idea of live shows before at least 2022 seems like an absolute pipe dream at this point.

my heart still breaks a little bit every time I reminisce over an old show, but everything else has gotten so bad that the late return of live concerts is something I've begrudgingly made peace with. hoping for more creative things like small drive-in shows or maybe I'll just call Obituary on the phone or Steve Asheim of Deicide and say YO CAN I SIT IN ON A REHEARSAL

(I don't have their numbers, I just wanted to sound cool).

it's just hard to go from 50 of these a year to....0.

Obituary's streamed show was cool mostly cos they actually did their best to capture the real energy of one of their live shows. never will be the real thing, but it aws the type of thing I'd totally pay $15 to watch as opposed to some of the other streams I've seen.

I'm very grateful to have seen enough shows to last a lifetime, and yet I do occasionally get sad at the thought that there is at least a chance I may never get to see some of my favorite old people perform again: Genesis, Springsteen, AC/DC ...

The last show I had been planning to see was the Drive-By Truckers on Friday, March 13. I was on the guest list via the club, and in one of our last exchanges at the time the publicist told me that there were lots of postponements and that the club "will be dark most of the month." Little did they know ...

Last gig I saw was Kamasi Washington in early march. Music was great but it was a waaay oversold seated show, folding chairs set up with no space between them. I am tall and have broad shoulders, so i spent the whole show with my knees up near my chest, sort of leaning back onto the shoulders and chests of the unfortunate people seated next to me, just awful. During the preshow I started to freak out a little bit and decided to bail, and right as I decided this the band came on and I was stuck there for 2.5hrs. One of the most miserable gigs of my life.

On the other hand hanging out with my friends before the show - having drinks at the corner bar, talking music, running into pals, sharing nachos - was like my quintessential ideal of a pre-covid night out, an "ordinary" couple of hours that's now become an incredibly cherished memory that I think about almost every day now.

Last show I actually saw was the local cover band doing a night of Rush.

Other pre-covid gig i keep thinking about is taking my aging dad to see John Prine a few months prior. A wonderful night and very happy memory before, now with some other serious resonances obviously

Last show I saw was Hand Habits and Garcia Peoples at Schuba's, was supposed to see Garcia Peoples again at the same venue in April and Drive By Truckers this summer at a brewery near my house. Had a bunch of other shows on my radar, but those were the only ones for which I had tickets in hand*.

(* - to my ilxor shame, I was also supposed to fly to Boulder for a weekend of Dead & Co. with some friends)

I had been planning to fly out and meet a friend in Maryland to see John Prine and Emmylou Harris last summer. So, basically a double bummer.

Good thread. I've been reaching out to members of Congress in support of the RESTART Act. There's also the Save Our Stages Act but RESTART to my knowledge is more encompassing. I urge the rest of us here that miss/love concerts to make some calls or send some emails as well.

"it's just hard to go from 50 of these a year to....0." i feel ya

I'm avoiding my temptation to email Deicide and ask them if I can pay them $1,000 to play private shows for me every Saturday

(u think I'm joking, this is exactly the type of stupid thing I would do w/ my money)

i think something like 60 venues have already gone out of business this year

worldwide? in New York? in the US as a whole? in Albania? it’s not a very useful figure unless you’re more specific

Read a US musician who used to work in nightclubs as well say that he hoped in the future the US could have more government funded venues to see music , and not be reliant so much on places that need to sell alcohol. He also asserted that avante and experimental musicians make more $ now doing house shows and alternative venues than bars. He is a fan of European culture venues that get support, and are not reliant on liquor sales.

I haven’t searched for a study yet comparing Europe to US in support of venues that host music.

In case it wasn't already clear just how badly the UK live music scene is being decimated by Covid...

41.6% of agents expected to lose their jobs by year end, 56% of promoters, etc. Startlingly bleak with no light at the end of the tunnel yet. https://t.co/K4iUCi3tq9 pic.twitter.com/SHtu0dsDwn

— Jack Stephens (@iamjackstephens) October 21, 2020

lordy, don't remind me. the memories of last year's colossal government bungling already have me ready to destroy my laptop.

last saw: Mulatu Astatke, which itself had been rescheduled two or three times for at least a year. Glad that finally happened.

Rescheduled: Dead Can Dance (rescheduled to this May from last spring; not optimistic that this is going to happen either); Motley Crue/Def Lepperd/Joan Jett. Rescheduled to this July. Might happen? Not sure. It's outdoors at least. Pet Shop Boys and New Order: pushed out to this November. Maybe.

Cancelled: FKA Twigs (really bummed about this one); Nick Cave.

my last concert was a year ago today: King Promise (including guest appearances by several Dutch-Ghanaian and Dutch-Surinamese artist friends). i was quite wary to go and stayed on the balcony, with as few people around me as possible. the next day our government instated a lockdown. it was a good show.

meanwhile, after having been postponed from last June to April first, the Céline Dion show I have (quite expensive) tickets for has now been rescheduled for (gulp) September 2022.

monstrosity was the last one I caught

but was gearing up for a busy month or two. had tickets for: haru nemuri, steve roach, crowbar/sepultura, squarepusher, coffins

all cancelled, sucks

lol i just got an email from a promoter announcing an indoor show, love the optimism guys

Nowadays in BK is reopening and I've heard murmurs of April shows from at least one other NYC venue
it's gonna happen; here's hoping it's measured and responsible

variant numbers are rising everywhere so nothing short of putting everyone in plastic bubbles will be "measured and responsible"

anyway I should also mention I'm in Ontario, Canada where the vaccine rollout has been atrocious

measured and responsible means "in June" in my mind

lol i just got an email from a promoter announcing an indoor show, love the optimism guys

― self-clowning oven (Murgatroid), Tuesday, March 23, 2021 9:36 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

While it doesn't make sense to most (including me), I have seen photos of indoor shows in the northern Virginia suburbs of DC for awhile now. Some Instagram story clips I have seen included people standing and crowded together (kinda like a Florida spring break crowd) often without masks. Sadly, some don't care about measured and responsible.

I usually avoid Medium articles, but this one (on the subject at hand) appears to be good:

https://marker.medium.com/live-music-is-about-to-get-its-grand-reopening-e90015825fa8

That is all accurate

there's gonna be a lot of this kinda stuff but this one looks partic egregious: $45 to dance in place in public for an hour while David Byrne yells at you over an intercom

Beginning on Friday, April 9, SOCIAL! the social distance dance club offers an interactive music and movement-based experience conceived by choreographer Steven Hoggett, Tony Award-winning set designer Christine Jones—both of whom are currently Armory Artists-in-Residence—and multimedia artist and musician David Byrne (Talking Heads, David Byrne's American Utopia on stage and film, and Reasons to be Cheerful). With a playlist curated by Byrne, Hoggett, and Jones and mixed by New York City DJ Natasha Diggs, SOCIAL! invites participants to the Armory's Wade Thompson Drill Hall to dance in their own socially distanced spotlights, all while listening to a wonderfully singular instructional voice over by David Byrne with choreography by Yasmine Lee. Moving free-form or in sync with the spoken choreography, audience members take part in a communal moment of cathartic release.

Get tickets now to be a part of this one-of-a-kind participatory dance experience.

After purchasing your ticket, you will receive an instructional dance video and welcome message from David Byrne. There will also be "dance ambassadors" mixed in the crowd to lead you through the moves—or you can choose your own style!

SOCIAL! the social distance dance club
A Social Distance Hall Production
Previews: Friday, April 9–Sunday, April 11, 2021
Performances: Tuesday, April 13–Thursday, April 22, 2021
Tickets: $45 (plus fees)
SOCIAL! is approximately 55 minutes with no intermission. This is a solitary participatory dance experience unsuitable for children under 10.

I just want to know why kids under 10 aren't allowed to participate

not cool enough

Steven Wilson just cancelled his European tour and is not rescheduling it. I have tickets for Van der Graaf Generator in the autumn but I'm not optimistic.

Sturgill Simpson cancelled his Webster Hall residency due to the current state of the pandemic. I actually went out to a bunch of shows for the first time in a long time last week, and Bob Mould's show at Webster Hall was one of them - I'd say most people (at least towards the back) weren't wearing masks despite requests by Mould, but there was a lot of beer consumption so it was difficult to see how mask-wearing would've been that prevalent and consistent.

The Lindsey Buckingham show at Town Hall had the most compliant audience in terms of mask wearing, mainly because the bars were outside of the actual theater rather than a part of it like most GA venues. Combined with a strict venue rule to wear masks at all other times (or be asked to leave), it was easily the safest show I had seen throughout the week.

I avoided seeing ZZ Top at our county fair, and while it was an outdoor concert, I didn’t feel like a county fair crowd with no vax or mask requirements would be a good place to immerse myself in right now.

Classical concerts however, I have no qualms about since everyone has to show proof of vaccination and be masked.

Tomorrow is my first live show since it all went down, Lucy Dacus/Bachelor. Given mask requirements, vax requirements, etc. and SF being just more on the ball in general, I'm looking forward, though my general plan for shows for the time being will be maybe hover briefly up front to get a quick photo or two and then go the back of the venue for more space/closer access to the outside if I feel I need it.

The Stones have even put it out a PSA for their fans:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rhQew-5jkEw

I think it all really comes down to the venue. Buckingham did talk about the pandemic in the context of the long, convoluted road it took to get the our started (basically a two-year delay which began with his open-heart surgery), but otherwise he didn't have to ask or plead - Town Hall's setup and rules took care of everything. Mould apparently has been butting heads with anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers on his own Facebook page - he asked nicely at his Webster Hall show, but I think he had enough after some of the more obnoxious assholes made a stink on his social media feeds.

Over at the tiny Poisson Rouge, there was no mask rule. Thurston Moore simply said, "I trust you're all vaccinated" before asking related follow-up questions like "how many have had their booster shot?" After the show, he masked up and hung out with the fans, but he didn't seem to give anyone a hard time for not wearing one if they asked for a photo or autograph. Patti Smith gently asked people to wear a mask because it wasn't a big deal, the least they can do - the older members of the crowd were all pretty good about it, but it was actually a pretty young crowd up front (college age) and I want to say most did comply. Regardless, there's a vaccine requirement at all shows and venues thanks to the city, and honestly, that's really the only way to do it at this point.

I should add it's been a week since I've been to shows and it doesn't look like I caught anything. Fully vaccinated, but I also wear an N95 that I wear properly and never take off - goes on before I leave home and stays on until I step back through the same door. (i.e no drinking much less eating at any of the shows) I don't even touch it unless my hands have been thoroughly washed or at least hand-sanitized.

Bob Dylan just announced the first batch of dates for the “Rough and Rowdy Ways” World Wide Tour 2021-2024.

My first show back was Wilco/Sleater-Kinney a month or so ago, an outdoor/vax required event so I felt pretty safe. It was a good warm-up for the college football game I attended a couple weeks after that, 110,000 screamers and no vax requirement! At this point I would feel comfortable at any kind of outdoor event, but am still a little wary of indoor venues.

Hopefully Bob swings back through Chicago at some point over that four year tour, I'm not ready to pull the trigger on tickets for an indoor show just yet.

Shows I had tickets for before Covid:
Holly Herndon
Floating Points
Squarepusher
Jenny Hval
Dan Deacon

Shows I bought tickets for in May/June thinking it would be safe to see and didn't go to because of my concerns with Delta:
Madlib & Freddie Gibbs

I think the Deacon show has been rescheduled, not sure of the rest (I think most if not all were canceled and either refunded or given to the artists)

Dead and Company cancelled their two Florida shows coming up next month. Official reasoning being "routing and production logistics", but I won't be surprised to lean that is has more to do with DeSantis and his anti-vaccine proof stance. They've been pretty big on proof of vaccine requirements at their shows and vocally concerned about Delta. Considering they are still managing the "routing and production logistics" are still getting them through North Carolina and Georgia, it's hard not to read between the lines about why only the Florida shows got scratched.

Shit, wrong thread, thought this was the other COVID tour thread.