Sunday, May 31, 2020

Withdrawal symptoms

For an incorrigible gig-goer like myself, this love letter to live music makes for painful reading: a succinct summary of what makes it so special and why online performances can never be a remotely adequate substitute.

As the article's author Hannah Ewens says, it's precisely because live music "is so contingent on other people and their physical presence" that it may be one of the very last things to return in the aftermath of coronavirus. All we can do is what she suggests: cling on to the belief that "there is a future where I'm half-cut, watching some artist - a band, literally any tolerable band - at a soulless O2 Academy with an irresponsibly oversized-and-priced two-pint special in each hand". At the present moment, I wouldn't even care if they were tolerable and the pints were Carling.

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