The coronavirus shutdown: will someone please think of the regular gig-goers ...?

If a week is a long time in politics, it's an eternity in gig-going terms. Now the coronavirus shutdown - the pandemic pandemonium - has put paid to all forms of in-the-room live music entertainment, people like me are ... in a fix. Stuck. By people like me I mean borderline-weirdos who insist on going out to see live music at least once a week, preferably two or three times a week. Undeniably this kind of regular gig attendance is an indulgence in the first place. An indulgence and even a certain kind of privilege. To be in possession of the free time, to have the proximity to decent gigs (in my case a side-effect of living in east London), and to have a car to get myself there and back fairly painlessly - these are things I'm lucky to have. Yeah, lucky old me. Anyway - first-world problems - to suddenly be denied the dubious pleasure of checking out a just-about-OK noise-rock band in (for eg) the Shacklewell Arms in Dalston on a rainy Tuesday night is a bit of a blow. Not a body-blow. Not actually serious. Not - god forbid - life-threatening. But still, a setback.

Not a Tuesday and not raining: Guru at Blondies in east London in January this year

Yes, music bore that I am, I'd go so far as to say that music matters and that the physical experience of hearing music played live also matters. Hmm, does it though? Does physically experiencing music being played live have any special significance? Yes and no, is the answer I think. On the one hand, I listen to probably dozens of hours of recorded music at home every week and this is often the highlight of my week (yeah, I should probably er, get out more). And when I do go out to a few shows, in truth I'm not always that impressed. The bands can be mediocre and there are - to my fastidious mind at least - numerous annoyances: bands shoving their over-priced merchandise down your throat, people in the audience doing those horrible screech-whistles, gigs starting too early or too late, there being too many people at the gig (I quite frequently go straight back home if a room is too packed), people spilling their drinks over you or just generally being selfish and unpleasant, etc etc. Yep, it's just fun fun fun on the small-gig live music circuit. But yes, you've guessed it - there are consolations. Moments at gigs where it clicks - a chord change, a funny/captivating expression on a musician's face, the feeling of momentum with one good song moving on to the next, a particularly well-executed quiet/slow song, the blast of certain kinds of punk/rock music, the slight buzz of anticipation that can still happen at gigs even with "thinks he's seen it all" types like me.

Agggh, stop me now! The roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd! Yes, there's a treacherous descent into tedious "you can't beat the live experience" cliche here. So, pulling the plane up from a precipitous nose-dive using all my blog-piloting skills, all I can really say is that months (even years) of going without live music won't of course do me any real harm. A lot less than a bout of COVID-19, for sure. But ... well, it's worth registering the fact that experiencing live music is still one of the things (for me at least) that makes life worth living. Yeah, for real. Surely not, Niluccio you old fool! No, I more or less mean it. Herman Düne at the Betsey Trotwood (Clerkenwell, London) in 2004 (I think), some of the Buff Medways gigs at the Boston Arms (Tufnell Park, London) in the early noughties, Tackhead Sound System in a pub in Edinburgh in 1988 (classic body-battering bass soundwaves), David Thomas Broughton spooking out bewildered audiences in various towns and cities in the past 15 years, the Santa Dads in the Cake Shop in New York in 2008, the Holiday Ghosts in Lion Coffee + Records in Hackney in January this year (or was it an age ago?): all these - and many more - are vital little pieces of my life. Tiny particles. My molecular structure! A denial of further experiences of this type for any extended period, and ... who knows how it'll affect me? (If you're into lists, by the way, here's a quick best-gigs-of-the-2010s one I did off the top of my head in December).

For sure, places like Cafe Oto in east London are now doing good stuff with their live-stream shows in an empty room during the coronavirus crisis. I'll be tuning in from time to time and, who knows, maybe this new form will even become a thing. Something that outlives the virus shutdown. But still, there are some of us who need the hard stuff, an injection of live music. There's one person I know on the London live scene who apparently goes to a gig every night - sometimes more than one gig a night. Incredible but true. Our paths cross every two or three weeks (he goes to some of the bigger gigs as well as to my three-quarter-empty shows). We're not friends, just gig-going acquaintances. At the time of writing it's 11 days since my last gig and already I'm beginning to get withdrawal symptoms. By now, my not-a-friend gigger must be tearing his greying hair out. So, I hereby make this heartfelt appeal: will someone please think of the regular gig-goers ...?