Just get on with it: my 20 best gigs of 2020 (decimated)
So, here's my usual end-of-year post - my 20 best gigs of the year list. What a list, eh! Er, no. I haven't even been to as many as 20 shows during 2020, never mind having a "top 20" to whittle them down to (see last year's list here). In a typical (non-Covid year) I'd probably catch about 60 gigs. Not, in fact, as many as it feels as if I go to (it often seems as if I'm at a gig every other night, whereas in fact - according to my calculations - it's barely more than once a week. Pathetic!). But this year - a miserable 12 all told. FFS! Eleven of this puny tally of 2020 gigs were pre-Covid, and in April I did a mini "best five gigs" blog to at least mark this period. At the time I still imagined things might crank back into gear again later in the year, and they did - sort of. For a few months - between lockdowns - we had the era of the socially-distanced gig. For various reasons I only managed to get to a solitary event from this period (though at least it was The Rebel, who is worth four or five gigs from more mediocre artists). But no, whichever way you look at it - it's been a well and truly fucked-up year. Granted, going a few months without my usual diet of freebie gigs in east London or a handful of DIY things in places like Nottingham, Sheffield or Leeds isn't exactly a real-life hardship (far from it). But still - music is art, man! And art is a vital part of what it means to be alive. (Yep, it is). How to get by without the live stuff? Well, obviously there's still a massive amount of great music to plug into and plenty of music-related things to enjoy. In a recent "eight random things" blog I mentioned a few bits and pieces from my rather random year, and I've also churned out dozens more blogs than I normally would (yes, another painful side-effect of music venues being closed ...). Where's it all going? Undoubtedly to more death and disaster, to more political corruption and incompetence, and to more hardship and collapse within the imperiled world of live music. It's going to get worse before it gets better. Either way, I'll (hopefully) be there when things improve. Still seeking out the gigs that absolutely must make it into my end-of-year top 20. Still avoiding the mosh-pit, nursing my half pint of over-priced watery lager and making piercingly-accurate mental notes about why the singer in the band on stage is trying far too hard to be funny, should shut up with the "jokey" interludes and just get on with it ...
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