COLUMN – Neil Crud – No More Gigs

Talk about lifestyle changes eh? The Martial Law lockdown has taken out everything our small circle of misfits loved doing… Live music… It got so bad at one point that I would have even gone to see a Guns ‘n’ Roses Tribute band – the two things I probably hate most… Guns ‘n’ Roses and tribute acts…
Back in March, which now seems like a lifetime ago, Spam Javelin played with Gas Hands at The Millbank in Rhyl… It was a weird evening, Lockdown was days away and people were already going into self-isolation… It was a Wednesday night and that fateful Liverpool vs Atletico Madrid footy match was on the TV. Two days later Maines pulled out of a gig in Chester stating Corona-concerns, Emissaries Of Syn played it (they’re a biohazard anyway) and it turned out to be one of the very last gigs in the country (and very last major football game)… By Tuesday our great leader had announced a countrywide lockdown and we entered the unknown…

“Sing brother sing, there’ll be no more gigs…” – those words by Dick Lucus of Subhumans off their 1982 album ‘The Day The Country Died’ have certainly come true. 

People are thankfully resourceful, and early on we saw some great Lockdown sets on Facebook Live from both Rash Decision and Burning Flag… and some terrible acoustic sets from others (ha ha). With smaller community radio stations deciding to close due to restrictions we saw shows like my own on TudnoFM and Liam Trotsky’s, broadcast on Facebook Live, from our living rooms. This was OK until the fascists at Facebook started taking the shows off air for playing copyrighted material. So again we became resourceful, I moved to Mixcloud Live and Paul Hammond moved to Live Sets, others used YouTube live. I have been back in the TudnoFM studios for a good six weeks now (one of only three DJs there doing so); unfortunately I’ve not been able to host any live sessions for obvious reasons, but again, I need to be resourceful… [watch this space].

The other way to get our kicks and support bands, unable to play live is to buy their music – all the money I have saved on not going to gigs (or playing them) I have, by and large spent on vinyl… Maybe you could do so too. You could even venture beyond your front door and help support the likes of Mudshark Records in Bangor, or Vod Music in Mold.

Music might be widely available and free to download or stream, but it’s not free to produce…

(*check out the new column from The Barefoot Rascal)