Saint Nicholas or San Nicola reigns supreme in Bari. He’s everywhere. Countless buildings in the city are named in his honour (for example, the Stadio San Nicola, home of SSC Bari) and it’s not uncommon to see ornate pictures and murals of him adorning houses, bars, cafes and restaurants in the city. This is all down to his relics essentially being stolen from a tomb in a church in the ancient Greek town of Myria by Italian sailors following the Battle of Manzikert in 1071. The sailors brought the relics back to Bari and two years later, the Basilica di San Nicola was inaugurated by Pope Urban II to house Saint Nicholas’ remains. It is said that the Pope personally placed the bones into the tomb underneath the church’s altar himself.
The Procession of Saint Nicholas, Bari.
Also, known as Nicholas of Bari and Nicholas The Wonderworker, he lived during the age of the Roman Empire and was a Christian bishop of Greek descent who spent most of his life living in the ancient town of Myra on the Anatolia peninsula, now part of Turkey. He gave all of the inheritance he received from his late parents to charity and was renowned for his spontaneous and secretive gift-giving and later became the inspiration for Santa Claus / Father Christmas.
Although many of the events in Saint Nicholas’ life are historically disputed, he seemed like a pretty sound bloke. He brought three young children back to life after they were killed by a maniacal butcher, with the intention of turning them into ham. He saved three poor sisters from a life of prostitution after dropping gold coins to them through the windows of their home. He appeared as a visitation in front of an executioner, threw his sword to the ground and saved three innocent men from their deaths after they had been condemned by the governor Eustathius. How a Greek-born philanthropist from 270 AD who spent much of his life living in Turkey morphed into an obese, white-haired, problem-drinking old man known as Santa Claus is unclear but it may have had something to do with the Dutch tradition of celebrating Sinterklaas.
It’s safe to say that Christmas in Bari, given its association with Saint Nicholas is usually a pretty big deal. Some of my students and Italian friends have told me about big street parties that take place on the 24th and 25th December and it sounds that in pre-Covid times, Christmas week is one big celebration of feasts, dotted with various religious ceremonies. It is said that Saint Nicholas’ relics continue to produce the miraculous liquid manna to this day. On his saint’s feast day on 6th December, a flask is used to collect the liquid from his sarcophagus and some is even available to purchase in shops near to the basilica.
Clockwise from left; Christmas lights on Via Sparano, Bari. Bari Lungomare. Basilica di San Nicola on 6th December. Festive panettone.
Another Italian festive legend is that of Befana, a hideous, yet kindly witch who visits children on Epiphany Eve (5th January) and depending on their behaviour over the previous year, gifts them with either presents of candy or lumps of coal. It is reported that Befana is also a fastidious housekeeper and that she will sweep the floor of the house upon leaving, brushing away the problems of the previous year. Whilst Father Christmas’ existence is widely-debated, I have seen several possible contenders in Bari for Befana.
I was lucky enough to be able to make it back to the UK for Christmas this year, narrowly avoiding the flare-up resulting from the new super-contagious strain of Covid being identified in London and the South-East in mid-December. I may have gone a little overboard in packing as much cured meat, cheese, spreads, pistachio nuts and panettone for family into my check-in luggage as possible. My excuse is that I was following the bountiful example set by Saint Nicholas. Detox and intermittent fasting begins in January.
The Christmas bounty from Italy.
I have made an alternative Christmas Spotify playlist for the festive season featuring the likes of James Brown, Calexico and LCD Soundsystem. Check it out here – enjoy!
The name of this blog is inspired by the final track, ‘You Set The Scene’ on Arthur Lee & Love’s revered Forever Changes album. I thought it was only right to pen a few words about one of the most underrated groups of the past 50 years and a legacy that still continues today.
Imagine a world without the radical, otherworldly Stratocaster histrionics of Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison and The Doors’ mysterious beat poetry-set-to-music or Sly Stone’s dandified funk? Or to bring things more up-to-date, none of the genre-defying musical chameleonry of OutKast and Anderson .Paak, or one of Mac Miller’s most recognisable songs? Without the influence of Arthur Lee and his band Love, this might be the world we find ourselves living in today.
Love, for a short period in the mid-1960s were top dog in LA. Not only were they the coolest band in Southern California (The Beach Boys were still pre-Pet Sounds at this point and considered a little passé, whilst The Byrds were less edgy) but they were also ground-breaking in the fact that they were America’s first racially-mixed psychedelic rock group.
The early line-up of Love. Left-to-right; Johnny Echols, Arthur Lee, Bryan MacLean, Kenny Forsi, Michael Stuart.
The group’s leader and singer Arthur Lee was born in Memphis in 1945 and moved to Los Angeles as a child, following his parents’ divorce. Ironically, lead guitarist Johnny Echols’ (and Love’s only surviving original member) childhood followed a similar pattern with his parents also leaving Memphis for LA in the ‘50s, and the pair’s grandparents even being friends back in Tennessee. Lee and Echols attended the same school, The Susan Miller Dorsey High School in the Crenshaw district of the city and the nascent seeds of the group Love were sown.
By early 1965, the first incarnation of Love (Lee and Echols adding former Byrds acolyte Bryan MacLean to the line-up, as well as bassist Kenny Forsi and drummer Don Conka – later replaced by Alban ‘Snoopy’ Pfisterer) were a regular on the West Hollywood circuit, playing hippie haunts such as Bido Lito’s, The Brave New World and The Whisky a Go Go. Jac Holzman, the founder of Elektra Records visited LA around this time, keen to find a new act after missing out on signing The Lovin’ Spoonful (best-known for their ‘66 hit ‘Summer in the City’). After Holzman caught the band live at Bido Lito’s, Love soon landed a long-term recording contract with Elektra. Ever-astute, belying his tender age, Lee insisted on retaining the rights to his songs, rather than handing them over to the label – providing him with a valuable additional income stream for the rest of his life.
Originally a talented basketball player, Lee was a marvellous mass of contradictions. He was known as a street-smart hustler and for not shying away from confrontation, but he also was blessed with an angelic voice, wrote deep, poetic and existential lyrics (“He should be the Poet Laureate for this country”, suggested his bandmate Echols) and had an affectionate love of animals (he was known to own several dogs at any one time). His signature look in the mid-60s was tasselled leather jackets, silk scarves and hippy beads – teamed with triangular shades and cowboy boots. He enthusiastically bent Holzman and Elektra’s ear about taking a chance on signing one of their contemporaries from the underground LA scene, a then-unknown group called The Doors, essentially kick-starting their career.
In the years prior to Love taking off, Arthur tried his hand at being a songwriter and wrote the simple yet soulful pop tune’ ‘My Diary’ for an emerging singer from Louisiana, Rosa Lee Brooks. He enlisted the help of a young guitarist for the recording session; a certain Jimi Hendrix. ‘My Diary’ is one of the first-ever recordings to feature Hendrix, if not the very first. Whilst the two were on friendly terms and Hendrix would play guitar on the 1970 Love track, ‘The Everlasting First’, Lee would criticise Hendrix for stealing his style and Jimi would even record and release ‘Hey Joe’ as a single, just one year after Love recorded their own version of the song for their debut album.
The original line-up of Love released three landmark albums between 1965 and 1968; each one sonically very different. 1966’s eponymous debut Love was propelled by the success of the lead single, the band’s cover of Burt Bacharach and Hal David’s ‘My Little Red Book’. The original, recorded by Manfred Mann for the film ‘What’s New Pussycat?’ was given a complete makeover and transformed into an urgent-sounding two-minute garage rock stomp – and one that does not sound of place on radio today. The rest of the album followed a similarly garagey vein with standout tracks such as ‘My Flash On You’, as well as more tender moments like ‘A Message to Pretty’ and the haunting ‘Signed DC’, an ode to former drummer Don Conka’s debilitating heroin problem that saw him depart the group.
1966’s Da Capo was an altogether more optimistic affair, with the line-up now expanded to include flautist, saxophonist and percussionist Tjay Cantrelli and new drummer Michael Stuart, with ‘Snoopy’ Pfisterer moving to organ and harpsichord duties. On one hand, the group explored breezier Latino sounds on ‘Que Vida!’ and ‘Orange Skies’ but there was also the pioneering and abrasive ‘7 and 7 Is’ – widely cited as one of the first proto-punk songs and ending in a cacophony of sound – mimicking a nuclear explosion.
It was around this period that the band also started living communally in a Spanish Colonial Revival-style villa in the Los Feliz district of LA dubbed ‘The Castle’. The once-grand mansion (allegedly lived in by Errol Flynn in the 1930s) was in a considerable state of disrepair by 1966 and became one of the key hangouts for the Californian counterculture scene. Janis Joplin, Hendrix and members of The Mamas and The Papas, Jefferson Airplane and The Doors were all regular visitors to The Castle and although the band only lived there for just over a year it became synonymous with their identity. “Night after night, day after day, it was just one big party, with no maid!”, reminisced Lee many years later.
I made my long-suffering friend Anna track down ‘The Castle’ with me in August 2015. Los Feliz, Los Angeles.
As the 1960s progressed, the mood in LA and America gradually shifted from one of positivity and optimism to gloom and foreboding. The drugs of choice were no longer weed and acid but heroin and crack cocaine. This change in atmosphere coincided with a number of significant events including the ongoing war in Vietnam (Lee and Echols had both faked mental illness in order to avoid conscription), which resulted in the deaths of almost 60,000 Americans and eventually on home soil in 1969, the killings committed by Charles Manson’s warped cult in Los Angeles and the murder of the black teenager Meredith Hunter at The Rolling Stones’ Altamont Free Concert. For many, these events marked the end of the hippie era and the Flower Power movement.
Love’s iconic third album Forever Changes was in many ways the perfect record to accompany these ominous and uneasy times. Although Arthur Lee was just 21 at the time of writing, several of his friends had succumbed to their vices and he became convinced that he would be next to die prematurely. More of a punk than a hippie at heart, he retreated to a hilltop house in Laurel Canyon and began writing Forever Changes as his swansong to the world, with his lyrics addressing the precarious state of affairs in his country at that time and his own mortality, despite his young age. In ‘A House Is Not A Motel’, he references the Vietnamese conflict by recalling the story a returning war veteran told him about how the “blood mixed with mud” to turn the soil “grey”. In the eerie ‘The Red Telephone’, he unnervingly sings about “sitting on a hillside, watching all the people die / I’ll feel much better on the other side” and appears to predict his own future incarceration; “they’re locking them up today and throwing away the key / I wonder who it will be tomorrow, you or me?”.
The album waiting to be spun by the DJ at ‘How does it feel to be loved?’, Central London, 2011.
It isn’t all darkness on Forever Changes though. Musically, the record is a joy; layered acoustic guitars complemented by subtle electric overdubs, lush orchestral strings, mariachi horns and flamenco flourishes. On ‘Between Clark and Hilldale’, Lee namechecks the exact Sunset Strip location of the hallowed Whisky a Go Go club and ‘Alone Again Or’, written and sung by guitarist Bryan MacLean is a genuine ray of light and a bona fide classic.
‘Between Clark and Hilldale’. The Whisky a Go Go, Los Angeles, September 2015.
Sadly, the release of Forever Changes in 1967 coincided with the group’s descent into heavy drug abuse. In fact, on two of the album’s tracks ‘andmoreagain’ and ‘The Daily Planet’, LA’s supreme collective of session players The Wrecking Crew were called in as the members of Love were not deemed “with it enough” to take part in the recording session. Arthur Lee became increasingly withdrawn and eccentric and the album was never properly toured, despite positive reviews from critics. The success of bands like The Doors soon far outgrew their old peers and the original line-up of Love disbanded with most of its members spiralling into drug addiction.
Arthur kept Love going by recruiting a new band and 1969’s Four Sail actually has some great moments, namely ‘August’, ‘The Singing Cowboy’, ‘Good Times’ and ‘I’m With You’, however during the later years of the 1970s and 1980s his output became more sporadic and he fell into obscurity, becoming something of an enigmatic recluse.
In 1996 Lee was imprisoned for 12 years at Pleasant Valley State Prison under California’s notoriously harsh three strikes rule following an incident outside his LA apartment and the alleged negligent discharge of a handgun (he already had previous convictions for arson, drug and driving offences and assault). Lee refused all visitors and interviews during his time in prison and instead found God. “He visited me and said ‘Love on Earth must be’”, claimed Lee in an interview for the 2006 documentary film Love Story. He served half of his sentence and emerged with a renewed calling to share his music with the world.
Prior to his conviction, Arthur had been introduced to the neo-psychedelic LA band Baby Lemonade (former Love bandmates Bryan MacLean and Kenny Forsi had both died during his time in prison) and he began playing live with them in 1993. The band were huge fans of Love’s music, as well as gifted musicians in their own right. Upon Arthur’s release from jail in 2001, plans were quickly made for a Love reunion with Baby Lemonade as his backing band. The new-look Love’s comeback show was at Spaceland (now called The Satellite) in Silver Lake, Los Angeles in April 2002 and over the next few years Arthur made amends for his reluctance to tour in the ‘60s by gigging incessantly. Two arguable highlights of the reunion tour were dates at London’s Royal Festival Hall and at Glastonbury 2003.
I was lucky enough to see the reformed Arthur Lee & Love twice in 2004 and 2005 – both at the same venue, The Brook in Southampton, UK (in ’05 he was also joined by Johnny Echols). On the first occasion my friend Charlie and I met Arthur. He was both warm and intimidating in equal measure; agreeing to sign the printed setlist I had commandeered from the stage after the gig but dismissing my sycophantic teenage claims that he was a “legend.” He also demanded that I spelled my name to him, yet still wrote it as ‘Clyde’. To this day and despite the typo, that signed setlist sits in a frame and is still one of my prized (and irreplaceable) possessions.
Arthur died in August 2006 after a leukemia diagnosis and exactly a month to the day after another pioneer of the psychedelic era, Syd Barrett. Tributes flooded in from across the music world and in death, Arthur Lee achieved the widespread success that originally evaded him in the 1960s. Indeed; more than 40 years after it was originally recorded, the late Pittsburgh rapper Mac Miller recorded a cover of Lee’s ‘Everybody’s Gotta Live’ – a track that was included on his posthumous album Circles, introducing his music to an entirely new generation.
Baby Lemonade still tour with Johnny Echols and their show at Islington Assembly Hall in July 2019 was one of the best gigs I’ve been to in a long time. They even played obscure ‘B’ sides such as the weird, yet equally brilliant ‘Laughing Stock’.
Baby Lemonade and Johnny Echols. Islington Assembly Hall, July 2019.
I will leave you with a clip of Love’s performance on The Other Stage at Glastonbury 2003 in the coveted ‘sunset’ slot, as early evening merges into night. Whilst I have been extremely fortunate to see Arthur and his band play live and to have been a regular at Worthy Farm over the past decade, this is still the one show I wish I was there for.
“For anyone who thinks that life is just a game, do you like the part you’re playing?“
In my last post, I talked about the crisis that many venues across the world are currently facing as a result of the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic.
Italy was the first European country to be stricken by the virus and a strictly-enforced lockdown was introduced on 9th March that lasted for overthree months (a government form was required to leave home and even outdoor exercise was banned at one stage). Either side of this and the current restrictions we find ourselves experiencing, I have been extremely lucky to still see my fair share of live music in Italia.
Gigs have been a very different proposition since the pandemic but hats off to the many venues, promoters and artists who have been trying their best to creatively stage fresh and interesting shows, in far from ideal circumstances.
Below is a rundown of some of the weird and wonderful gigs I’ve experienced over this past year, plus links to how you can find out more about the artists and venues in question.
My first gig after moving to Bari. Formerly the frontman of Milan’s Ritmo Tribale, Edda is the reformed bad boy of Italian post-punk. Having overcome a serious drug addiction, Edda now makes emotive electro-tinged power pop, typified by ‘E Se’ and ‘Signora’. From what I could gather in-between songs, he likes to tell a good story too.
Let’s start with the positives. TPO is a fantastic venue in the North West of Bologna – a converted industrial building that’s now a cracking multi-purpose arts space. Props to the venue for having reusable beer cups too. Now imagine an Italian Calvin Harris with a pencil moustache and you’re halfway there with our friend Dardust. An Italian producer from the Marche region, he’s clearly a talented chap and the crowd lapped up his live show. However, at one stage he had a visual of marching demonic-looking bagpipers on the big screen behind him for anentire song. Genuinely terrifying.
Sunday night jazz jam – Binario69, Bologna – 23rd February
Bologna was one of the favourite cities I visited in 2020. I planned to stay for four days and ended up spending seven. I loved its mixture of history, left-wing politics and vibrant student counterculture. Binario69 is technically a members-only club for those in the know (I had to sign up and pay a small €10 joining fee – you receive a membership card in return). Tucked away on a small street behind Bologna Centrale station, it’s a laid-back space where patrons sipped cocktails, played board games and listened to Sunday night afro-jazz performed by local musicians. Prior to the Covid lockdown, Binario69 hosted live music most nights of the week and is now running a crowdfunding campaign in order to stay open.
Francesco Manfredi Quintet – Palazzo Pesce, Mola di Bari – 20th June
The first gig post-lockdown #1 and held in the sumptuous former family home Palazzo Pesce in Mola di Bari. After the stringent safety measures upon entry, the concert took place in the sunken garden outside the house with clarinettist Francesco Manfredi and his group paying homage to the songbook of New Orleans’ Sidney Bechet or to quote Manfredi; “the first clarinet player of hot jazz.” The concert I attended was timed perfectly to coincide with the sunset that evening too. Blissful.
Classical piano virtuoso Elena Matteuci and young violinist Sebastian Zegame paid homage to ‘La Tarantella’, an ancient form of Italian folk music that originated from the Taranto region of Puglia. The bite of the local Tarantula spider was said to make its victims hysterical – a condition known as Tarantism. It was thought that the victims’ only hope was to be revived through the power of music and dance – hence the creation of La Tarantella. There was also a fitting tribute to Ennio Morricone who passed away two days before the concert and an interpretation of ‘Cinema Paradiso’ as the encore.
Bari’s Extreme Music Academy didn’t have the easiest of starts to life as a new live music venue, opening its doors halfway through the relentlessly tough year which is 2020. The venue is on the outskirts of the city on the edge of an industrial area by day and red light district by night. Don’t let its location fool you though as this new venue is a gem – especially if you are partial to metal and punk. It boasts a large 200-odd capacity live room with a decent soundsystem, an outside courtyard where people hang out between bands and a bar with cocktails named after various metal and rock icons. “Uno Lemmy e uno Soulfly, per favore”. I went to the opening night and Bari’s Strebla were the highlight – unusual post-punk / math-rock with staccato time signatures.
Taranto was another city that I unexpectedly took a liking to during the summer – two days soon became one week. I was surprised to see that Berlin techno legend Ellen Allien was DJing at the Sound Department venue on the Saturday night of my stay. Sound Department is located out of town near to the naval docks and is built predominantly from old shipping containers. At 4am in the morning and without warning, the security staff suddenly winched the metal sides of the venue up towards the sky and then removed the roof to convert the club into an open-air arena as the sun came up. A very cool concept.
La Notte di San Lorenzo is a night in August that’s famous in Italy supposedly as a chance to see shooting stars clearly in the night sky. Taranto’s Parco Archeologico, a modest green space, famous for its ancient Greek remains hosted a midnight concert from local musicians Game of Sax to celebrate the occasion. The locals loved their rendition of Domenico Modugno’s classic ‘Nel Biu Dipinto Di Blu’ and sang along to every word. About as different to watching Ellen Allien two nights before as it gets.
The Comet Is Coming – Locus Festival, Locorotondo – 14th August
Locus Festival is arguably Puglia’s most established major music festival. Since its inception in 2005 it has welcomed a wealth of musical greats including the late Gil Scott-Heron, Lauryn Hill, David Byrne and Sly & Robbie. The 2020 event should have been headlined by Little Simz, Paul Weller and The Pixies but Covid unfortunately put paid to that. However, a smaller, ‘limited edition’ version of the festival was still held in the grounds of Masseria Ferragnano, a fortified farmhouse on the edge of Locorotondo. Social distancing, temperature checks and directional queueing systems were in operation in full force but it actually worked quite well and still felt like a ‘proper’ festival. The only difference being that the audience had to remain seated on plastic chairs for the duration of the performance.
I’ve seen The Comet is Coming and the various other projects of their bandleader Shabaka Hutchings a number of times in the UK so had an idea of what to expect. The boys even learned some rudimentary Italian for the occasion though!
One of the more unusual live performances I have experienced, Domenico Tagliente took over the huge organ at the Chiesa di San Domenico in Mola di Bari and re-interpreted Giorgio Moroder’s score of Fritz Lang’s ground-breaking 1927 silent film ‘Metropolis’ whilst the movie was projected onto a big screen inside the church. Eerily atmospheric.
I only stopped off in San Marino City for one night as I drove back to Bari from the UK (a stunningly beautiful place but if truth be told, a tourist haven) but I lucked out with the fact that Fake Jam were headlining the outdoor music stage of the SMIAF Extreme Sports Festival that very night. Hailing from Bologna, they brought a lot of support with them and specialised in a brand of Parliament and Earth, Wind & Fire-inspired jazz funk. Excellent and unexpected.
B. Fleischmann is originally from Vienna but him and his band are now based in Berlin. They make marvellously quirky, offbeat pop music with typically Berlin-esque techno inflections. The show was part of the annual Time Zones Festival, a longstanding annual event in Bari and surrounding areas since 1986 that showcases alternative and non-commercial music – the festival’s motto is “on the paths of possible music”. This was my first visit to the impressive and modern Teatro Kismet too but sadly the last show before the strict Covid measures were reintroduced in Puglia and all live music ordered to stop.
As you can see it’s a somewhat eclectic bunch of highlights but I feel fortunate to have seen such a breadth of artists in what has been a very testing year for live music. Another mention also goes to the two squat spaces Casa Occupata Via Garibaldi in Taranto and Ex Caserma Liberata in Bari; I went to a bizarre gig at the former where the performer was playing pots and pans with a drumstick, as well as a synth running through his laptop (it was actually pretty cool). The latter is a cultural hub in Bari and seems to also be home of the city’s small but passionate dub and reggae scene. I went to a dub party here in February and a lot of the faces there also came to the brilliantly-named Bari Hill Carnival soundsystem in September.
It’s very interesting that so much of alternative culture in Southern Italy is associated with the squat scene (“una casa occupata”) – something that is a dying breed in London compared to its 1970s peak and famously its associations with the punk, new romantic and acid house movements. What do Joe Strummer, Bob Geldof, Boy George, the Sex Pistols, Annie Lennox and Depeche Mode all have in common? They all lived in squats early on in their careers.
With promising news about the development of Coronavirus vaccines circulating, hopefully live music will be back in earnest in 2021.
For the past 20 years, live music has been a massive part of my life. The date of my first-ever gig will be forever etched in my memory; 30th March 2001 and my favourite Welsh political provocateurs Manic Street Preachers at Brixton Academy, South London. Many years later and I would be able to watch roadies loading bands’ equipment in and out of the very same venue from my flat’s kitchen window on the opposite side of Stockwell Road. I have also now gone on to see the Manics some 22 times…
Ever since that day in 2001, I’ve been hooked, whether it’s seeing an emerging artist play a dingy pub in Camden, a DJ at a warehouse party in Hackney Wick, an established band road-testing new material in a mid-sized 1930s art deco theatre or a huge act playing a headline festival or shiny arena show, with the lavish production to match. Pre-Covid in London I would average a gig a week and tracking down the best places for music is often one of the first things I do when I arrive in a new city.
The Manics on another occasion, this time at Wembley Arena. May 2018.
From a personal perspective, I have played over 300 gigs as a musician, firstly as a member of The ImmediateThe Shake The Screenbeats and in more recent years as part of a low-key folk duo, inventively named Clive & Vicki. Most of the venues we’ve played have been part of the well-trodden and affectionately-named ‘toilet circuit’; small capacity and mostly independently-owned venues that aren’t necessarily glamorous but are an essential part of the music ecosystem. It’s become a clichéd saying but without these places there would be no future Glastonbury or Coachella headliners. For a couple of years, I worked managing music partnerships for the Tennessee whiskey brand Jack Daniel’s and in particular running an initiative designed to champion these independent small venues. To represent and deal with such treasured haunts as The Joiners in Southampton, The George Tavern in East London, The Zanzibar in Liverpool and Glasgow’s King Tut’s was a real honour. It remains an unrealised ambition of mine, to one day open a small venue dedicated to emerging artists.
Clockwise (from top left); 1.) The Screenbeats, The Dublin Castle, Camden. August 2007. 2.) Supporting Milburn at The Charlotte, Leicester. July 2006. 3.) Clive & Vicki expanded to become ‘OCDC’ at the Heavenly Social, W1. March 2018. 4.) Clwb Ifor Bach, Cardiff. May 2007. 5.) The Colony Club, Newbury. December 2003.
2020 has clearly been devastating for the live music industry worldwide. Not only have countless venues been forced to close their doors with their outgoings far outweighing their income but the impact of the pandemic has affected staff across the board from promoters and tour managers to security, lighting and sound technicians to bar staff and cloakroom attendants. In the UK, the team at the Music Venue Trust charity does a fantastic job of supporting these venues and you can find out what you can do to contribute during this difficult time at their Save Our Venues page. There’s a great range of merch available to buy from venues across the country and the proceeds go directly to them.
The George Tavern, Commercial Road, East London.
The Zanzibar Club, Liverpool. (credit: The Zanzibar)
The Joiners, Southampton. (credit: Gary Reggae)
In Italy, like most of Europe, live shows were immediately halted in early March as the Coronavirus crisis started to quickly worsen. However, unlike the UK, live music slowly started making a gradual reappearance in the early summer. The first post-lockdown gig I went to was at the Palazzo Pesce in Mola di Bari in June. Entry times for the audience were staggered, capacity reduced by half, temperature checks mandatory on the door and every audience member had to provide their contact details upon arrival. It was definitely a strange experience but joyous to actually see musicians performing live again in person.
I’ve been very lucky to still manage to see a reasonable number of gigs over the past year in Italy – both before and after the initial lockdown. Aside from one or two better-known names, most of the acts have been either emerging or just pretty obscure. In my next post will be a rundown of my musical highlights, plus links to how you can find out more about the artists and venues in question if you haven’t heard of them before.
Expect the eclectic.
In the meantime, you can support musicians and those working in the live music industry during the pandemic crisis by contributing or referring friends or colleagues to the organisations below.
