Artist: Curtis Harding
Venue: Brudenell Social Club
Date: 26.3.22 [Cancelled]
The last of my postponed/cancelled COVID gigs. Let’s hope that we never return to such dark and devastating days. Thankfully many live music venues survived lockdown and the aftermath of COVID complications but some simply couldn’t carry on. Hard times lead to hard decisions.
Artist: IDLES
Support: The Big Moon
Venue: Millennium Square, Leeds
Date: 8.7.21 [Cancelled]
With large public gatherings still banned at the time, another gig bit the dust. The knock-on effects of endless cancellations made rescheduling such large scale events an impossibility.
Artist: Nick Cave and The Bad Seeds
Venue: First Direct Arena, Leeds
Date: 18.4.21 [Originally scheduled: 12.5.20 / Subsequently cancelled]
Another great gig that was never to be. With social gathering and international travel in stasis during COVID lockdown, such events became an impossibility. Sadly this tour was never rescheduled.
Artist: Baxter Dury
Venue: Brudenell Social Club, Leeds
Date: 23.3.21 [Originally scheduled: 17.4.20 / Subsequently cancelled]
Rescheduled time after time and then cancelled due to COVID restrictions. In a world without live music we were compensated with a live streamed gig from Baxter Dury’s home. Dark days and strange times.
Artist: Nightmares On Wax
Venue: Leeds Town Hall
Date: 20.9.20 [Originally scheduled: 1.4.20 / Subsequently cancelled]
This should have been an awesome night. We had central front row balcony tickets for a special 25th anniversary, orchestrated performance of ‘Smokers Delight’, against the beautiful backdrop of Leeds Town Hall. The tour was only due to visit select worldwide locations with Leeds being the hometown gig.
The real life nightmare of the COVID lockdown put and end to this dream.
Artists: Various
Venue: Leeds Festival [2020], Bramham Park, Leeds
Date: 28.8.20 [Cancelled]
The combination of Rage Against the Machine and IDLES would have made it worth enduring a day with Generation Y. Cancelled due to the COVID lockdown.
Artist: Gary Numan
Venue: Live from the Drive-in, East Yorkshire Airport
Date: 21.8.20 [Cancelled]
Here in my car, I feel safest of all . . .
Under lockdown the gig scene was in stasis. It seemed like large gatherings in hot, sweaty venues wouldn’t happen for the foreseeable future – but for a moment there was light at the end of the tunnel.
A drive-in gig, where everyone stayed in their own car, within a designated grid square, safe and sound from anyone else. Such social distancing seemed like an alien concept but in a world without live music it was a viable option. However, it was never to be. With COVID levels going from bad to worse, lockdown ensued and all plans were grounded.
Artist: Various
Venue: Bluedot [2020], Jodrell Bank Observatory, Cheshire
Date: 23-26.7.20 [Cancelled]
Having thoroughly enjoyed a day at the prevoius year’s Bluedot festival, we booked tickets for the full 2020 event . . . little did we know what was to come that year. As the entire live music scene (and much else in life) was halted by a global pandemic, the festival was postponed for a year.
Assured of a similar line-up when things got back to normal, we held-on to our tickets but 12 months later COVID chaos still reigned. Spikes in virus levels, the need for quarantine ‘bubbles’ and near-impossible international travel scuppered any plans for large gatherings with international line-ups. As tickets rolled-over for a second year, we decided to cut our losses and cash them in.
After an enforced 2 year hiatus, Bluedot triumphantly returned with a very similar line-up in 2022. Sadly on this occasion we missed-out and Björk remains on my ‘must see’ list.
My Gigography 