Live Music

Fans of Live Music are Having Their Best Year in a Long Time

Or at least I am.

Not concerts, shows. That’s what actual live music fans call them, apparently. I don’t know why this is, but I’ve been going to them since I was a slip of a lad at 14, when I saw Sting in his post-Police glory in 1988. I even wrote about it.

Since then, I’ve been to hundreds of shows. Most of them were at various venues in my hometown of Vancouver, Canada, but I’ve also made a sport of seeing my favourites in different places worldwide, either by luck or plan.

Sometimes I’ll make a specific trip to see a band somewhere — Depeche Mode in Bogota in March 2018, when I was living elsewhere in Colombia, is a fine example. Other times, I’ll be going somewhere anyway, only to check what’s on during my dates there and be overwhelmed with surprise, leading to a flurry of credit card activity that will enable me to participate in the spectacle. Kasabian in Naples, Italy, in July of 2018, for instance. I was going to be there, so why not include one of the most incendiary live shows in the last decade on my itinerary as well?

Still, other times, the live music gods will truly turn their shining faces on me in the form of music festivals in interesting locales, in which many of my favourites are collected into one multi-day explosion of rock and roll energy.

The Corona Capital Festival in Mexico City in 2015 had the Charlatans, the Psychedelic Furs and Primal Scream all on the same fucking day, and the next year really put it all together with Richard Ashcroft, Band of Horses, and Pet Shop Boys all appearing within hours of each other.

In recent years, I’ve been living abroad in places where such tours never come. Never…not as in seldom, or rarely, but never. This is not to say there is no live music available in Manizales, Colombia, Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, or Kingston, Jamaica. Very much to the contrary, it’s everywhere in those places, you don’t even need to look all that hard for it.

But it’s unlikely that Social Distortion, Morrissey, or the Manic Street Preachers will ever come through any of those places.

Additionally, as it did with almost every other industry in the western world, the Covid pandemic halted live music for a time. It has taken a while for things to rebound, but in 2023 the chance to see my favourite bands on a stage with music blasting out of a stack of amplifiers is back with a vengeance.

In fact, when I decided to return to Vancouver in September of 2022, the opportunity to once again go to shows was a prime motivator — alongside being out in the spectacular surrounding nature and spending more time with friends and family. These are in no particular order, but you can probably figure it out.

On my way back, I was at Madison Square Gardens in New York City for New Order and the Pet Shop Boys. Great shows, the kind at which you know all the words.

I was barely wheels down in Vancouver when I came out of the blocks hot on my first weekend, seeing drumming god Stewart Copeland play Police classics with the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, followed the next weekend by local guitar heroes 54–40 at the legendary Commodore Ballroom in front of about 800 people.

Naturally, I wrote about my experience at both:

New Order and Pet Shop Boys caught up with me in mid-October, but I gave it a pass that time. As the cold hush of winter descended on the city, it was Suede and Manic Street Preachers, once again at the Commodore Ballroom. Two more bands that continued the new and highly effective practise of two bands whose salad days may be behind them but who still have a big enough following to tour North America.

Bryan Adams somehow found his middle-of-the-rock rawk way into my concert itinerary and can still manage to pull thousands of people into the local hockey barn and bang out the hits like he’s been doing it for decades or something. It might have had something to do with the fact that he was in his hometown too.

2023 has so far begun the way its predecessor ended. Ride and the Charlatans made my month in mid-February, and I really hope more bands whose high water mark might have been a few decades ago but who can still put on a quality show for longtime fans can figure out a way to tour together in the future. It seems to be working.

Hawksley Workman provided nothing but talent and stage presence in front of maybe two hundred people at a small club in Vancouver on Tuesday night, and the next night it was the Red Hot Chili Peppers doing the same for 50,000 others in a huge stadium. I hadn’t seen them in 31 years when they were such a part of my life that my first tattoo was inspired by them. They’ve changed, I’ve changed, and everything has changed, but their ability to put on a high-energy show hasn’t left them. Flea and Chad Smith are a monumental rhythm section, John Frusciante wails righteously on guitar again, and Anthony Kiedis still bounces around with his shirt off like he isn’t 60 years old.

The rest of the year is a live music juggernaut hereabouts. Crowded House in May, Placebo in Seattle the same month, and then the Cure in June. Third Eye Blind plays at a festival on Vancouver Island later that month, and the week after that is good ol’ Mike Ness and Social Distortion in Vancouver, once again in front of the thousand or so die-hards at the Commodore. Band of Horses play a festival in Seattle in September; after that, some choices will need to be made.

Peter Gabriel and Guns n’Roses play separately in October, and Bruce Springsteen and Depeche Mode do the same in November. And as we all know, Ticketmaster doesn’t make it easy for everyone to participate in shows of this size.

Ultimately, the point is that live music is back, and everyone is on the road and determined to make hay while the sun shines. The joy and thrill of seeing my favourites, surrounded by a sea of like-minded people or with one person in particular, still hasn’t gotten old and presumably never will. Should I get tickets? The answer is always going to be an enthusiastic yes.