| Good evening from Chicago, wherever you may be. Apologies for the mid-week email. I am trying to take a few days off this week, and have had a piece on live music brewing for a few days. So you're getting the normal edition today instead of Sunday. However, you will still get a surprise this weekend. When my colleague Adam Jackson walked into Chicago's Grant Park last weekend, he joined a throng of more than 100,000 revelers celebrating the return of live music. Lollapalooza, one of the largest music festivals in the world, marked the unofficial start of summer festival season with one of the largest public gatherings since the start of the pandemic. Save for a handful of drive-in shows and super-spreader events, concerts have been on hiatus since the middle of March 2020. But that's all changed in the past couple of weeks. Green Day, Weezer and Fall Out Boy performed in front of 35,000 people in Arlington, Texas, to kick off their Hella Mega Tour. The Black Crowes have played several shows in the past two weeks, dotting from Tennessee to Connecticut to Michigan. Attendees at Lollapalooza were reminded of the pandemic upon entry, when they had to either show proof of vaccination or a negative covid test in the past 72 hours. But once inside, the festivalgoers ate sausages, drank beer and snapped photos like it was just another day in paradise. Live music is roaring back even as the number of coronavirus cases has climbed by more than 100% over the last two weeks thanks to the delta variant. While individual shows have been postponed due to coronavirus outbreaks, everyone in live music believes the business will come back at full speed in the fall. The concert business, like so many sectors of society, isn't ready to go back to hibernation and isolation. There are too many people itching to work again. Too many musicians eager to make millions. And too many young people eager to party. "The excitement level is really high," said Omar Al-Joulani of Live Nation, the largest concert promoter. "You can see it with ticket sales. Festivals are blowing through tickets." For those curious, I asked Adam to share a few thoughts from Lollapalooza: "The festival was packed full of people from all age groups releasing that pent up energy from a year or so of quarantine and movement restrictions. Since the festival is all ages, I heard a lot of adults/people my age complain that a lot of the angsty teens were acting stupid and pissing people off. … I saw a girl yesterday present documentation of a negative test but was denied from entering at first because they required that the results come back negative within the previous 72 hours from presenting it. Her test was taken a couple days before the festival -- so that 72-hour green light expired by Sunday. Even so, she slinked to the front of another line nearby and was admitted there. When I asked her if she lost her vaccination card or something, she said she was only half-vaccinated and is scheduled to get her second dose when she gets back home. She said she got vaccinated because the delta seemed serious lately."
Sales for all kinds of music events are exceeding all previous records. Lollapalooza sold out, moving more than 400,000 tickets. Coachella sold out without even posting a lineup. Railbird, a newer festival in Lexington, Kentucky, doubled its sales from its last event. Festival season typically stretches from the spring into the early fall, when the weather is prime. But promoters are cramming a year's worth of festivals into the late summer and early fall, resulting in huge festivals every weekend – often times the same weekend. Over Labor Day weekend, Megen Thee Stallion will perform at Bonnaroo in Manchester Tennessee, Made in America in Philadelphia and BottleRock in Napa, California. At the same time, arenas, amphitheaters and stadiums are all open for business, booking as many artists as they can before basketball and hockey are back in season. Many of these venues will hold six or seven artists for the same date, waiting for the acts to sort out the proper routing for their tours. During most of the pandemic, live music executives assumed that shows catering to baby boomers would be slower to come back. But sales for Dead & Company, the Eagles and James Taylor are strong, according to Rick Roskin, co-head of contemporary music at Creative Artists Agency. "All ages, all genres are ready to go," said Roskin. "Everyone wants to work and everyone wants to perform. Promoters and artists are just trying to find the right time." The only types of acts that can't get on the road just yet are those that have major productions that take several months to prepare. WME music co-chief Kirk Sommer booked a 2020 tour for the Killers that sold 300,000 tickets in the U.K.. It would have been one of the biggest tours in the country. But they pushed it to 2021, and then pushed it again to 2022. This demand is putting all kinds of strain on the less famous parts of the business. Sound companies, lighting experts, video producers and truckers are all facing more demand than they've ever experienced before. Crew needs to move equipment from city to city, and there's only so much crew to go around in a tight labor market. Arena or amphitheater-level pop tours can often be 12, 14, 18 trucks, according to David Zedeck, co-head of global music at United Talent Agency. It's also created some unfortunate new businesses. People are so eager to go back to live music that some are faking vaccine cards. The Federal Bureau of Investigation warned people not to use fake cards to get into events like Lollapalooza. Some executives worry that the industry is doing too much too soon – although not necessarily for health reasons. John Meglen, co-chief of ConcertsWest, worries that there will be more supply than demand. It's hard to put on multiple major shows a night in cities and not expect them to steal audience from one another. "You can't have a show Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday and Friday and think they'll all do great business," Meglen said. "It's just too much supply. Let's call this the glass half empty take on this. But most people in the music business seem to feel like Green Day's Billie Joe Armstrong. "Take a look around you," he said during his show in Arlington. "This is human contact. We cannot be locked up anymore. We need to be together." For those of you who want to see live music but don't want to go to a show in-person, there are plenty of festivals and shows offering live streams at home. Stay safe out there. – Lucas Shaw | 
⋮↠〖*HDvideo~〗 2020 Spycies: Dos espías rebeldes Película Completa En Línea released 2020. story: Vladimir y Hector, dos agentes secretos d...
Post a Comment