Given that we’re all on lockdown, we’ve already had 3 concerts cancelled or postponed.
We were due to see Darius Brubeck (son of Dave, of “Take 5” fame) at St George’s in mid-March (no idea whether that’s going to be re-arranged or not)
The Devon Philharmonic Orchestra concert at Exeter Cathedral on the 28th April has been cancelled – a friend of ours plays viola in the orchestra, and is therefore partly responsible for the amount of classical music we now listen to.
The Zombies gig I was due to see in June has already been moved to next February. Yes, the Zombies – Time Of The Season, She’s Not There.
There has been one bright side – while Fish (formerly of Marillion, although he left over 30 years ago) has had to postpone his tour, his re-jigged schedule now means he’s going to play in Bristol in November. Originally the nearest gig was going to be in Frome.
This is particularly good news for reason I’ll come on to in a minute.
The other one to look forward to is cycling commentator Ned Boulting, who has announced some shows for October this year. Given all of the big races so far have been cancelled, I’m not quite sure what he’s going to talk about (and neither is he, I suspect) – but he’s engaging and entertaining so I’m sure it’ll be fine.
But thinking about the cancelled concerts got me thinking about concerts that I didn’t go to – usually because of illness. I knew I’d missed a few, but after I put together a list of all the concerts I’ve been to (on the back of scanning all of the ticket) I realised just how many there have been
- Richard Thompson at Colston Hall 2007
- Stereophonics at Colston Hall 2008
- Robin Ince at the Arnolfini 2013
- Strypes at Motion 2015
- Fish at O2 Academy 2015
- Fish at O2 Academy 2017
- No Such Thing As A Fish at Colston Hall 2018
- Ned Boulting at Anson Rooms 2018
There are probably a few more – I think we missed a Devon Philharmonic show 2-3 years ago as well.
The Stereophonics one is hard to relate – we’d been for some food beforehand and were about to head to the Colston Hall when I noticed I’d had a missed call on my phone.
My dad had had a stroke.
Obviously we shot home and up to Northampton.
He died the next day.
I’ve never listened to the Stereophonics since, too many memories.
I was *really* annoyed at missing not one Fish show but two of them – especially as those tours were the 30th anniversary of Misplaced Childhood and Clutching at Straws, and he played the albums in full.
There’s one other that needs mentioning.
Scott Bradlee’s Post-Modern Jukebox (they do 40s/50s versions of songs like Radiohead’s Creep) were playing at Colston Hall a few years ago. The concert was about a week away and I realised I hadn’t received the tickets – so I went to chase up the website I bought them from.
Odd – no email in the folder where I keep concert booking confirmations. I then had a major hunt through my bank account, credit card statements and PayPal account. Nothing.
I can only imagine that I’d marked the concert in my calendar but never actually got round to buying any tickets. And to make things worse, it was now sold out.