I bought the earplugs pictured below at the tail end of last year in anticipation of a busy concert schedule in 2020. I’ve never worn ’plugs to gigs before but, after two particularly noisy experiences last summer (Garbage and Skunk Anansie), and having chatted to a cousin and fellow gig veteran, I decided now was the time. I have no desire to enter my forties with either significant hearing loss or, perhaps worse still, persistent tinnitus. I could hear a muffled buzz for two days after Skunk and I was a touch afraid.

But the ’plugs have remained steadfast in their packet. Not because I’ve refused to wear them in some silly show of bravado like a builder berk yielding a Kango, but because the whole world has, of course, stopped. While we sit at home in our pants contemplating how best to imbibe Domestos, I’ve wondered, on and off, what the future of concerts can and will be.

As Mark has already suggested regarding the restaurant landscape, I think live music as we know it won’t be reappearing any time soon. How do you reconcile mostly sweaty and often drunk crowds with social-distancing? The only and obvious answer is you can’t.

Small venues thrive on intimacy, big stadiums require huge numbers of people to fill them. Neither seem prudent or even feasible pre-vaccine. And I’m not sure if either of these setups can be successfully altered even temporarily. A small gig with just a handful of people isn’t really a gig – more a gathering of the artist’s friends or those rich enough to pay the inevitably inflated ticket price. An arena that’s only a quarter full reeks of misery as the band battles to overcome the sterility of the surroundings. Bono has said that his first ‘magic act’ in any cavernous venue is to shrink the stadium and production and draw the crowd in. Well, good luck with that, sir, at Wembley with just a few thousand peeps to enchant.

In this period of lockdown, many artists have live-streamed virtual gigs from their houses. I’ve tuned into a couple but, after the novelty of snooping their sitting room wears off, I’ve struggled to stay the course. Some of this is due to the often lousy sound quality at both ends, but it’s also because nobody’s there. If I’m not there, I need to see other people transfixed in the crowd so I can experience it vicariously. Without people, I don’t think it’s a gig – more a live recording session. In which case, I’m inclined to wait for the finished product and listen to the album on my premium hi-fi.

Of course, I appreciate that if we want artists to continue to perform at this time, adapting and accepting change, both good and bad – just like any other business – will be necessary. I’m sure tech can play its part, but acknowledging what we cannot now have will be key to enjoying what is currently possible.

Two pieces of new music that have recently appeared from big hitters deserve some attention – not least because of the timing of their release. Bob Dylan, unexpectedly (although that’s rather his default style), first aired ‘Murder Most Foul’ in March. Ostensibly a 17 minute ode to what people often call the defining moment of the latter half of the twentieth-century – the assassination of JFK. It’s meaning will be unpicked for years – hopefully even beyond quarantine – because it’s dotted with music references both obvious and oblique. It’s apocryphal and gory: “..they blew off his head while he was still in the car… they blew out the brains of the king / Thousands were watching”, but the roll call of artists names it concludes with also suggest hope. “Play Don Henley / Play Glenn Frey… Play Oscar Peterson / Play Stan Getz / Play ‘blue sky’”. There is a suggestion that music can overcome even the deadliest of days.

In his reliably brilliant Red Hand Files, Nick Cave responds to a fan who asks whether he thinks it’s likely to be Dylan’s final release. He answers that he hopes not, but that there is wisdom in treating any event that is special and that we enjoy with “care and reverence” just in case it may be the last.

Although I don’t think many thought we’d heard the last ever Rolling Stones record, the group’s advancing years mean new material shouldn’t be taken for granted. The sudden ‘dropping’ of ‘Ghost Town’, then, has come as a welcome reminder that the band with a collective age of 304 are still alive and rearing to go. And, you know what, it’s a decent, likeable effort. The lyrics were apparently written by Jagger in quarter of an hour and it’s certainly got a pace about it that’s lacking in their most recent blues-heavy efforts. I can see it becoming a bit of an anthem to 2020, assuming they get the chance to perform it on the road sometime.

All is not lost then. Whilst live-streaming can’t ever hope to quench the need to be an a crowd that is led, whisked and immersed in sound, there is much out there to enjoy. YouTube is a never ending source of footage from gigs remembered and those we couldn’t be part of. Artists have given free access to concert films and now has never been a better time to revisit your own record collection. The earplugs may well sit idle for some time yet, but when I do reach for them it will be with renewed vigour and, indeed, reverence for what is to come.

AZS