I went through the pics on my phone today, looking for a specific one from last year. And I was taken aback by how different my 2020 reel is from any previous year.
My phone used to literally explode with photos from gigs, festivals, music conferences, catch-ups with musos and other industry events. But that, obviously, was cut short by the developments of last year. So, since I haven’t done a proper 2020 recap yet, I thought I’d share a different sort of post this week.
Here’s my 2020 through my phone’s lens.
How it started
Things looked pretty promising for the gig year ahead. I was stoked to have gigs, trips and artist interviews lined up.
Boy, did we all have big expectations! Pretty much everyone I know declared 2020 “their year” in music.
Then, the fires ravaged Australia for months, and musos stepped in to help big time. Little did we know that 2020 was just warming up…
… Yet, I managed to travel to Berlin to do some music soul-searching before things truly went down the drain.
HOW IT ACTUALLY WENT
In March, the Rona hit. My concert and blogging life (like everyone’s else’s, I’m sure) started to look very much like this:
In the absence of live music performances and cultural events, some obvious things became even more obvious.
Soon enough, we all figured out that the music world was changing in unprecedented ways. So I embraced video interviewing like never before (and cut my hair short in the meantime).
The #stayathome attitude made me pick up new (old) hobbies. [Fast-forward a little and, sadly, I can’t say that I’ve progressed much until today. My good intentions have been conquered by lockdown inertia and quarantine blues.]
Then, in some parts of the globe, what we knew as “life b.C. (before Coronavirus)” fought back. And for a very brief, moment the (music) world felt whole again:
That was until the Rona reminded us all it wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon. So, we had no choice but to become better at this virtual thing. Some of us as performers, others as the audience. Aussie artists mastered live-streams fairly quickly and pretty well:
There were some digital highlights along the way, like music awards and conferences, recognising musos’ efforts to keep on going in new, creative ways:
In the last quarter of 2020, the lucky ones even started gigging in front of real audiences again. My level of jealousy went through the roof:
HOW IT’S STILL GOING
But the Rona is still not done. And most of us are still waiting for better days in the music biz. So, this is where we are now. At least in the case of my current place of residence (Europe):
And how was your 2020, musically speaking?
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