High Contrast has announced a virtual tour in support of the Music Venue Trust’s #saveourvenues campaign.
The live music industry is said to be facing their “biggest crisis since the 1920s” with the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and many workers are unlikely to be able to return when full capacity gigs are predicted to be possible again in April 2021.
High Contrast will play a series of five livestreamed gigs across November and early December, all to raise money and awareness for #saveourvenues.
See the dates below.
NOVEMBER 2020
5th – Club Tracks hosted by UKF
12th – High Contrast band home session
17th – Music From Films
26th – Jungle on Vinyl
DECEMBER 2020
3rd – Album Launch Party
“Thinking back on some of the most pivotal, defining moments in my life, a majority of those moments happened at live music events, whether in venues or festival spaces,” High Contrast said in a statement. “I think of seeing Roni Size & Reprazent perform Drum & Bass music live at Reading festival in 1998, a performance that hit me like a lightning bolt and which I walked away from aged 18 thinking ‘this is what I’m gonna do with my life’. It’s arguable that without that galvanising moment I would never have embarked on my own career in music.”
He adds: “I think of going to a proper club for the first time and hearing Fabio dj, the power and emotion the live venue imbued the music with, making me never want to listen to music at home again for it forever felt like a paltry shadow of the vibe you get in a club. Now, being a musician it’s understandable that these musical moments affected me so much but having seen the joy live music brings to audience members first hand and the sheer number and variety of people at live music events, I’m sure these are things felt by the majority of people in this country.
“When I saw Leonard Cohen perform at Glastonbury a few years ago with my Mum and sister, there was something beyond magical about it, my Mum having played Leonard Cohen songs to us kids growing up, to then as adults getting to hear those songs performed live together is something I can’t really put into words but many tears were shed.
“These kind of moments are a huge part of what makes life worth living and the thought of young people in particular being denied these gateways to inspiration is unthinkable. Without venues and events then there will be no more live music and it will have died on our watch. We simply cannot let that happen.”
Last month, over 1,000 venues, theatres, festivals, arts spaces and organisations in England celebrated in being awarded in the latest wave of £1.57billion Cultural Recovery Funding, helping them to weather the storm of coronavirus closures into next Spring.
However, many fear that freelance and self-employed workers and road crew are being “ignored” by the chancellor’s new Job Support Scheme and that the CRF bailout favours bricks and mortar establishments and the people employed by them.
Announcing the #saveourvenues campaign back in April, the Music Venue Trust wrote: “We cannot stress enough how critical it is that the music industry supports the #SaveOurVenues campaign as without them over 500 of the UK’s grassroots music venues could go out of business, never to return, in the coming months. Please help us.”
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