I think I feel sick right now, but I have this to say: if you want to see any artist live, go for it. Especially if you've never seen them before.
You may never know... might be your very last chance ever.
Magnum have just cancelled their tour next April. Totally understandable in this situation, even if I would have loved to see them again.
I first came across them in June 2009, when a friend reviewed what was their new album at the time. And chose to include A Face in the Crowd as a sample. I loved that song. Still do. It made me want to dig deeper and discovered plenty of other songs I loved in the process. Hard to pick just one, but here's Les Morts Dansant.
They never came to Romania.
But in 2019, I got a ticket for one of their shows in Sweden in April 2020. I was finally going to see them live!
Well... we all know what happened in 2020. That did not go according to plan. The tour was postponed.
When those shows eventually happened in the spring of 2022... it was without me. It was a mix of things starting to go south financially for me and not feeling right to travel during those days when there was the worry of the Ukraine war spilling over.
After the big tour was over though... they announced a few shows in the UK and one in Ireland. My passport had recently expired, I can't travel to the UK without one anymore and I don't exactly love bureaucracy, plus one of my former uni colleagues (who also happens to love their music) now lives in Dublin and he could host me, which would save the accommodation expenses. So Dublin it was. We really enjoyed the show. I left with
the pick Tony Clarkin used during the show. I just wish the audience hadn't been so respectful and tame because it was kind of awkward to be the only one to be jumping on Vigilante... which is totally a song that makes your body want to jump. Well, it makes my body want to jump, but not everyone around me is as much of a savage... oddly.
It's still the final show they've played in the EU to date.
I would have loved to see them again next April. The dates could be really conveniently coupled with Priest + Saxon, Phil Campbell, Slash and more tours happening at the same time.
I understand and respect their choice, but that doesn't mean I'm not sad.
And it's sickening to know the one time I saw them live may be their last EU show ever. Or at least the last time with Tony, who has been the main songwriter since the very beginning, playing live.
You never know.
---
I didn't think Berlin 2017 would be my very last Aerosmith show, I was sure they'd do a 50th anniversary world tour, I had a ticket for 2020. But then the world turned upside down, their bodies turned against them... and at this point, chances are slim. As good as they sounded and looked for those three shows in September. I hope everyone who did get to see them then treasures it.
I never thought Paris 2014 would be my very last Motörhead show. I'm not blind or stupid, I saw how Lemmy looked, I saw how bad his hand was shaking when he reached for the water on his mic stand. But us humans can be great at bullshitting ourselves and believing what we want to believe. And I got myself to believe that he had to be getting better because at least they weren't cancelling tours anymore. Their very last cancelled show wasn't even cancelled because of his health, it was cancelled by authorities in Paris as it was right after 90 people were killed in the 2015 Bataclan attack.
When I saw Saxon in early March this year, I had no idea I was seeing one of the very last shows Paul Quinn would play on his very last Saxon tour. There, in front of the stage at Olympia Theatre, I was in awe. How can they still pull it off at their age, a full two hour set full of high energy songs? Just a few days later, I would get my answer. Nowhere near as easy as it may have looked from the outside from a distance. Paul put out a message saying the Saxon style of touring had become increasingly difficult for his body to handle in recent years. And that, while he would remain in the band and write new music and still play the occasional special show, he would step aside from actually touring and performing live regularly.
It's not necessarily even age. I was incredibly happy to see Metal Church with Mike Howe in 2019 after he had returned to the band a few years earlier. I had discovered them with Badlands, so he was
the Metal Church singer for me. I thought I would see them again for sure, they weren't even old and Mike was super fit. He committed suicide in 2021 after his divorce. His bandmates were absolutely furious over how things got there, because from what they say, he did seek help, but was just given antidepressants and sent on his way... but that doesn't bring him back.
Trevor Strnad from The Black Dahlia Murder also committed suicide that year after his mother died and his girlfriend dumped him. And he always seemed like such a cheerful guy...
Alexi Laiho also died during the pandemic break and he was just a couple of years older than me. Children of Bodom were my introduction to extreme metal when they covered Alice Cooper so that was extremely upsetting. I'm very grateful I got to see them live, but what a huge loss, Alexi was insanely talented, one of the best guitar players of his generation. Some people get lucky and they get on the other side of excesses alive. Others aren't and he ended up being in this second category.
Sometimes you never know what's going on with people until shit hits the fan.
And in all the cases above, it's just bands I did get to see at the very least once, though most of them more times (Saxon even over a dozen times with Paul).
But I never got to see Dio live. When I bought my ticket for Sonisphere Bucharest 2010, it was for Heaven & Hell before any other band on the bill. Then they cancelled all festival appearances and I thought okay, health comes first, he'll get better and I'll see them then. Except that never happened.
When I chickened out of traveling to Denmark for the first time ever to see Procol Harum, I didn't think I was giving up my one chance to ever see them live.
When the Twisted Sister show in Bucharest, the only real chance I ever had to see them, got cancelled because two assholes, the promoter and the former mayor, had some beef with each other... I hoped that maybe they'd reconsider those 2016 shows being their final ones ever. Three quarters of a decade later, that hope has gone dim.
I'm most upset about Omega because as a Hungarian band, they came to play in Romania quite often. They even did mini tours here for their last every five years anniversaries in 2012 and 2017... Should have been clear to me that having started in the '60s, they were... um, "much closer to the finish than to the start" as Joe once said about Aerosmith.
---
I often also worry about my own body not allowing me to travel, to experience concerts at the same intensity anymore.
Sometimes it's already completely draining...
when we were younger, much younger than now,
life was a fast game, we played it somehow...did all of the dreams that we wanted come true?
some did, clearly not all, maybe a few...