As I thanked Josephine Vander Gucht and Anthony West for one of the most incredible shows I’d ever witnessed, on March 12th, 2020, I didn’t think for a second that it would be the last time. The last time meeting artists in person, the last time getting out of a venue buzzing with excitement and high on dopamine, the last time enjoying what is, to me, one of the most beautiful things to experience in life: live music. Hopefully, there will be an occasion for myself and fellow gig lovers to experience that again once the pandemic is over. In Australia and New Zealand, live shows are back already, and safely so, it seems.
Unlike for the people working in the industry itself, the loss of concerts is not that dramatic for us, attendees. But in retrospect, if I learned anything from it all, thinking back to that specific evening. You, indeed, only live once.
I actually almost didn’t attend that show; I had night classes after work, and I have a need to be a good student deeply rooted in me, back from my schoolgirl days. But I loved the British duo’s latest album so much that I decided that seeing them live for the first time was more important than a 3-hour after-work class that I could catch up on later. I’ve heard it said before by many people, and I even said it to myself: “There will be other shows.” But what if there aren’t?
Every concert is unique. You could see a show by the same musicians, with the same setlist, two days in a row (and I have), and it wouldn’t be the same at all. Just like it goes with baking, change one single ingredient, and the result will be different. You can get pretty close, but no matter how closely you follow the recipe, you’ll never make the exact same cake twice. With shows, it’s even harder to replicate the same experience. You have different venues, different crowds. These two parameters on their own have the greatest effect on how a live performance turns out. And on that Thursday night, last year in March, it felt like everything just clicked together for an unforgettable evening.
Prior even to the first beat, the first note, as the stage was still being set up, I remember feeling and seeing the excitement all around me. The crowd was just ready for it all. Perhaps the fact that the end of the week was nearing played a role in it, or maybe deep down, we all had this inexplicable sense that we might be looking at our very last days of “freedom”. Back then, no lockdown had been issued yet (that happened five days later in France), but we were hearing about this new Coronavirus more and more. And in the couple of days leading up to that night, the threat of it had seemed to be getting more present, but was still being minimized by officials (remember when we were being told that it was similar to the flu?).
Had we known how serious it actually was, I don’t think some of us, myself included, would’ve even been in that room, to begin with. But what’s done is done now. We were then unaware, and the energy was running high, and as soon as Oh Wonder and their band (Yves Fernandez on bass and George Lindsay on drums) took the stage, it only ran higher. The atmosphere was electric throughout the whole show, even at times when the duo sang softly as Josephine Vander Gucht played the keys and Anthony West the guitar. Each performance was on point, and the atmosphere felt so intimate and friendly in some way. As if it was all but a meet-up between a group of long-time friends to let off some steam. And whenever the duo of real-life partners talked between songs, the closeness only grew.
Twenty minutes into the set, Vander Gucht couldn’t help but point out, with a nervous giggle: “I keep laughing because the last two songs- The first one, the opening lyrics are – and it’s very Coronavirus current – ‘Hands up for a miracle’.” Joining gestures to words, she laughed along with the audience. “And the second one,” she continued, “‘What a way to wake up like I’m overexposed’”. At which point West chimed in: “Wait ‘til the end of the set…” She turned to him. “What’s the end of the set?” He went on to explain: “A lot of the songs have the word ‘crown’ in them, which in Spanish is…” He paused, turning to the crowd that audibly got to where he was going with his sentence. “Corona, right?” Vander Gucht rested her hands on her hips, acting comically resigned. “The whole theme of our show is… Corona.”
In reality, there was no escaping such a twist of fate. The London-based pair had released their third album titled No One Else Can Wear Your Crown in February that year. And it actually had no relations to the virus, in case that needed clarifying. But the timing of it couldn’t be helped. Humor being one of humanity’s favorite coping mechanisms, the joke had to be made. And it provided a welcome release in the moment, as proven by the general reaction in the room: laughter.
Despite the “Corona” talk, that evening felt like it stood out of time and place. As if we had exited it all, for one last hurrah. We danced, we sang, we laughed, managing to forget about the world that awaited us outside the walls of the Alhambra. For a long time, the slight thought of that concert used to make my eyes water. It was unbearable for me to look back on it and reminisce, because I didn’t know if there would be a next time. I avoided going through the pictures and videos I had taken, left them untouched in a folder for months and months. But more than a year later, I decided to give it another try. And it turned out to be not so bad. It’s bittersweet, still, but more sweet than bitter, all in all. I smiled at the sight of the joy that I captured in some of these photographs, and laughed all over again at the jokes. And although I can’t get rid of my worries about the future, this shift in perspective towards the past is making it a little easier to get through this difficult present we’re living through. Happier times will come again, sooner or later. I think… acceptance, is what this feeling is called.
If you haven’t already, I hope you, too, find some of it soon.
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