When COVID-19 suspended the concert industry, it didn’t just mean we’d miss out on the bands we were already looking forward to seeing—we’d also miss out on the bands we didn’t yet know we wanted to see. As ubiquitous as streaming and social media are, they can’t beat live shows as paths to music discovery.
My musical taste would map as a scatter plot, not a straight line, and I enjoy the diversity of sounds—the scathing “Minotaur” by Nequient sits next to the cloudlike, ambient “Tempest” by Our Earth Is a Tomb. I also appreciate a comp that mixes plain old absurdity (an odd cover of “Monster Mash” by the Weird Bananas) with political commentary (“Heroes” by street punks Squared Off).
