Music has helped so many of us get through these tough few months. For example, tomorrow is day 70 for Red Sox organist, Josh Kantor, who goes on Facebook Live for “7th Inning Stretch at 3 pm seven days a week for a half hour (or more!) each day ( https://www.facebook.com/7thinningstretch2020/) to play famous tunes on his organ and to raise money for local food banks (http://feedingamerica.org/find-your-local-foodbank). He and his wife, Reverenced Producer Mary, are determined to keep this going every day until the baseball season resumes.
Singer Ben Folds, stuck in Sydney, Australia during the pandemic, sits at an organ and plays songs and tells stories on “Saturday Apartment Requests with Ben Folds.” Here is a link to #6: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ULe4yus47c0
Saturday nights are also reserved for Dead and Co’s “One More Saturday Night,” each Saturday night at 8 pm (here is a link to an awesome show from Citified in NY, 6/23/19): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ktDsE09W2Rk)
There is no shortage of great music. I look forward to my daily email from Relix Magazine reminding me of the day’s shows: Weir and Wolf Brothers Wednesdays (with conflicts with Dave Matthews Band each Wednesday), Phish’s Dinner and a Movie each Tuesday, and more. Today’s email from Relix simply said, “June 2, 2020: #TheShowMustBePaused.”
According to a letter posted on https://www.theshowmustbepaused.com/, two Atlantic Records music executives, Jamila Thomas and Brianna Agyemang, are spearheading an initiative known as “Blackout Tuesday” in reaction to what they describe as “the long-standing racism and inequality that exists from the boardroom to the boulevard.”
The Show Must Be Paused is a play on the well-known phrase which encourages perseverance, “The Show Must Go On.” Let’s pray it is not “The Day The Music Died,” a reference to the infamous day, February 3, 1959, when musicians Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and “The Big Bopper” J. P. Richardson, and well as pilot Roger Peterson were killed in a plane crash near Clear Lake, Iowa.
Music has the ability to unite and heal—looking forward to the return of music tomorrow.
