Maskonomics

Do you ever feel like you're CRAIG T. NELSON in POLTERGEIST and everyone around you is the developer who moved the headstones but didn't move the graves underneath your house? "Whyyyyyyyy?"

The ruling by a federal judge on Monday that ended the United States' mandate for masks on planes and public transportation probably isn't going to directly affect the average touring band, which generally isn't using planes, trains or buses to get around, but indirectly it's going to make it a lot harder for them to ask their audiences to mask up or expect their audiences to do so on their own. The headstones, so to speak, have been moved. The virus has not.

"In just the last two weeks," DAMON & NAOMI's DAMON KRUKOWSKI wrote Tuesday, "there have been announcements [about positive Covid tests] from BARTEES STRANGE (Apr 2), CAR SEAT HEADREST (Apr 3), LOW (Apr 8), SUPERCHUNK (Apr 9), CIRCUIT DES YEUX (Apr 11), BRIAN JONESTOWN MASSACRE (Apr 14), SPOON (Apr 14), JON SPENCER (Apr 16), SEA POWER (Apr 18) and BOB MOULD (Apr 18)." And that's just one musician's social media feed. As Krukowski was publishing, CROWDED HOUSE's NEIL FINN was checking in with a positive test from Australia, forcing the cancellation of the final four shows of that band's tour, and metal warhorse LAMB OF GOD was announcing frontman RANDY BLYTHE's positive diagnosis in Grand Rapids, Mich. But Lamb of God was planning to go through with Tuesday's show in Grand Rapids anyway, with CHIMAIRA singer MARK HUNTER filling in for Blythe. Respect to the solidarity between metal bands, which will spare Lamb of God a big economic loss and may give its fans something special to remember. That option isn't available to most bands. For most, the economic loss is the only option. And potential health issues aside, this is an economic story.

Mask and vaccine requirements aren't delivering repeated blows to the live music economy. The disease itself is. Those canceled tours, STEVE ALBINI wrote Tuesday, are "ruinously expensive." Albini's message to fans, in a thread explaining why his band, SHELLAC, is heading out on tour after a long string of postponements: "I want you, potential gig goers, to appreciate how definitely *not* over it we are, and how we will not get to over it without commitment from everybody to a few basic things, done as a matter of human decency out of consideration of other people... Wear a mask. Please."

It isn't just bands who face losses when someone in their orbit gets a positive test. "It hurts everyone: venues, staff, crew, etc.," the FUTURE OF MUSIC COALITION tweeted. And too many artists, desperate after two years of little or no work, feel they have no choice but to accept bookings where there are no mask or vaccine requirements, which only increases the likelihood that they, too, will soon face the bad news of a positive test. Actually, the Coalition specified "festival" bookings in that tweet. Are you listening, COACHELLA?

Krukowski laid out the economic consequences in further detail in his post, "Masks Are Off," and contrasted it with recent rosy pronouncements about the state of live music from LIVE NATION and AEG. That contrast, he wrote, "is stark. I know there have always been iniquities in the music business. But this is extreme." Festivals, he noted, can endure individual artists canceling—COACHELLA seems to have endured the loss of one its headliners this year with little problem—as can big promoters and agencies. The losses are local and individual they can be painful. Now cooking, Krukowski wrote at the end of his post: "Matzoh, the bread of affliction."

In Variety, my friend JEM ASWAD talked to BRIAN LONG of KNITTING FACTORY MANAGEMENT, who said he's seeing anywhere from one to five postponements *every day*. Read that again. "The solution lies with us," Aswad wrote. "Mask up."

Hi Hi Hi

A reading/listening guide for the 20th day of the fourth month of this or any year: Classic cannabis songs from the Jazz Age... A short history of LOUIS ARMSTRONG and the vipers... How weed culture evolved through hip-hop... How did weed and country music get so cozy? (That link is vintage, from 2013; the country conversation got really weedy circa 2013-14)... Classical cannabis... 4/20 time signatures... Rolling Stone's greatest songs about weed... Billboard's weed anthems ranked by potency.

But Also

How rock'n'roll broke up with booze and drugs... Creating while clean... And the Sober 21, a beautiful package of essays put together by the Creative Independent from musicians including NILE RODGERS, MIX MASTER MIKE, ANNIE TRUSCOTT, TYLER POPE and DARRYL "DMC" MCDANIELS.

Rest in Peace

Flutist, composer and bandleader JOSÉ LUIS CORTÉS, aka EL TOSCO, father of the Cuban dance style timba and a giant of 20th century Cuban music. He was a member of the influential bands Irakere and Los Van Van but made his most lasting mark with his own group, NG La Banda, which popularized (some would argue invented) timba and had a long run of hits in the late 1980s and 1990s. NG La Banda "transformed Cuban music in the '90s," musician and musicologist Ned Sublette, who released NG's early music in the US on his Qbadisc label, wrote in his newsletter announcing Tosco's passing. "One of the greats is gone"... Master luthier RICK TURNER, who helped build the Grateful Dead's iconic Wall of Sound, co-founded the bass and guitar company Alembic and designed Lindsey Buckingham's signature Turner Model 1 guitar... R&B singer RODERICK "POOH" CLARK of '90s group Hi-Five, which had a US #1 pop hit with "I Like the Way (The Kissing Game)"... Canadian rock singer/songwriter/guitarist JERRY DOUCETTE, best known for his band Doucette's late '70s albums.