A few weeks ago, I spent £27 on a record with the enticing title Live Drugs. I bought it because I am a fan of its creators, the Philadelphia-based rock group the War on Drugs, and also because I was in the midst of a pandemic-related phase of insomnia and anxiety and it seemed to offer the prospect of a bit of uplift. But the main reason was the prospect of some kind of reconnection with something I almost seem to have forgotten: live musical performance, and what it’s like to hear and watch a band with a multitude of other people.

Live Drugs was recorded in an array of places across the world over a period of five years; one review called it “a grand love letter to live music”. Its best moments suggest a kind of inarticulable dialogue between the group and its audience, something heard most spectacularly on the 12-minute evocation of 21st-century living titled Under the Pressure, when thousands of people passionately sing along not with the words, but the guitar part. They sound like a football crowd.

It takes a lot of human labour to create a moment like that, and right now all of that work is in a state of suspended animation. People who earn a living seeing to sound, lights and the transport of people and equipment are either unemployed or doing another job. Something similar applies to the string and horn players often hired by successful bands, who also play in orchestras and ensembles. The advertising sections of music magazines and Sunday supplements are smattered with announcements of gigs and concerts scheduled to take place from the spring onwards; having written off 2020, the people behind the UK’s summer festivals seem to be tentatively starting to put next year’s run together. But no one knows for sure if any of these events are actually going to happen.

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