Tuesday, March 17, 2020
The F Word: Musicians feel the pinch
Posted
By Frank De Blase
on Tue, Mar 17, 2020 at 12:49 PM
This past weekend, I didn’t go to the St. Patrick’s Day parade, with its doused-in-green, not-so-sober charade. Nor did I see Greg Townson do the duckwalk, with feeling on the ceiling. I didn’t go to London or France, so it’s safe to say I never saw anyone’s underpants. My cheers fell on deaf ears and bounced off empty halls’ walls. The Rochester music scene was a skeleton of itself. There was nothing to see, hardly.
In the coming weeks, a lot of musicians are gonna feel the hit from the panic surrounding the novel coronavirus. People are going to be wary about stepping out for a while, and there’s only so much you can do with a GoFundMe page. It’s gonna hit those in our music community for whom live performance is their lifeblood.
So I’m encouraging an impromptu “support Rochester musicians” initiative. Yeah, that’s the ticket. You can purchase their music online. Donate to virtual tip jars when musicians livestream their performances from home. Maybe offer to pay for pizza delivery or dry cleaning, or whatever. PayPal can be a musician’s best friend. Who’s with me?
Frank De Blase is CITY’s music writer. He can be reached at [email protected].
Tags: The F Word, Frank De Blase, opinion column, novel coronavirus, COVID-19, Image