I miss attending concerts! Sold out arenas and clubs may be a thing of the past as the fear of spreading coronavirus or any virus has caused us to step back from our fellow humans. Thanks to the current COVID-19 Pandemic, all concerts have been cancelled/postponed until the Covid Curve has been flattened. Once life returns to “normal”, and I use the term loosely because we just don’t know what the “new normal” will be after we all crawl out of our shells, I fear that the concert experience will be very different from the past norm. 

Attending rock concerts or any type of live music performances is not an easy endeavor in Misawa, Japan, even during “normal” times. Living in northern Japan is a very remote experience. Misawa is a small farming community and the biggest cities within a three hour drive or less are Aomori, the prefectural capital, Morioka, and Sendai. As you have probably surmised, not many bands have Misawa on their tour list…and that includes Japanese bands! So to see a live show, a person has to drive three hours to Sendai or two to Morioka. Of course, it is faster to take the train and when you include tolls and gas, it is about the same cost. A lot of big rock acts play Tokyo, but Tokyo is an eight hour drive and it is definitely wiser to take the train. The Shinkansen will get you to Tokyo in three hours, but it is expensive. The best way to get to Tokyo is to fly and sometimes you can get a pretty cheap round trip flight which makes it more than worthwhile and easier on the bank account! 

But it is worth it!

The concert experience from learning when a band is in your area to buying the ticket to preparing for the show to listening to your favorite songs or the bands new music to arriving at the venue to buying a t-shirt and spending that couple of hours embroiled in the live music experience pressed together with fellow music lovers…priceless! But I fear that the experience will be different when we emerge from our COVID hibernation. Time will tell.

To help the wait, check out these clips of my 2019 concert experiences. The videos were shot on my iPhone, so sound and image are not professional quality, but it is live music! Here’s to hoping live music makes the comeback we all eagerly look forward to… Enjoy!

© 2020 Gregory Vessar. All Rights Reserved.

Clip #1 Slash with Myles Kennedy and the Conspirators at Shinkiba Studio Coast in Tokyo, Japan Jan. 17, 2019.

Clip #2 Halestorm at Club Quattro in Osaka, Japan Dec. 4, 2019.

Clip # 3 KISS at Morioka Ice Arena in Morioka, Japan Dec. 14, 2019

© 2020 Gregory Vessar. All Rights Reserved.