(Image Source: Wikicommons)
Music legend Van Morrison is pushing back against government social distancing regulations, and says that COVID shutdown rules are based shaky “pseudoscience.” The 74 year-old multiple Grammy Award-winning singer believes that the raft of oppressive government rules could ruin the live music and hospitality industry.
The Irish entertainment icon launched a new campaign to “Save Live Music”, calling for society to resume normal capacity gigs and concerts, saying that, “I call on my fellow singers, musicians, writers, producers, promoters and others in the industry to fight with me on this.”
“Come forward, stand up, fight the pseudo-science and speak up.”
Morrison has already scheduled ‘socially-distanced’ gigs in England during September, but says this shouldn’t be confused with mindless compliance.
“As you know, we are doing socially distanced gigs at Newcastle Upon Tyne’s Gosforth Park, Electric Ballroom and The London Palladium. This is not a sign of compliance or acceptance of the current state of affairs, this is to get my band up and running and out of the doldrums. This is also not the answer going forward. We need to be playing to full capacity audiences going forward.”
Using Closures to Promote Vaccines
However, the establishment is also cleverly using the controversy to promote the unpopular effort to vaccination the global population with an experimental COVID-19 jab. Billionaire music mogul Sir Andrew Lloyd Webber has offered himself up as a volunteer for the much-hyped “Oxford vaccine” for COVID. Lloyd Webber announced that he “would do anything” to get theaters open again for his productions.
Just completed the Oxford Covid-19 vaccine trial. I’ll do anything to get theatres large and small open again and actors and musicians back to work. – ALW #SaveOurStages @nivassoc pic.twitter.com/pIcYZJPLps
— Andrew Lloyd Webber (@OfficialALW) August 13, 2020
Government lockdowns and arbitrary social distancing has already cost the global music industry billions of dollars in revenue. Concert giant Live Nation recently revealed that its revenues collapsed by 98% in the last financial quarter.
The six-month shutdown has also cost the industry more than $10 billion in corporate sponsorships, and also threatens to put tens of thousands of established music venues out of business permanently.
READ MORE COVID-19 NEWS AT: 21st Century Wire COVID Files
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