Regular readers will know that I usually attend quite a few rock concerts each year. I actually had several lines up for 2020, but they were all cancelled for obvious reasons – and there would have been more. But, by God, am I missing them right now!Joe Bonamassa was cancelled completely. Bad Touch was rescheduled for April this year, but I reckon it will get cancelled again. Hollywood Vampires and George Thorogood were both rescheduled for later this year, but the jury is out on those right now. Most artists are currently scheduling in 2022 at the moment.Planet Rock is my go-to record station. You can find it on DAB, on 105.2 FM in the West Midlands, and on digital TV (0110 on Sky, 924 on Virgin, 730 on Freesat). It’s also available through Android, iPhone and iPad apps. You can also listen online by clicking the image at the top of this article.
Another good source is NOW 70s on Sky. Right now it is on Channel 361 (but it tends to move around a bit depending on Sky’s fairly regular channel reorganisations, and also available on Virgin and Freesat). If you catch it right, there’s lots of rock and punk, but if you get unlucky, there’s far too much disco. I mean, as everyone knows, the best decades for music were the late 60s and the 70s – up until disco ushered in the 80s. And as everyone also knows, the 80s onwards was absolutely crap for music – though if you really must, there is a NOW 80s channel, too (there’s also a NOW 90s, which is worse still, and there were others – but music was so crap in those decades that they were cut, hence Sky’s last channel restructuring around the music channels).Some bands have been doing livestreams during lockdown, and a good place to find out about those is through ENTS24, which is one of the sites I use to find out about upcoming gigs, and where I often book tickets. You can choose which bands or music types you are interested in, and you get immediate and advance alerts of upcoming gigs, often with presales (click beyond the home page). Gigantic is another source of such advance warnings (again, click past the home page to get detailed information).
Then, of course, there good old CD, DVD, and BluRay (and streaming). You can get any band you want that way in whatever format you prefer. I get most of mine from Amazon.