Crying at the Club

This week I got misty eyed watching a live stream of a Blink-182 Halloween cover band.

Image ID: Two Blink-182 album covers. The first one with a blond bombshell type nurse putting on a blue medical glove in a sultry but threatening manner. The second is a painting of a smiley face wit exes for eyes surrounded by black painted arrows on a blue white and pink background.

This week I’ve been researching live streams- specifically streams in small venues. If an artist is big enough to tour arenas, you can usually find someone who is planning to live stream the show from their phone by diving deep enough into Twitter or Instagram. I’ve had a great time watching live streams of My Chemical Romance and Fall Out Boy. And I’m late to the party, but I just found out that King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard are streaming their tour for free on their YouTube, a move I would be thrilled to see other bands adopt. I hadn’t spent much time with King Gizzard before, but rest assured I’m about to get extremely into them.

Also: Check out their policy on bootlegs and harm reduction, both extremely cool.

But though I treasure these arena streams, they doesn’t really fill the void left by going to small local shows. So when I found myself watching a Halloween cover band playing as Blink-182 on a gritty feed looking at a dusty black club stage, I felt myself tearing up a little.

Image ID: The interior of The Melody Inn crowded with people in leather jackets and dyed hair. The stage is lit green and covered in banners for different bands.

Punk Rock Night Indianapolis

“Punk Rock Night the longest running weekly Punk Rock showcase on the planet, operating since the year 2000. Our weekly shows are at The Historic Melody Inn in Indianapolis every Saturday. All of our Saturday night shows at The Melody Inn will be on a live feed. The Feed usually starts right at 9:10pm”.

The audio quality was not great, but it was still listenable and enjoyable. The image quality was somewhere in the middle- better than a phone camera, not as good as an arena pro-shot stream. But it didn’t need to be. The camera positioning was good and the stream was stable. Best of all they have a clear, consistent streaming schedule.

I still miss being in the room. But watching this stream of a little venue did a lot to soothe that ache, so I’ll be tuning in again. And for all I miss getting to be there live, it was amazing to get to watch a show and not be fighting against the pain I would be in if I was there in person.

I’ll keep researching this topic as well, so if you have other streams you know about send them my way, and let me know if any of y’all want to hop on a stream together.

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