The Prime Minister's announcement of a ban on gatherings of more than 100 people ended Friday's last hopes for artists to perform, producers to organize and spectators to thrill. The concerts are over for a while. Or almost. This morning or in the wake of his speech, the cancellations fell one after the other ...
The main cancellation of the day concerns the Printemps de Bourges. It will be formalized in the coming hours. The first major music festival of the year was to be held from April 21 to 26. Again on Thursday, Gérard Pont, his boss, hoped to organize it by adapting the rooms to the restrictions of 1,000 people. “Almost 40,000 tickets were sold. As long as the prefect does not prohibit us, we maintain. We will advise before launching the assembly site for the festival in early April. But with less than 100 people, this is obviously no longer tenable.
In France, most rooms stopped
This Friday, the bad news continued. The two biggest world turners, Live Nation and AEG cancel all their current international tours in progress or next (including that of the reformation of Rage Against The Machine) but also the promotional arrivals in Paris of their foals (like Dua Lipa or Tones and I ). The Banlieues Bleues festival is stopped, the Guitares au Beffroi festival canceled. The Chatelet theater cancels the last of “A Room With A View” by Dj Rone, from Olympia to the Coopérative de Mai via the Seine Musicale, in Clermont-Ferrand, most of the rooms are stopped. Even the Record Store Day - the record store celebration - is postponed to June 20, the day before Music Festival.
At the Prodiss, professional union which brings together the producers of shows and the owners of halls, you lose your Latin. "With this new restriction, almost all concerts are potentially canceled," said a spokesperson. But we will not communicate until next Wednesday. We are awaiting the results of the audit that we launched a week ago to find out precisely the percentage of cancellations and their economic impact. "
Voices are rising to ask the Ministry of Culture for the creation of a solidarity fund like the one that followed the attacks in November 2015. "Everyone is touched, even the smallest rooms, worries Live Tonight , a platform that puts CE and individuals in contact with musicians. Even before the last announcements, we had to cancel 500 work contracts. The intermittent performers, musicians and technicians alike, are very worried about not collecting enough fees to renew their intermittence. ”
"We don't want to give in to psychosis"
At Live Nation France, which has many artists on the roads, we cancel concert after concert, day after day. But "we don't want to give in to psychosis". "We are doing everything to find a new date for canceled concerts and we continue to sell tickets, we are told. Until further notice, the Afropunk (July 11 and 12 in Paris), Lollapalooza (July 18 and 19 in Paris) or the Stade de France by Lady Gaga (July 24) festivals are maintained. ”
At 100 spectators maximum, the solutions found in recent days by several artists to play anyway - like Van Morrison and the group Nada Surf, who had made 2 concerts of 1000 spectators instead of one in the same evening - are obsolete. Even the singer Yseult, who hoped to keep her concert behind closed doors this Friday in Bordeaux and broadcast it on her Facebook page has been accused by the authorities. A final solution, to multiply the concerts in apartment.