As NSW gears up for a potential Blues whitewash next Wednesday night as State Of Origin game three proceeds unfettered by the current outbreak of the highly contagious Delta strain of Covid-19 that’s been seeding its way across the nation, Peking Duk are scrambling to figure out what the hell to do about their Winter In The Domain concert, which was supposed to be going ahead this Saturday.
The show will definitely have to be postponed, as Sydney’s lockdown looks sure to be extended past Friday night’s two week deadline and uncertainty remains over just when live music will be allowed back again regardless, and the Duk have taken to social media tonight to communicate as much to fans.
However, that’s not all they’ve communicated. Fed up with the double standards that politicians have been consistently applying to sport vs live music throughout this pandemic, the EDM duo have opened up a can of verbal whoop-ass on the PM and his cronies.
In a powerful, lengthy statement shared across their socials, Adam Hyde and Reuben Styles take aim at ScoMo’s bungled vaccine rollout and ensuing lockdown de ja vu across the nation, resulting in yet more rescheduling nightmares for the already decimated music industry.
“It feels strange to be writing this while the rest of the world seemingly returns to normal, holds events, travels freely and yet Australia who was leading the way with their response to Covid-19 is in yet another lockdown,” the pair writes.
“16 months ago we locked down, it made sense – why overrun the hospitals if it was avoidable. 12 months ago, we locked down, It made sense – we need to protect our loved ones, we need to protect those that are at the highest risk of Covid-19. In December 2020, 7 months ago – we locked down… this made sense, because again it had not been enough time to vaccinate the vulnerable and safeguard those who are at risk.
“Now in July 2021, with Australia firmly the worst performing country in the OECD for fully vaccinated adults the music industry is facing more uncertainty, more cancellations, more postponements. America can have events, because 45% of their population is vaccinated. Australia with around 7% fully vaccinated cannot.”
Their fiery statement continues:
“We were doing so well.
At the end of 2020, beginning to plan shows for the end of 2021 we thought, surely.. surely the federal government will get this right.. Well no, they got it so horribly wrong and with their terrible planning, terrible roll out it brought more border closures, more lockdowns and less and less events, music festivals and a huge amount of uncertainty to the industry we love.
It doesn’t have to be this way, Sport seems to be doing well – thousands of people were at Suncorp stadium in Brisbane while music venues in Melbourne (with zero covid cases) were left with no dancing policies and operating at hugely reduced capacities.
When will live music be afforded the same luxury as other events? When will we get the green light from the government so that we can tell our crew who have been out of work since March 2020 that they can return to some form of normality.
Scott Morrison has a 4 part plan but there are no dates, there are still no answers. Just another piece of his marketing puzzle so that when people ask what the plan is he can say “oh well we have one..its 4 parts!!”???
So we are left scratching our heads. Should we postpone our shows to the end of the year? Should we postpone them to next year? Will things even return to normal next year with this snail paced vaccine roll out and ever evolving strains of the virus.
The music industry wants answers, The entertainment industry needs answers or unfortunately more and more very talented musicians, very talented lighting designers, very talented sound engineers to say the least will get tired of the uncertainty, they will move on to more secure jobs and the music industry might not ever be the same again.
TL:DR Because the federal government royally fucked this vaccine roll out, it means less gigs, less travel, more uncertainty. We are working on replacement dates/plans for our Winter in The Domain show this weekend and hope to update you as soon as possible.”
You can check out the full post below.
We’ll bring you any more info on replacement dates for Peking Duk’s Sydney show once we hear about it.
View this post on Instagram
