The Zoo announce ‘Anti-Social’ physical distancing concert series

Socially distant gigs are coming to Australia, sooner than you think.

Brisbane’s iconic live music venue The Zoo rolls out its Anti-Social run of shows from July 11th, featuring kick-arse local and grassroots acts performing in a reduced-capacity room.

Anti-Social is the brainchild of The Zoo owner Pixie Weyand, who is taking a safety-first attitude to these first, post-COVID gigs.

The Zoo

The Fortitude Valley venue typically holds 500 punters. But not during this pandemic. Initially, the site will open its doors to 100 punters, twice each night, in line with the Together Again dates trialed recently in Auckland by Live Nation.

“I was adamant that we weren’t going to open until 500 people were allowed back in the venue, we survive on those bigger shows,” notes Weyand.

“Generally, 100 people in the venue for us is a financial loss so it took a bit of adjusting to make sense of it all and change my mindset.”

The popular venue, which has hosted performances from Nick Cave to The Church and many more over nearly three decades, will be among the very first to open for business since the coronavirus crushed the live music industry.

“We have no choice but be creative and think outside the box,” adds Weyand, “I want us as an industry to look forward and move forward as productively and safely as we can together with the information and resources at hand.”

She continues, “As a venue we don’t have the luxury of time to sit tight and wait, every week that goes by we go further and further backwards.”

First up, homegrown hip-hop act Butterfingers will perform on opening night. A program of 30 acts are booked in across July, August and early September, featuring Bugs, Resin Dogs, Asha Jeffries and others.

Anti-Social 2020 Program

The Zoo’s series of scaled-back shows come as Australia’s live community forms an alliance with the sports sector on the Live Entertainment Industry Forum, which will develop industry standard guidelines around the reactivation of concerts, from cleaning and sanitisation, to crowd management, social distancing, health monitoring and contact tracing.

LEIF was unveiled on the heels of a A$325 million recovery and relief package proposed by Live Performance Australia, which federal government has yet to approve.

In the meantime, a cadre of artists, companies and industry leaders have signed an open letter, calling on Canberra to help where it hurts.

Pixie Weyand

An assistance package for the entertainment industry is said to be in the works. For for venue owners like Weyand, the long wait and the uncertainty could kill-off live music.

“Right now,” she says, “we have no idea what the future holds or when restrictions might lift or go back to normal, for our survival we need to absolutely work with what’s in front of us together and as an industry we need to be agile, creative and flexible otherwise we will remain stagnant or even worse be forced into silence for good.”

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.