“Force majeure” was a phrase I first heard during the legendary “Blizzard of ’93,” when snow clobbered the Southeast. Having grown up in Colorado and Pennsylvania, I was pretty underwhelmed by the six inches of snow that shut the state down. Snow cancelling a show was nothing new in other parts of the country, but in Georgia? I remember being on the phone with one band’s booking agent, who muttered “force majeure” and said the show being cancelled was nobody’s fault. But what about a pandemic? No one was prepared for this past March, because a pandemic is the exact thing described in the literal definition of a “force majeure”—an event that could not reasonably be foreseen or anticipated. And we the people had our asses handed to us.

The week before this Algiers show, the energy in Atlanta had begun to feel a bit odd. It started that Monday when I saw Wire at the Variety Playhouse. Later that week they were to be in Austin, which I knew only because I had designed the poster for the show. That night as I watched them onstage, it occurred to me that Wire was never going to make it to Texas. My Spidey sense tingled. That Wednesday, I walked my 8-year-old daughter to school, and her teachers appeared to have a hard time making direct eye contact with anybody. Everything in the school felt off. In a very vague sense that week, I felt like a boa constrictor had been slowly yet deliberately draping all over my arms and legs, waiting for the exact moment to strike. Then in one fell swoop. Everything. Stopped. That was the week leading up to the Saturday night at 529 with Algiers.

Thinking about the last Algiers show makes me reflect immediately on all the actual firsts from that week. It was the first time a band’s booking agent had contacted me every single day leading up to a show. I’d been working with Algiers’s agent for over half my life, and for the first time in all those years, he reached out to me daily. “How are things looking there?” “Is the club still open?” “Has anybody asked for a refund?” Each day he touched base, and each day I responded that the show would, in fact, go on. As the promoter, the way I looked at it, there was no reason to cancel. Yet.

The other first from that week was that the lineup changed a total of five times. The bill was confirmed back in January, but in the week leading up to the show, bands hopped on and off the bill at a rate I couldn’t keep up with. Brooklyn-based Nordra were the direct support and were the first to leave, on Tuesday, and then local openers Shepherds bailed on Friday. I detected a trend. Little did I know how prescient this all turned out to be. Other local bands joined and then ducked out in a blur over that week. I still remember each band: W8ING4UFOS, Vangas, Small, and A Tower To The Stars. Flyers were updated at a furious clip. The one band (other than Algiers, mind you) that didn’t cancel was the newly formed Atlanta band More. Their appearance at 529 that night happened because their show down at the EARL had fallen apart. So of course when they offered to play at 529 instead, I clung to them for dear life.

The night of the show, I had been lingering around the club starting around sunset, and the vibe at 529 was clearly off. Once I saw Lee and met the other fellas from Algiers, I sensed a pall of collective resignation. Not resignation about the show itself, but rather resignation to the impending worldwide collapse, which held heavy in the air. Few find it surprising that I’m a complete germophobe, and the night of that last Algiers show only amplified my concerns. Shaking people’s hands. Whisper-yelling into friends’ ears. Opening the bathroom door. Scratching my face. On a good day, walking into a rock club is a dicey experience, but going into 529 on the cusp of a pandemic felt indescribably reckless . . . like being high off bathtub crank in a high-speed car chase without a seatbelt.

A little bit about the club: 529 is a 250-capacity room nestled at the crossroads of the East Atlanta Village. Although I love many rooms in town, 529 is the ideal venue: it has a great PA, good lines of sight, and plenty of places to duck away to smoke weed. Aside from being a promoter for this show, I also hold the proud distinction of being one of the club’s owners, so perhaps my take on 529 could be considered a bit biased. When I originally booked the show back in the fall, I had anticipated Algiers would play to a packed house. Elbows and shoulders rubbing against each other. The life force of interaction, humanity, and sexuality celebrated at a rock show. My idea of a good night out. Yet given the gravitas of what was rapidly enveloping us all throughout the week, the show itself was absolute perfection. Poetry. Blood. Throb. Sweat. Flesh. Vigor. The entirety of the human experience. C’mon, it’s what we all live for! Or at least I do.

As you’ll hear on this recording, Algiers’s performance was completely off the rails. Not a single one of us in the room that night could have known we were at the flash point of a global pandemic. Much like the preceding week, everything about the show felt very off script. Altered. Splintered. Distorted. Damaged. Muted. I never felt the instinctive groupthink mindset of, “Oh, this is what we do when this sort of thing happens.” Far from it. The only comparable time was the week of 9/11, but this was entirely different. The Tuesday night of 9/11 made the streets in Atlanta a ghost town. However, by that Thursday, the city felt like it had dusted itself off and moved on. For me, though, I was still in a fog. It wasn’t until around 10 pm Thursday night that it dawned on me that I had a show to put on that night across town. Even by that threadbare comparison, 9/11 didn’t prepare any of us for what Ye Olde Covid-19 Pandemic Nightmare of 2020 would do to all of our internal wiring. Since March, we’ve heard it a billion times: “Things will return to normal.” Sure, but how long will that take? Given the rudderless leadership and deceitful misinformation from our dubiously elected officials, I have very little faith in our government coming to help us. However, consider me an evergreen optimist. When this is all done, I’m convinced the power of we the people will shine through, and I remain convinced we will take care of each other no matter what.

Enjoy this recording of those who decided to sing while Rome burned. I was there. Sure, it was another day at the office, but one unlike any before or since. I’ll remember it forever. Soak it up."

– Henry Owings '21