LCD Soundsystem release statement, "we're playing tonight," amid Omicron surge

UPDATE (12/19): REMAINDER OF RESIDENCY CANCELLED.

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Original post…

A few NYC venues have closed temporarily amid the surge of the Omicron variant in NYC over the past couple of days, and tours in the city and elsewhere have begun to be postponed and cancelled as cases surge. Among the shows that are still set to go on, however, are LCD Soundsystem‘s Brooklyn Steel residency, which on Friday (12/17) is in its 17th night out of 20. LCD have now released a statement about going ahead with the shows, beginning, “we’re playing tonight.” They say that they’d considered cancelling the remainder of the shows and acknowledge that “people were going to get very, very angry at us regardless of what we did.” They also give ticketholders the option of a refund, saying, “you need to make your own decision as to whether you feel safe coming to see us. if you don’t, you can go to axs.com to get your money back. you’ll be first in line for tickets the next time we play in nyc. we won’t hold your money, or reschedule… you just get first crack next time there’s a gig here.”

Read LCD’s statement in full below:

we’re playing tonight.

we’ve had a lot of discussions and stress about this amongst ourselves, and we’ve decided to play again tonight. but we feel like we have to make some things clear here, so we’re writing this out to whomever is planning on seeing us.

for starters, we’ve all known that there are risks playing these shows. when we planned them, we thought we’d be in better shape, covid wise, by now, but it didn’t pan out, so we’ve been in a bubble together for months, our families, our crew. but we play in a room of thousands every night, so we know there are risks. we know that we and our team (and the team at brooklyn steel), in many ways, face the most risk of getting sick, just by virtue of being at every one of our 20 shows.

but we said we would play, and people are coming, so we are playing.

but let’s be very, very clear—we are not saying by playing that we think it’s not a place you can catch covid or anything else, really. it’s become clear that more and more people use soft data like “see? this sports team is still playing in front of fans!” to assess whether something is risky or not. i get it, but that seems nuts. us playing the show is in no way an indicator that it’s safe to attend.

yesterday, we all got to the venue and talked about cancelling. i was almost sure we would. but it seemed very last minute. we talked about asking/requiring guests to wear masks (which we did, to very little effect). we talked about how people were going to get very, very angry at us regardless of what we did. we learned that almost 50% of the tickets bought were from out of town, so there are people who’ve traveled, booked hotels, etc., to see us. they would likely be very, very irate if we cancelled all of the sudden. there are people who will be angry at us for playing, as well.

so here’s what we’ve decided:

you need to make your own decision as to whether you feel safe coming to see us.

if you don’t, you can go to AXS.com to get your money back. you’ll be first in line for tickets the next time we play in nyc. we won’t hold your money, or reschedule… you just get first crack next time there’s a gig here.
if enough people want to cancel, we’ll cancel the shows and refund everyone, putting you next in line as well.
it’s the best we can come up with.

please, please, please do what’s best for you, your health, your families and your community. we’ve all had to think about that a lot. we will play again, so don’t worry about these particular shows.

we’ve been so happy that so many of you wanted to see us, and we’ve been having a great time playing for you all in our (well, most of our) home city. we will either play these last three shows on the 19th, 20th and 21st, or we will not, depending on what the majority of you all want to do.

thank you for listening.

lcd.