IQ announce live stream in the wake of cancelled gigs

UK prog rockers IQ have announced they'll stream a live show from their recent Resistance tour for fans to make up for two shows they were due to play this coming weekend.

The band had been scheduled to play at Uden in the Netherlands and Nancy in France. Of course these have now been cancelled as a result of the recent Covid-19 lockdown measures.

“I know it was beyond our control, but we’ve never had to cancel a gig before and it didn’t really sit well with us, especially as we knew so many people had made travel and accommodation plans for the shows," guitarist Mike Holmes tells Prog. "I’ve seen quite a few artists doing various lockdown videos from their homes which is a great idea, but it’s not really going to work with the IQ setup.

"As luck would have it we recently played two gigs in Germany and the first one at Aschaffenburg was filmed and recorded for our own archives. The video footage wasn’t quite what we hoped it would be so we had no real plans to do anything with the files, but with this whole lockdown thing in place for the foreseeable future we figured we’d try to do something to show in place of the two concerts in May. The set list for the Aschaffenburg show was pretty much the same that we would be playing in Uden and Nancy and as it’s the entire two and a quarter hour concert it seems kind of appropriate for the moment.”

The live stream will take place on Friday 22nd May at 20:00 GMT. The link will appear on the IQ website and will be available for the following week to make sure that everyone has the chance to see the show. There’ll also be a live chat with members of the band during the initial stream.

Writer and broadcaster Jerry Ewing is the Editor of Prog Magazine which he founded for Future Publishing in 2009. He grew up in Sydney and began his writing career in London for Metal Forces magazine in 1989. He has since written for Metal Hammer, Maxim, Vox, Stuff and Bizarre magazines, among others. He created and edited Classic Rock Magazine for Dennis Publishing in 1998 and is the author of a variety of books on both music and sport, including Wonderous Stories; A Journey Through The Landscape Of Progressive Rock.