Late last year, the Primavera Sound festival trialled a very promising test at a venue in Barcelona that turned up positive results for the live music industry's eventual full-scale return.
The festival gave rapid Covid tests to the 463 attendees at at the Sala Apollo venue and took other precautions and all went according to plan, with no new incidences of the virus occcuring following the gig.
Now, a much bigger gig has taken place in the Spanish city after 5,000 people took rapid Covid antigen tests before attending a gig at the Palau Sant Jordi arena by indiepop band Love of Lesbian.
It's the largest 'normal' gig (i.e. with no social distancing, etc.) to have taken place in Europe in the past year.
Spanish authorities gave the all-clear for the experimental gig to go ahead, in a bid to see whether rapid testing could pave the way for large gatherings of this kind.
One fan said: "We were able to evade reality for a while. We were inside our small concert bubble. And we were even able to remember back in time when things like this one were normal. Things that nowadays aren't that normal, sadly."
And while it seems that gigs like Crowded House's tour of New Zealand are pie-in-the-sky at the moment, scenes like the below give you hope....
