Andrew Marino for Vox
The only concert I actually got to see in person this year was sold out. But a sold-out show in a parking lot filled with cars is a much different scene than a typical sold-out indoor or outdoor venue show. Especially when that show is a drive-in concert held in the middle of a pandemic.
In October, I watched the cult-favorite heavy metal group GWAR perform live in the parking lot of the Diamond, a baseball stadium in Richmond, Virginia. GWAR is beloved by their fans for their over-the-top concerts, at which they wear grotesque costumes and put on skits about having sex with babies in between performing singalong anthems like “Fuck This Place.” I’d never seen the band before; scatological humor and thrashcore aren’t really my thing! I don’t think I ever expected to find myself here seeing a band known for spraying fake human (or alien) blood on the audience, on a pitched-up stage atop concrete, amid honking car horns and a backdrop of bleachers an