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The Coronas have spoken of their misfortune of sharing a name with the coronavirus epidemic that is currently sweeping the world.
The spread of COVID-19 has seen many gigs, events and festivals cancelled across the globe in order to prevent further infection, with a number of countries completely quarantining themselves.
Irish band The Coronas are currently on tour in Dubai, where they spoke to NME about the “surreal” nature of recent events.
“Dubai are taking a lot of different precautions in the airport and even in our hotel,” said the band’s frontman Danny O’Reilly. “A lot of big shows have been cancelled, but ours is a smaller venue with about 600 or 700 people.
“It’s just got to a whole new level in Ireland. We’re thinking that they may do a full lockdown and there’s concern that we might not get home, but we’re aiming to get back on Monday. No one really knows or can predict what’s happening. Everyone’s living day by day. It’s unfortunate for us that we have such an unfortunate band name. That throws another weirdness into the mix.”
The band, who released their fifth album ‘Trust The Wire’ in 2017, said that they too had been hit by forced cancellations and were worried for the future.
“We’re the same as any other band,” said O’Reilly. “We’ve had concerns about what’s going on and we’re 99% sure we have to cancel our upcoming American tour. We also might have to postpone our upcoming show at Shepherds Bush Empire in May. A lot of people have it worse than us.
“We were chatting to some other bands out here in the same boat and I was like, ‘Yeah, but at least you’re not named after the virus’.”
Would they consider change their name given the recent events?
“We haven’t even thought about it,” replied O’Reilly. “We’ve been around for five albums and this is a new disease. It’s having a big affect on everything and it’s a hard one to judge. If we were a brand new band I’d say, ‘Absolutely, of course’. We haven’t considered re-branding. Who knows what affect this will have?”
Hey @corona beer! So what’s your plan? Asking for a friend
— The Coronas (@TheCoronas) March 12, 2020
Still, the band have tried to see the funny site of their own situation – going as far to tweet the beer brand Corona for advice.
“Someone mentioned that maybe we should do a co-headline tour with The Vaccines,” said O’Reilly. “Twitter has been going crazy, and we just asked Corona the beer what their plans are. The memes started coming in when this all started coming in and we wanted to take the piss out of ourselves, but because there are people dying and so many at risk, it’s a tough one.
“Sometimes when serious things like this happen, it’s good to look at it from a lighter angle. Everyone is in trouble, but all we can do is laugh at our name because it’s not ideal.”
Keep abreast of the latest events cancelled due to coronavirus here.
The post The Coronas: “We have such an unfortunate name” appeared first on NME Music News, Reviews, Videos, Galleries, Tickets and Blogs | NME.COM.
