Some days, a lot of things happen. On this particular day, five (or more) big things have happened that have been covered on this blog! Days such as this are referred to as banner days, and this is one of them.
Five of GHEA’s January 22nd events happened in the concerts corner. Blog favorites Emerson, Lake & Palmer provide us with two concerts occurring fifteen years apart. In 1978, they were impressing audiences in Chicago at the International Amphitheatre as part of their Works Tour. In 1993, they were at Massey Hall in Toronto on their Black Moon Tour, reestablishing themselves as forces to be reckoned with for a new generation of listeners.

In 1980, Rainbow kicked off the German portion of their Down To Earth tour today in Hannover. While there’s no concrete recollections of what happened that day, there’s a recording floating around on the internet.
Gary Moore was also onstage on this day in 1983, wowing a Tokyo audience alongside his Corridors of Power Tour lineup. Recordings of this concert show that it was a good ‘un for sure.
Two members of this lineup, Ian Paice and Don Airey, were out in force on this day in 2006 in a little band called Deep Purple, playing a concert in Barcelona in support of recent album Rapture of the Deep.
(As of this writing, Don Airey performed at three of the five listed concerts, which has to be some sort of record for Banner Day continuity).
Technically, the sixth counts as a concert as well, though technically a “premiere” of a new work is a bit different. Either way, January 22nd, 1934 was the day upon which Dmitri Shostakovich introduced the world to his second opera, Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk. Though it received positive views for the moment, a particularly harsh critic two years later managed to make life very difficult for Shostakovich, to put it lightly…
You can read more about each of the following topics below:
- 1934–Dmitri Shostakovich’s Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk premieres
- 1978–Emerson, Lake & Palmer perform at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago
- 1980–Rainbow perform at Eilenriedehalle in Hannover, Germany
- 1983–Gary Moore performs at Shibuya Kōkaidō in Tokyo
- 1993–Emerson, Lake & Palmer perform at Massey Hall in Toronto
- 2006–Deep Purple perform at the Pavelló de la Vall d’Hebrón in Barcelona
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- Edit on 2020-09-10: Optimized for new site.
- Edit on 2021-01-22: Added Rainbow concert. Formatting update. Note on Don Airey’s robust touring activities added.