We had fun, especially when we covered two very different songs: Tim Buckley’s Song To The Siren and Tubeway Army’s Are Friends Electric?

While we were playing, Brighton was getting covered in a blanket of snow. Instruments in hand, we trudged home through the transformed white landscape. A cold end to a good night.

The Gilded Palace have been putting on gigs in Brighton for years and they’ve always been very kind and generous to Salter Cane. For the gig in The Albert, a limited run of special commemorative posters where made, listing all the bands who ever played under the banner of the Palace. Salter Cane were in there along with many visiting bands that we have played support to.

I remember the first Gilded Palace of Sin concert I went to, not long after moving to Brighton. The mighty Flophouse Jr. were playing upstairs in The Lift (now The Hope). The support band that night was a local band called Caramel Jack.

Since then, Salter Cane and Caramel Jack have formed a kind of mutual appreciation society and we relish any chance we get to play together. That’s why we think our next concert will be quite special.

On Thursday, December 17th, Salter Cane and Caramel Jack will be playing at The Prince Albert. It will be a festive affair …well, as festive as a bunch of miserablists like us are likely to ever get.

We’re looking forward to it and we hope to see you there. Together, we can raise a glass to the memory of The Gilded Palace of Sin. And then we will rock.

If you’re in Brighton and you’re wondering what to do after crawling around town in the guise of the recently undead, come along to The Prince Albert on Monday night. There, you can thrill to the sinister sounds of Australia’s own The Drones, ably supported by Salter Cane.

We promise a night of swampy reverb for all. See you there.

Anyway, you can listen to:

1. The album Salter Cane and
2. The EP Black Swollen River.

Services like Spotify and Last.fm are starting to change the way we interact with music. As recorded music moves from being a scarce, expensive resource into something ubiquitous and free, the value of live music gets ever greater.

But you don’t have to just believe me. Here’s Bill Drummond delivering an excellent talk called The History of Music, Part 19. Yes, it’s kind of pretentious and no, being in the KLF doesn’t automatically mean you’re an expert on music, but this is well worth a listen.

A few frantic phone calls later and Jamie’s girlfriend’s sister’s boyfriend Ben had provided a replacement. Simple! Now all we had to do was set up and soundcheck without a sound engineer…

All of the earlier hassle was soon forgotten however. We were playing two sets that night and although the first set took a little time to warm up, by the time Chris was switching over to electric guitar it was clear we had the growing audience’s attention. We’d rehearsed a ton of material, but luckily Chris is a prolific enough writer that we now have plenty to choose from.

We broke for a rest after 45 minutes, coming back with our current favourite cover version, Roy Orbison’s ‘In Dreams’. Finishing the night was exhausting; three big numbers in a row, starting with ‘Wicked Boy’, which the audience lapped up, urging us on with their grateful response through the frenzied ‘Amelia’ and ‘The Truth is Nothing’.

Not satisfied with an hour and a half of Salter Cane, they had us play an encore too, and another was being asked for even as we staggered away from our instruments!

So, thank you Lewes, for making us feel very welcome indeed. Now, next time, if you could just sort the weather out…