Tags: concert

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Sunday, October 31st, 2021

Four days

I had an extra long weekend recently. It was four days of being a culture vulture. It was also four days of ever-increasing risk assessment.

It began on Thursday morning with the first Salter Cane band practice in eighteen months. That was pretty safe—three of us in a room, reminding ourselves of how the songs go. I honestly thought it could’ve been a disaster and that I wouldn’t remember anything, but thanks to a little bit of last-minute revision the evening before, it actually went really well. And boy, did it feel good to plug in and play those songs again.

Later that day, Jessica went up to London. We spent that evening in the Royal Opera House, watching a ballet, The Dante Project. We wore masks. Not everyone else did.

Checked in at Royal Opera House. Ballet time! — with Jessica

The next day, the indoor gatherings continued. We went to the IMAX to see Dune. The opportunity was too good to pass up. It was wonderful! But again, while we wore masks for the duration, not everyone else did.

Checked in at ODEON BFI IMAX for Dune: The IMAX 2D Experience. D U N E — with Jessica

Still, I reckon the ventilation was reasonably good in both the Royal Opera House and the BFI’s IMAX cinema. But that evening we checked into the Clayton Crown Hotel in Cricklewood, venue for the Return To London Town festival of Irish traditional music.

Checked in at Clayton Crown Hotel. Return To London Town 🎶🎻 — with Jessica Checked in at Clayton Crown Hotel. Matt Molloy and Sean Keane 🎶 — with Jessica Checked in at Clayton Crown Hotel. Afternoon session 🎶☘️

That’s where we spent two days going to concerts, sessions, and workshops, all of them indoors. The music was great, and we had a lovely time, but I couldn’t help but feel a sense of nervousness throughout.

When we got back to Brighton, we both took lateral flow tests—thank goodness that these are freely available! We were both negative. We had dodged a viral bullet.

That was the last trip out of town we’ll be making for a while. But even for Brighton-based activities, this is the routine now: weigh up the risks, decide whether an activity is worth it, and if so, testing afterwards.

For example, the week after our trip to London, the Wednesday evening Irish music session at The Jolly Brewer pub started up again here in Brighton. It was one of the things I missed most during The Situation.

I wrote about this at the very start of the first lockdown:

I’m quite certain that one positive outcome of The Situation will be a new-found appreciation for activities we don’t have to do. I’m looking forward to sitting in a pub with a friend or two, or going to see a band, or a play or a film, and just thinking “this is nice.”

I certainly did find myself thinking “this is nice” during the session, which was as wonderful as I had remembered. But I was also thinking about ventilation, and distancing, and airflow. Like I said:

Risks. Benefits. Running the numbers. Making decisions. Trying to do the right thing. Trying to stay safe but also trying to live life.

Monday, January 6th, 2020

20/20 Visions Review - Brighton Source

Here’s a write-up (with great photos) from the truly excellent gig that Salter Cane headlined on Saturday night.

The high praise for all the bands is not hyperbole—I was blown away by how good they all were!

Wednesday, February 13th, 2019

Tinnitus Tracker

Rob has turned his exhaustive spreadsheet of all the concerts he has attended into a beautiful website. Browse around—it’s really quite lovely!

Rob’s also writing about the making of the site over on his blog.

Friday, April 20th, 2018

The Real Music Club presents Salter Cane, The Equatorial Group, The Organ Grinder’s Monkey Saturday 28th Apr 2018 | The Brunswick

Mark your calendars, Brightonians: one week from tomorrow, on Saturdaay, April 28th, come and see my band Salter Cane playing in The Brunswick.

We will rock you …in the most miserablist way possible.

(Also, The Equatorial Group sound pretty great.)

Tuesday, June 14th, 2016

Amsterdam Brighton Amsterdam

I’m about to have a crazy few days that will see me bouncing between Brighton and Amsterdam.

It starts tomorrow. I’m flying to Amsterdam in the morning and speaking at this Icons event in the afternoon about digital preservation and long-term thinking.

Then, the next morning, I’ll be opening up the inaugural HTML Special which is a new addition the CSS Day conference. Each talk on Thursday will cover one HTML element. I am honoured to speaking about the A element. Here’s the talk description:

The world exploded into a whirling network of kinships, where everything pointed to everything else, everything explained everything else…

Enquire within upon everything.

I’ve been working all out to get this talk done and I finally wrapped it up today. Right now, I feel pretty happy with it, but I bet I’ll change that opinion in the next 48 hours. I’m pretty sure that this will be one of those talks that people will either love or hate, kind of like my 2008 dConstruct talk, The System Of The World.

After CSS Day, I’ll be heading back to Brighton on Saturday, June 18th to play a Salter Cane gig in The Greys pub. If you’re around, you should definitely come along—not only is it free, but there will be some excellent support courtesy of Jon London, and Lucas and King.

Then, the next morning, I’ll be speaking at DrupalCamp Brighton, opening up day two of the event. I won’t be able to stick around long afterwards though, because I need to skidaddle to the airport to go back to Amsterdam!

Google are having their Progressive Web App Dev Summit there on Monday on Tuesday. I’ll be moderating a panel on the second day, so I’ll need to pay close attention to all the talks. I’ll be grilling representatives from Google, Samsung, Opera, Microsoft, and Mozilla. Considering my recent rants about some very bad decisions on the part of Google’s Chrome team, it’s very brave of them to ask me to be there, much less moderate a panel in public.

You can still register for the event, by the way. Like the Salter Cane gig, it’s free. But if you can’t make it along, I’d still like to know what you think I should be asking the panelists about.

Got a burning question for browser/device makers? Write it down, post it somewhere on the web with a link back to this post, and then send me a web mention (there’s a form for you to paste in the URL at the bottom of this post).

Thursday, March 24th, 2016

Salter Cane, The Self Help Group, Thursday 31st March - Brighton Source

Salter Cane play a dark, melancholic folk-rock, full of doom and darkness, murder and mayhem.

If that sounds like your idea of a fun time, come along to the Latest Music Bar in Brighton next Thursday.

Sunday, December 25th, 2011

British Sea Power

Oh, this is good! British Sea Power are doing a monthly residency at The Haunt in Brighton. I’ve got my ticket for the first show.

Thursday, July 15th, 2010

CASH Music: Calexico

Download Calexico live in Nuremburg, licensed under a Creative Commons attribution non-commercial share-alike license.

Wednesday, April 9th, 2008

Black Cab Sessions

This is the very definition of an intimate gig: a song in the back of a London cab.

Thursday, October 18th, 2007

Trendwhore » Win & Regine Join Springsteen on Stage [VIDEO]

Arcade Fire and Bruce Springsteen together at last.

Tuesday, June 12th, 2007

www.myspace.com/rumblestripsuk

And the Hackday band is.... The Rumble Strips. Never heard of 'em. But they sound like they could be fun.

Wednesday, March 21st, 2007

Flickr: adactio's photos tagged with lastfm:event=97947

Yes, there is a reason why I'm using this machine tag. Watch the next release of Last.fm for machine tagging goodness on events.

Wednesday, January 17th, 2007

Bringing it all back home

Given how much I travelled last year, you’d be forgiven for thinking that I’m leading some sort of transient lifestyle. But Brighton is where I spend most of my time and quite often it’s as eventful here as anywhere else on the globe.

There’s the renowned Brighton music scene, for example. I’ll be contributing to its vibrant ecosystem next month. Salter Cane will be playing a concert at The Joogleberry Playhouse on February 25th, which is, incidentally, my birthday. If you’re in town, come along and celebrate. You can add your name on Upcoming or Last FM.

On March 2nd, I’ll be giving an Ajax workshop. I’ve given workshops before in London, Manchester and Sydney. This time I’ll be doing it on home territory. Not only will it be in Brighton, it will be in the Clearleft office building, right in the middle of the trendy North Laine. If you’re interested in coming along (and helping me celebrate the release of Bulletproof Ajax), sign up before February 12 to get the early bird discount—£100 off the full price!

Thursday, November 2nd, 2006

Microformats - Audioscrobbler

More about the microformats that can now be found on Last.fm.

Friday, October 14th, 2005

Tom Vincent Photography - Salter Cane

Pictures of my band. My, what a grim-looking lot we are.

Sunday, August 7th, 2005

U2's City of Blinding Lights

William Gibson gives a first-hand account of U2's redristribution of the future.