Wave Machines - Day Three

After recovering from the disappointment of P.Doc's no-show, we load ourselves back into the van and head off to Brighton via Portsmouth, where we drop off some Strange Death of Liberal Englanders and manage to catch last orders in 'The Duck', or was it 'The Dog'...? Maybe it was both. Anyhoo, we make it to Brighton at about 3am and pass out within minutes.

Brighton is one of our favourite places to play. Apart from being a lovely place with a vibrant arts scene and about 20 times more sunshine than Liverpool, the friends we stay with are fantastic and really know how to look after us. They make us a delicious meal which we devour after soundcheck, and their kids demand a performance of Punk Spirit. Tim obliges and we have a lot of fun turning a dinner table into a percussion set and the kids sing along to the chorus, bless 'em. We miss out the swear word.

Before the gig there are photo shoots to attend, so we get to mess about on the rocky beach and then, when it gets dark, we go to the fairground, but it's closed. Bugger.

We have played Brighton a few times this year and rather pleasingly, the audience keeps growing. By the time we jump on stage the place has filled up nicely. There's even some folks who've travelled down from London because they had to miss our Hoxton gig - good on you! The gig itself is brilliant, one of the most fun shows we've played this year, but we notice our sound man keeps looking over to the side because the venue has one of those little noise activated light meters on the wall. If the band make all the LEDs light up for more than a few seconds, the power is cut to the stage, but luckily we made it through the gig with all of our 240 volts still intact.

The audience then convinces us & the venue managers that an encore is necessary, so we start up ''Water Dries Upon Her Back'. Halfway through the tune, we're obviously enjoying ourselves too much, it's getting louder and the power cuts out. Gutted, Carl raises a middle
fingered salute to the gods of electrical audio judgement, but all in all, it was a good way to go...

We're then taken out for some drinking practise and introduced to a drink called Tuacca (or something like that) which is only available in Brighton pubs - it's very nice. Things start to get fuzzy...