Salad Undressed – Antenna Studios, Crystal Palace

This was a very exciting day for me. Somehow, somewhere, I had heard that Marijne and Paul from Salad were getting back together for a one-off acoustic set. SOUTH of the river!

Salad split up in 1998 having left behind two fantastic albums – Drink Me and Ice Cream – which I still play to death.

Despite living within a couple of dozen miles from Crystal Palace all my life, this was the first time I had been here. As a big radio and TV nerd, seeing the main TV transmitter in the middle of the town was quite exciting for me!

I’d met Marijne before when we invited her down to the radio station to record a session with her new short-lived band, Cowboy Racer. That band released a couple of singles in 2004 and an album in 2011, and then split.

I said hello to Marijne before the gig and amazingly she remembered me from that day five years ago! We had a good long chat before her set and I managed to persuade her to come in with Paul for another session, which was great work all round for us.

The band were billed tonight as the MB’s (the Merry Babes was the band’s name before they renamed to Salad in 1992) but they changed to Salad Undressed pretty quickly after that, which is why I’ve used that name in this post.

The evening was put on by Idle Eye, half of which was Dan Laidler from Tiger. Their single Friends still earworms into my head far more often than a 20 year old song should, and I went looking for him too but was told he wasn’t around.

So good to see them live again. And … more Salad is coming. I’m very happy about that!