New Years Eve with the Campers Club at Seacroft East Runton

Jacqui and I drove over mid afternoon to spend some time with Dan and Michele. I carried on to the club at 5:45ish and got the pass fob to open the barriers from Graham the manager. Soon got the gear in and looked out the window to see Nigel had arrived so I let him in, and Dave a few minutes later. The smallish stage in a corner is a bit of a challenge to set up the Bose but we eventually got going with Dave well forward, the Bose just behind him and Nige slightly hidden by the Xmas tree. No problems setting up but the room suddenly filled up at 7:45pm, so no opportunity for a sound check. I put my music on and then Jen and Laura arrived. We changed into the red and black and had just got going with set 1 when Jacqui arrived with Dan and Michele in tow. (Harriet was having a teenage party and Dan and Michele had been asked to go out for a while). I thought it would be a good night when the audience answered back "uuh huh" to Dave singing "Good Luck Charm". As the audience were enjoying a slap up feed, we picked and mixed through set 1 to play a more sedate repertoire and consciously leaving the Shadows Walk out altogether. We popped in the odd special request e.g. “Beautiful Body, Cheating Heart, Raining in my Heart” to keep the volume down but we opened up a bit as we got into the last 20 minutes of the set. We were going down quite well with a crowd determined to enjoy themselves and as the food was eaten they began to respond warmly to things like the “How Long” the Beatles, Seasons of Gold and the Hollies. We got the chairman and a couple of his guests up to play tambourines in “Mr Tambourine Man” and generally engaged well with the banter. Only problem for me was the lack of room between the people on my left and my guitar footpedal – I was being gently pushed back and the logistics of changing guitar settings was getting tricky – still its them that are paying! After an hour we stopped to let Grenville (The Chairman of the Camping Club) deliver his speech and then we took a break. My MP3 batteries had failed, so Nige put his music on and we both resolved to sort out better interval music progammes in the NEw Year. We resumed for Set 2 playing it fairly standard up to The Eagles and getting lots of dancing, then we did “White Xmas for the last time this year. The audience sang along really well and were well in the spirit of things. It was at this point we brought Grenville and his mates up to do the Shadows walk. It went down a bomb! Then we did the bad hand routine to bring Dan up to play “Rock Around the Clock” The old boy got a good round of applause! We carried on with the set including a well received appearance from Elvis to finish with, of all things, Shang-a-Lang which really got them bopping. Took a break and then resumed at 11:30 pm in the white for the final set. By the time we got to “Unchained” we only had a few minutes to midnight, so Nige did “Hippy Hippy Shakes”. I got the key wrong to start but picked it up as we went. Then it was time and we ushered in the New Year with “Old Lang Syne” (in C might have been a bit high for this crowd), “Okey Cokey, Knees Up Mother Brown and the Conga” Finally got to give Jacqui a New Years hug and then we played onto 12:30am with a mix of stuff e.g. Midnight Hour Shakin All Over, Saw Her Standing There. We got a fine response as we wrapped up with “Wonderful Tonight” and encored with “Great Balls” and “Johnny B Goode” A great night audiencewise. And apart from a few cock ups (mainly on my part) I thought we played pretty good. The management were well pleased. Then it was quick pack, load and off for Jacqui and myself because we were flying out to Thailand on New Years Day. We left Nige and Dave sipping coffee with Graham and drove back via Norwich getting in just after 3 am.

AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL YOU BLOGETTES AND BLOGATEERS

Boxing Day Show at Mundlesey Manor

We agreed to meet at the gig at 6:15pm and I allowed and hour and 45 mins for the journey. It was chilly as I set off but I was pleased that the sniffly cold I had been fighting was in retreat. The roads were very quiet and apart from an accident on the Norwich ring road I was hardly held up. So I rolled up at the Manor bang on time to see Dave’s van parked up and Nigel getting his last few bits in. The Manor is a big rambling hotel probably dating from Victorian times? I parked behind Dave and got my stuff into the foyer then we shifted our vehicles into the car park proper. As we moved the gear into the dining / concert room I realised that Dave had had a cold over Xmas giving him a decidedly nasal vocal quality. It is a fair sized room (by hotel standards) with room for several dining tables and a medium sized dance floor. The carpeted stage meant there was hardly any boxy echo but, thinking we had the potential to be a bit loud, we set up with the Bose well back and Dave well forward. There was a funny smell in the stage area, but I put it down to Dave’s bad stomach! However, all the gear worked well and, as there was no one there, we did a bit of “Just One Look “ as a sound check. “Much too loud” reported Nigel who had wandered out front. So we dropped the Bose master volumes a notch and Dave switched to brushes and we tried again. It was still a bit loud, but we figured with a few people in we would be OK. And so it was. As it was a bit of a hotel function do, we got changed into white shirts, black ties and black waistcoats – looking quite smart (but easily confused for restaurant waiters). When we came out to play there were only 3 or 4 people sat ready for the show; but the management had specifically asked for an 8pm start, so we got on stage and opened up with a very quiet “Foot Tapper” with Dave playing brushes instead of sticks. There were still only a few people sat there as we ended it so I took the boys into a quiet jazzy 12 bar to limber up. Quiet but played at a fair pace, we certainly got Nigel’s fingers busy in the bass solo! Following on Nige took the opportunity to take us through a quiet “Beautiful Body” and Dave turned out a couple of Jim Reeves waltz’s. During this quiet spell the audience started to arrive and we had about 20 in. We opened up a bit of banter with the audience and they were very responsive, even asking for 60’s stuff we knew (e.g. Needles and Pins), so we promised their requests would get played and got on with the normal set 1 with Dave back on sticks. We ran through nicely from “Just one Look” to “The Young Ones” doing some good bantering and getting a bit louder along the way. I had been distracted by how loud I was having to set the guitar on the Bose until I realised that the volume pedal on the Roland GT-10 was half way back, but that was quickly fixed. The audience had grown to about 30 at this point, mainly sat in rows (theatre style) facing the band across the dance floor. We slipped in a better paced “Rockin Around the Xmas Tree” and then “Three Times a Lady”. The ‘crowd” were still very responsive, so we did a good bit of audience involvement with the Shadows walk getting 2 chaps and a lady up to play the rubber guitars – this time I got the guitar sound right on the GT-10 and as I went out front I could hear that the band sounded pretty good; the whole thing going down really well! After a well appreciated “Seasons of Gold”, we followed up with a ‘bum clutcher’ (“Only You”) and got several couples up and dancing. Bottom grabbing sloweys had turned out to be the staple repertoire for getting this audience dancing. Then, as I switched guitar, Dave and Nige assembled a tambourine troupe to assist us on “Mr Tambourine Man”. We followed this with the Hollies medley and that got a great response as did the following ‘Mop Top’ Beatles sequence. After “Rock Around the Clock” I could see we had been playing for about 90 minutes so we brought the set to a close with “I Believe”. We retreated to the bar to top up on water and lime and then got changed into the red shirts. These looked very smart with the black ties and waistcoats and we were well received as we came back to play set 2. We opened with the usual sequence of the Searchers, Eagles and Beach Boys then threw in a slowey with “Raining in My Heart” and followed up with a great audience sing-a-along with “White Xmas”. Somewhere along the way we also did "Shine" and a couple of instrumentals with “Walk Don’t Wipe Out” and Flingel Bunt” - I stepped out front to do the Shadows walk again. We did a good banter sequence to introduce “Alice”; getting the logic right that Nige announces it and it is only as he explains the answer back expletive with an “Ffff” that Dave interjects with “You can’t do that here Nige!”. Anyway it all went down very well as did the Elvis routine a bit further on. After “Sweet Caroline” we wound up with “Love is All Around” and we got a great reception with some shouts for ‘more’ (it was getting late and it may have been that some thought we were finishing for the night). We had a short break and came back on for the final set opening up with “500 Miles” and running through to “Hi Ho” getting a great reception from our small but enthusiastic audience. We carried on with “Unchained” and “American Trilogy” and then a rare performance of “Dance the Night Away”. We were just thinking what to do next when someone shouted out for the Kinks and we impressively swang straight into “You Really Got Me”! By then it was fast approaching midnight so we continued into the ending sequence with “Pretty Woman” and a special request for “Wonderful Tonight”. We got a great reception for that so we encored with “Great Balls” to finish about 5 past midnight. A surprisingly good night considering the small audience! As we packed up the bad smell returned and the boys told me the stage was built over a sewer that occasionally leaked bad odours; but looking at Dave clutching his belly I think they were having me on! It was as we were packing up that Dave noticed he had used his Shure Sm58A mic rather than the Audix - which he had left lying at the front of his kit!! Got loaded up and Dave had some good feedback from the guvnor who was most impressed with the bands versatility and ability to hold the attention of a small audience. It was about 1 am as I set off in sub-zero temperatures. The roads were icy but quiet and I made steady progress home getting in about 2:45am but feeling surprisingly good!

Lowestoft Railway and Bowls – Waveney Norse Council Xmas party

Was it my imagination or was the weather getting warmer? It was certainly dark and drizzly as I drove over, but not actually freezing as it had been for the last month! I made steady progress arriving at 6:30pm after an hour and a quarter. Being there first I was able to pick my parking slot and soon got the gear in. I was just setting up the mains leads when in came Dave and Jen, followed closely by Mick (the “committee man” translates to concert secretary in these parts) who arranged for the dance floor to be cleared of the tables and chairs left there from the previous event. As I resumed set up, in came Nigel perversely wearing his fleece in the increasingly mild temperature. Mind you he did take it off after a band chorus of “You won’t feel the Benefit” (reminds me of a UB40 song). After a while everything was set up OK but, as we switched on, we ran immediately into feedback problems. This was mainly due to the setting changes I had made at the previous gig to push more of Dave and Nige’s vocals through my Bose. So I reset the cross feed volumes back to 12 o’clock, but it was still feeding back a bit and it was only when I spotted that the master volume on the Rolls mixer was also up at 1 o’clock that I could get rid of it. Basically, I could do with 15 minutes balancing the reverb and Rolls mixer settings in a hall one day! The place was filling up nicely so we omitted a sound check and Mick got the disco underway at a respectable volume, until Dave asked him to turn up one of his favourite tunes! Nige and I took refuge in the quiet bar. When Dave joined us he suggested that with only 2 sets to do and some serious drinking already underway, why not start with Set 2? We agreed to do this and dip back into set 1 if we needed it. As we returned to the concert room I took advantage of Mick’s absence to turn the volume down a tad on the disco and we went to get changed in the foyer leading to the indoor bowling green. With all the dressing room banter going on we lost track of time and were 10 minutes late on stage! We finally got going and opened up with the Searchers. It was very loud and quite dark on stage but the large audience seemed to be OK with it and we got a good round of applause as we kept the beat going and announced “Do It Again”. We played pretty much by the Set 2 book after that with the notable exceptions of “Rockin Around the Xmas Tree” (much too fast again) and “Shine” which got a good reaction. The audience seemed to like the band banter and they did a bit of dancing to the faster numbers, but they really came up in force for the first slowey: “Halfway to Waveney Norse Council”. Dave led us straight into the intro and after that, Dave and Nige kept the beat going while I did the announcement. That worked very well (we should do more of that in my opinion). However, we soon got thrown out of our stride by doing “Sweet Caroline” to precede the announcement for the “buffet is ready” and then trying to do the Elvis routine while the audience’s attention was diverted by food. Anyway, Dave hammed it up very well and it went down well with those watching. It was a hard audience to read. There was a vocal minority asking for fast numbers and then not dancing, whilst the silent majority really wanted slow dances so they could do office party bum clutching (or bottom grabbing as they say in posh places). We played a mix of material to the close of the set, including a good Shadows walk with correct guitar settings and a chorus line of parking attendants and then “White Xmas”; which I wrongly started in the key of D in the dark and so we had to continue in D! But they all sang along anyway. At 10:10pm Mick pointed out we were running over time so we bravely finished with “I Believe”. My fault for misreading the clock! Then we had a long break for awards and speeches. In the break Nige and I took the Bose volumes down a notch because we both felt it was too loud on stage. Before resuming with our normal set 3 show, Dave had organised us to do a request for “Peaceful Easy Feelin”. Nige took the lead, Dave the first harmony and with me on top it went down very well with the crowd. So well that the chap who requested it came up to sing karaoke on the house mic doing “Lying Eyes” with us! After that, up comes another fellow who wanted to do an Elvis number. He didn’t know any of our Elvis repertoire so we did one he knew: “His Latest Flame”. Nige and Dave did a great job considering they hadn’t played it at all before (I had played it a few times in Revival 18 years ago!). Of course the crowd loved all this and when we opened up Set 3 proper with “500 Miles” they were very raucously singing, dancing, clapping and stamping along. As we opened up with “Amarillo” a lot of people came up to dance the party dance sequence all the way through to “All Right Now”. But they looked a bit hot and bothered after that so we did “Unchained” and filled the floor again – this time with bum clutchers. So much so that we reprised “White Xmas” (this time in C) as another slowey that they could croon and dance along with Bob, Bing and Perry (Dave, Mog and Nige) and they did just that! By this point we were into closing time, so we did a spirited finish with “Merry Xmas Everybody”, and that went down so well that Mick asked us to do another. We chose to encore with “Pretty Woman”. Dave tried to sign off at the end but the remaining audience were a bit worse for drink so they were not sure what they were clapping for I think! All in all it was a good night for the band and several people came up to say how much they had enjoyed it. We got packed and loaded up quickly and were on the road by 12:50 am. Apart from slowing to avoid police attending a crash on the road near Beccles, I had a quiet run home under clear skies with no moon. It meant that the stars were very bright and town lights were visible for miles as an eerie glow on the horizon. Also the temperature had continued to rise in a light South West wind - it was over 10 degrees as I rolled into the drive just before 2am feeling strangely awake.

Norwich WMC

It was a very wet, windy and dark day. I set off at 5:45pm and there were a few large puddles to negotiate as I drove up past Thetford to pick up the A11 to Norwich. The traffic news wasn’t good: a tree had fallen across the road where the A11 meets the A140 in Norwich. Visibility was very poor as I drove on and the traffic news suggested diverting, so I took the A47 and went one junction North so I could enter Norwich on the Watton Road. Well by the time I got to the inner ring road the rain and wind was even worse and I wasn’t able to recognise quite where I was. The outcome being that I missed the turn to St Benedicts St and carried on right round the inner ring road to the railway station on the other side of town. So I carried on to complete a circuit of the city and eventually I found my way back and did my usual thing of making the illegal turn at Charing Cross to park on the curb near St Gregory’s Alley. No sign of the others, so I started making several journeys up the alley to get the gear into the club foyer. Odd I thought; I keep bringing the gear in and it seems like its not piling up in the foyer? It was Nigel! He was already loaded in and parked and he had seen my stuff arrive and was carting it up the stairs. We were both doing this in staggered stages so we never actually met until the end! I couldn’t find any on street parking, so ended up in a car park off Pottergate costing £1.60. By the time I got back to the club Dave and Jen were loaded in and Dave took off to look for parking. Got in the club and started to set up. Nige and I agreed to come forward with the Boses and push Dave right to the front to get good sound projection from another boxy stage.

I also set the reverb mixer to give a bit more of Dave and Nige’s vocal into my Bose. For those blogateers who are interested in things technical. Here is a picture of the reverb rack with Axon Guitar Synth on top, Rolls line mixer in mid and Lexicon MPX1 at the bottom.

The thick cable at the top leads to a stage box that Nige and I plug our Bose send and analogue returns into.

And here is my Bose set up - the T1 digital mixer shown in close up on the right.


We soon got things working and I remembered to save the existing Bose T1 Scene (where Dave’s vocal replaces the Bass Drum) as Foot Tappers Practice before reloading with Foot Tappers Live for the show. Once we got it working I thought the on stage guitar sound was a bit bassy so I reduced bass boost EQ and took a bit of treble off the mic EQ to close down a toppy ring from the mic. Dave did a bit of meeting and greeting while Nige and I finalised set up. You can just see Dave's kit amongst all the Xmas trimmings.

The bar man had been having problems with his (beer) gas, but that was conveniently fixed in time for us to have a lager before we got changed - into the red shirts with Xmas ties (courtesy of Kleenezy). We were a few minutes late starting off but soon got into our stride with the usual beginning. The on stage sound was OK if a little loud. But it looked like it sounded fine out front of house. The audience could hear the banter ‘cos we got some good response to our opening remarks about how Dave had organised some “Christmas Crackers” as we pointed out the lovely ladies dancing along to the band! We did an early “Rockin Around the Xmas Tree” which went well even if it was a tad fast for me. While we were at it Dave did “Winter Wonderland as a request for the blonde twins. We got a bit lost but all arrived at the end together. Carrying on with the show, we got the twins up to do the Shadow’s walk with the blow up guitars. Only problem was (yet again) I made the mistake of setting the guitar to 12 string rather than Shadows sound, so had this uninspiring bassy guitar sound to work with. Still it all went down very well. Changing to 12 string we went straight into the Hollies which I thought we played well and it got a good ,warm round of applause. Changing back to 6 string we did the “Mop Tops” which also went well. After “Rock Around the Clock” we were running out of time so we finished with “I Believe” which filled the dance floor and got a great response. Then it was off for a long break for Bingo. During the break I met a Scotsman at the bar singing I Believe". He loved the band and insisted on buying the round of water and lime I was getting in - what a good chap! Changing into the white we opened up Set 2 with the Searchers. After the Eagles and Beach Boys we did a stirring rendition of “White Xmas” which went down a bomb with this audience. Then we followed the usual sequence through “Alice”, “Moon of Love etc”, “Halfway to Paradise”, “Wonder of You” (Elvis made a much appreciated appearance and even hit the difficult high line at the climatic end of the song), Sweet Caroline” the Bay Cities and finishing off with “Love is all Around”. We took a shortish break before returning to do a 35 minute Set 3; playing the party dance sequence through to “All Right Now” (which got an unexpected great response) We only had a few minutes to go so we wrapped up with “Merry Xmas Everybody” complete with Nige in Noddy Holder hat. I thought we played and sang it pretty good and it got a great response with lots of shouts for more, so we encored with “Unchained” to another great response. As we came off we got a lot of complimentary remarks on the show and there was even talk of us coming in to do Xmas Eve. We politely declined, but Phil (The concert sec) was pressing Dave to agree to Xmas Eve 2009 as we packed up. The rain had almost stopped as we brought the cars round for load up. Rather than risk delay with the fallen tree, I made my way back the way I came in and then had a quiet run home getting in about 2 am.

Practice at Skeyton

A very cold day. I made good progress to the hall and negotiated the sodden field to the door arriving bang on 4:30pm. Dave was just setting up. He had had a bit of a nightmare collecting the key, so he had only just got the heating on. I kept my fleece and scarf on as I set up; the heating didn’t lift the cold that much! Dave and I had time to run thru a request for Saturday night “Winter Wonderland” and had just started sorting out “Shine” when Nige arrived. He soon got his gear in so we could ‘shut that door’! Ran thru “Shine“ several times. Dave’s vocal range has improved since he gave up smoking so he wasn’t sure which line to sing, but eventually he settled for the lower one on the verse and chorus and the higher one in the coda. Despite it sounding straightforward, “Shine” has an unusual chord sequence that is difficult to remember. After many play throughs I still have trouble remembering the chords while I’m concentrating on the harmonies and just need it to be played through many times until it gets delegated into the fingers. Poor Nige has to sing it through everytime and because he can’t help doing the intro to Lulu’s “Shout” at the end so it is quite wearing for the boy’s throat (just hope he doesn’t do it on stage). Eventually we moved on to a bit of maintenance on the Searchers agreeing a less hasty start and a short transition into “Needles and Pins”. Then we played “Travelodge California” to exercise the solo. “Winter Wonderland” was next on the agenda and that seemed to go OK in the key of C. Had a tea break and started work on “Nowhere Man”. Although we could get harmonies going well enough, they were not the right harmonies. I think Dave and I would have settled for that last year, but thank goodness Nige makes us go that extra mile to get it right nowadays. So we tried various versions out before agreeing we needed to research it further before we take it forward. We then focussed on some maintenance improvements to the current Beatle medley. Nige and Dave reviewed timing and rhythms for “8 Days a Week” and “Can’t Buy Me Love” and then we spent quite a bit of time getting the timing of the drum entry right for “I Feel Fine”. Dave is also to remember to sing the hi-lo melody on the first word of the lead line phrases e.g. Baby becomes (hi) Bay (lo) Bee. Next we ran thru the Xmas trio “Merry Xmas Everybody” Dave takes the hi line Mog takes the lo line and Nige will be in Scotland …, “White Xmas” Dave to croon the first line on his own and “Rockin Around the Xmas Tree”, a tad slower with a swing please! We fooled around with “Girl from Ipanema”, "Wanna Make Those Eyes" and some Eagles stuff before we moved on to do a bit of maintenance on “Crazy Little Thing” Nige doing the hi lines on the answer backs. Dave playing straight under the guitar accents in the verse and we all will remember to stop on the F in the middle 8. After another couple of runs through “Shine” we closed off with a review of “Wonder of You” agreeing Nige to take the hi line on the girly answerbacks and some attention to the dynamics. Loud beginning, soft verse rising to attack the end of each verse; soft under guitar solo with a climax in volume during the final section and coda. With freezing fingers we packed up. Had an uneventful run home listening to Bob Dylan’s Theme Time. Outside temperature dropped to -1 as I got home at midnight.

Dave A's Retirement Bash at Parish Hall Marks Tey

I encouraged Jacqui to come along so she could meet Dave A’s wife Rita. We set off at 4:45pm but I made a significant overestimate of the time to get there as we had an uneventful cruise down the A14 and A12 getting there far too early at about 5:50pm. We had a quick drive round Marks Tey to see if we could get a cup of tea to no avail, so I rolled back up at the hall and loaded in. First impressions were good. It is quite a big hall with a big stage surrounded by curtains (but not as big as the Central Hall Wymondham). There is a very high roof over both the stage and the hall and the medium echo sounded kind to vocals. I was just loading in when Dave A and Rita arrived, followed shortly after by Dave and Jen. Rita set about organising the room with tables and Jacqui bagged one near the stage for the band.

Set up went smoothly, it was a pleasure to be able to get behind the Bose and Reverb units to plug stuff in without adopting the stance of a contortionist. By the time Nigel arrived (having come through Sudbury) I was about set up. It didn’t take Nige and Dave long to complete their set up and I had a brief listen to their mic sound out in the hall before putting on my background music. Now the strange thing was that, although the sound carried as it should, it was a little on the soft side. I thought this would be easily catered for by turning the master volume up one notch so we did that.

Rita gave Dave our playing times and I set up my spare SM58 mic for speeches. Red shirts, white ties and a couple of cans of Carlsberg later we were ready to go. We opened set 1 up with the standard start. The volume on stage was quite loud so we eased back a little and progressed right through to “Apache” when we got Dave and Rita up to the front of the dance floor to do the Shadows walk. That went down really well but after “Only You” we only had time to do the Hollies medley before it was time to wrap up for the buffet. Mind you I thought we sang the Hollies well and we got a big round of applause for it. When we came off Jacqui said the harmonies were really excellent and the overall sound very good. As we grabbed some sandwiches Dave A said much the same but he added that it could be a bit louder. Discussing it with Nigel we concluded that the curtains were absorbing a lot of the sound and we should have positioned the Bose further forward and to the middle of the stage (like we did at the Jubilee Hall a few weeks previous). It was too late to do anything about it so we would just have to soldier on and maybe turn the master volumes up a bit more. This we did, but it was really loud on stage as we played through a mainly standard set 2. We had a few up and dancing in this set and the bantering was working very well with all three of us contributing strongly. After the Eagles we played a request for a Drifters song with “Save The Last Dance for Me” in D. Dave and I did some pleasant backing vocals to accompany Nige’s lead lines (some of which were made up) and we got a good round of applause for it. After Alice and Elvis made a brief visit to the building, we got the crowd up and dancing with the Bay City Rollers and “Sweet Caroline”. Then we did a new routine - the damaged hand scam! Nigel howled holding his hand in pain as we started “Somewhere Under the Sun”. Dave and I stopped playing to ask if there was a ‘Bass Player in the House!’ Of course we volunteered Dave A to do it; so he came up to play while Nige took Jenny for a turn round the dance floor. Dave did a fine job considering he wasn’t prepared and Nige came back to help us close with “Love is all Around”. But at the end of it I spotted Rita had just started dancing; so we did an extra slowey for her, playing “3 Times A Lady”. Had another break and met up with some of the muso’s attending. By the time we started Set 3 there were only about 40 minutes to do. Dave and I got on stage and got a beat going when in danced the ‘flying scotchman’ - wearing the kilt. So we took time out to do a verse of “Nigel Where’s Your Trooosers” before starting “500 Miles”. Then we played right through the party dance sequence to “Hi Ho”. A highlight being Jenny helping Nigel out of his kilt without him missing a note! We only had a few minutes left at this point so we did “Pretty Woman” to close the show and “Unchained” as the planned encore. But we got such a good response that Dave A asked us to do one more – so we did a spirited version of “Merry Xmas Everybody” earning a great crowd reaction to finish the night on a high. Everyone we spoke to said how much they enjoyed the band and what great vocals we had. We handed out several cards. Then it was the long pack and load up on a very cold night. Jacqui’s mic stand monkey covers got some nice comments from one of the muso’s wives as we packed up. And Dave did plenty of talking to the muso’s while the rest of us worked so fast that we were loaded by 12:30am. But it took another 5 minutes to de-ice cars before we finally got going. We formed a convoy to negotiate the A12 and A14 at a steady 55mph with Dave peeling off on the A140 and Nige on the A1088. Jacqui and I got in about 1:30am feeling alert enough to have some cocoa before retiring for the night.

Trimingham Caravan Park

Jacqui was accompanying me to East Runton to meet up with Michele for a visit to the Cromer “End of the Pier” show, so I agreed an early departure time of 4:15pm to take account of Friday traffic and dropping her off. In the event we got away at about 4:25pm and had a slowish run right through to Sheringham where we came across a sign saying the coast road was closed. I arrogantly assumed it was a joke or admin error and tried to get through; but there were some serious barriers across the road so I had to turn back and go right back up to the main road and divert round via Manor Farm. It was a bit later than we planned when I dropped Jacqui off but I had a time to say a quick hello to Dan via Skype. Michele explained there was a burst water main that had closed the road. I carried on to Cromer but there was another diversion – this time for a street Xmas party “Bah Humbug”! Nevertheless, I made good time from Cromer to the gig getting there for about 6:50pm. Nige arrived shortly after and Dave 5 minutes later. While we waited for Andy to come and unlock I handed over some e-ciggie refills to Dave that the band had acquired to pay him back for phone calls and misc’ dressing up trimming expenses. Andy eventually let us in but warned that the site had been very quiet and he didn’t expect many in. Mind you parking up was still a problem with a couple of residents cars in the way! We got unloaded and started setting up. We were using conventional gear to avoid the problems of mounting the Bose off-stage. Nige was using his Behringer with an EV 15” cab for bass and I was using my Mesa Lonestar for guitar and the “old” PA for vocals etc. In the week I had bolted in a TC Electronics Voiceworks unit into the PA rack to provide reverb under control of the usual PA footswitch. Only trouble would be that the indicators on the Voiceworks were very discreet so I would have to pay special attention to reverb changes. Although I had brought the Roland synth, I decided to omit strings from this performance to reduce set up time and see how we got on without it. We got the PA all working without too much trouble (Nige had to lend Dave a monitor lead and the pots on the monitor needed a bit of tweaking) but the sound wasn’t great and I ended up fiddling around with the enhancement and equalisation, eventually getting an semi-acceptable middley sound that didn’t feedback too much. The guitar sounded good but the Mesa gives a much more dynamic response than the Bose meaning I would have to play more subtly to avoid big spikes in guitar volume. We ran through a bit of “Just One Look” and Nige took a step out front to listen and reported that the sound would pass muster. The room was relatively empty so I calculated that the bit of toppy feedback we were close to would be absorbed as people arrived. We had a round of beers (on the house) and I briefed the boys that we would exercising some less often played numbers from our reserve repertoire on the night. The audience had grown to about 20 around the bar area as we started off set 1. The sound was different and maybe a tad loud, but we got used to it as we played through to “Good Luck Charm” without incident. At this point we departed from the usual by doing a good rendition of “Peggy Sue”. While we were ‘off piste’ I got the boys to do a couple of instrumentals with “Walk Don’t Wipe Out” and “Flingel Bunt”, to which I had a Shadows dance to so I could assess the sound – it was OK and yes I could do the walk to it! Then we did “Raining In My Heart” as a slowey and I thought we played and sang it well considering it hadn’t been aired for a while. We carried on mixing, matching and bantering our way through the set doing the usual 12 string 60’s stuff and following up with a good “How Long” (it got a good round of applause), a presentable ”Rockin Around the Xmas Tree” and a nicely paced “Blue Suede Shoes” complete with solo key change to try and baffle Nigel – but he was right there with the B to A! We finished off with “Three Times A Lady” without strings and it worked well enough. We took a break and took on board water and lime (on the house again!) and had just resumed with the opening chords to “Travel lodge California” when in came Jacqui and Michele; I was able to blurt out a quick hello and then we were into the song which we played well. Of course Jacqui and Michele gave it a good round of applause - it was just like having a reasonable sized audience again! The Searchers medley was going well up to my wrong chord as I forgot the key change to “Don’t Throw Your Love Away” which threw Dave out on vocals. But we soon got back on track and carried straight on with a good performance of the Beach Boys and Eagles sequence before departing again from the usual order with a ‘Take That, Take This, Take The …… Other’ tribute to Morrisons supermarket: “Shine”. This went quite well considering Dave and I are still trying to gel on harmonies. We followed up with “If You Had a Beautiful Body” and “Dance the Night Away” which both swang along nicely. I had a bit of finger trouble on the solo but I don’t think anyone was counting! Then we did a subtle “White Xmas” before we got back on track with a longer Elvis routine featuring both “Can’t Help Falling” (Dave nearly missed the key change) and “The Wonder of You”. After “Sweet Caroline” we did the Bay City Roll and wrapped up with “Love Is All Around”. We were just able to say hello to the ladies and hear about the jolly good pier show, when we realised we only had half an hour to go. So we got rapidly back on to do an alternative soft rock session including: “Can’t Get Enough, All Right Now, The Wanderer, You Really Got Me, Rockin All Over The World, Bony Maronie” before wrapping up with “Merry Xmas Everybody” and “Shakin All Over” spot on midnight. After doing a couple of ritual shouts for “More”, Michele said her goodbyes and got on her way back home. Dave was working the small crowd and with Jacqui helping me to pack up, I was nearly loaded before Dave had even thought about packing up his drums. In fact Nige and I took a bet on whether he would ring Jenny to come out and help or he would leave it ‘til the next day. In the event he did pack it up (surprisingly quickly) so we called the bet an honourable draw ;-). Jacqui and I got off about 12:50 am leaving Dave and Nige to continue the glad handing. Had a good run home getting in about 2:15am.