Lowestoft Ex Servicemens Club

Got off about 5:15pm, another cold windy day. Had an uneventful trip to Lowestoft and caught sight of Dave’s van as I approached the club. So I followed him into the car park and parked up. Dave was accompanied by his roadette Jenny. But she had had a fall in the week so Dave was meant to be doing the bulk of the shifting. A few minutes later Dave Ainsworth and his wife Rita arrived and then the club opened up. Jenny and Rita both helped us in with the gear despite my warnings on “health and safety”. We got set up on the small stage OK. I passed Dave some armoured leads for his mic and monitor so we could omit the snake. Dave A had his Trace Elliott 2x10 rig and it sounded just fine. We knew we had to keep the volume down and we sound checked briefly with “I Feel Fine”. All seemed OK so I hoped we would be in for a good night with a revised set listing. The 2 Daves were on new books. I had printed out the new running order, but I had left it in the car – bad mistake! Had a couple of beers while the bingo was on and we got changed and ready to go at 9pm. Had a slightly tentative start to set 1 but it was all working well by “Good Luck Charm” and we had a few folks up and dancing already. We got such a good dancing response to “3 Times A Lady” that we improvised “I Love You Because” as a follow up waltz. So far so good. The on stage sound was fine. Dave A was sitting back in the mix which was OK but we expect he will grow into it more as he gets familiar. The PA sounded a bit grainy to me but people had no trouble hearing what we were doing! We proceeded on with the set. I included the “Walking In the Rain” medley which Dave A followed well considering we hadn’t done it for a bit and I had taken over Dan’s parts. We got some good audience singing back response in places! On the whole Dave and I were bantering well enough together in this set. Tried the Shadows walk on my own with “Apache”. It is certainly better than nothing but It will be good to get back to the synchronised bit which always draws a good response. Did the rock’n’roll and finished off with “I Believe” to close a fair performance that had gone down well. After a break for water we got on for another hour to do set 2. This started off OK with “I Feel Fine” and the Eagles medley, but then we started to make some poor decisions on departures from the running order. Dave and I had been suffering with colds in the week and voices were a bit strained by now. Also I had started to miss not having the new running order in front of me and couldn’t get the announcements out quite as I would like. But, although we had some difficulty reading whether the dancers wanted sloweys or fasties, it is fair to say we were generally holding the attention of the crowd. Finished set 2 off with my poor choice of “Shake Rattle and Roll” ‘cos I couldn’t remember the running order. So we had a break for the raffle and got on with Set 3 starting with the rendition of “Sweet Caroline” that we should have played towards the end of Set 2. Then we played through the dance routine with good continuity up to a confused start to “Locomotion”. We lost the plot a bit thereafter, but it wasn’t long before we were closing off with the usual Orbison Clapton finish. They both went well, but we didn’t have time for an encore. I was a bit despondent at the end feeling I could have done better, but people kept coming up to saying what a good night it had been. The governor’s were pleased because we had kept the audience to the end so I guess we were being hard on ourselves. Got packed up slowly to find it was raining outside for the load up. Dave A looked tired but happy - Rita was driving him back. We did a bit of extra manoeuvring to extricate the Galaxy and then it was an hour and half home in the cold rain. Got in about 2am.