Evening at Bury St Edmunds Rugby Club

Got Rocky to come and assist me loading in and arrived at the club spot on 6pm. There was quite a bit of activity and I soon found Luke and Janie and agreed the “modus operandi” for the two bands on the night. It was good job Rocky came because we had to get the gear up a difficult flight of stairs. Rocky went home (via The Morton Hall!) and I started to set up. A few minutes later I looked up and there was Dave, Jen and Neil (our dep bassist for the night) - They’d come up the fire escape. As I came back to the gear the guitarist in the other band pointed out my Korg FX unit was smoking – shock horror I had plugged the wrong power supply in. After I unplugged it all it was clear it wasn’t working, so I drove home and picked up my spare Line 6 XT and set up with that. We did a brief sound check with “Just One Look”. And let Janie’s band (Headless?) set up. I helped them sound check and then Jacqui, Claire and Rocky arrived to make it quite a band party. After the speeches, Headless did their set and We got changed - Neil wasn’t keen on wearing the band uniform so we compromised by wearing the black shirts and red ties. Then we went on with our usual start. We got as far as “Apache” and Dave decided to liven it up. He went out and grabbed many of the younger (mainly single men) elements in the audience for a Shadows dance class. This went down really well, so well that we decided to do “Flingel Bunt” to follow up! After doing Happy Birthday for Luke (Foot Tappers style) we ploughed on with a mix of stuff to a mixed response. We took a break and came on to do the final set starting with “500 Miles” which Dave also assembled the Bury St Eds formation dance team for. Then we simply blasted through to “All Right Now” keeping the party dance atmos going. We just had chance for a ballad in the shape of “Unchained Melody” before we were into the closing sequence. Dave said goodbye with “Pretty Woman” and we encored with “Wonderful Tonight”. Neil had done a fine job (if a bit loud) but he doesn’t take direction too easily, so I would put our recent deps in order of preference: Charlie, Dave A then Neil. Got packed up and, with some difficulty, got the gear down the stairs. It was an easy run home for me – I got in about 1am. Pretty exhausted after 3 gigs so I was asleep immediately.