Ipswich Conservative Club

Easy drive over for me. I allowed 50 mins to include a stop at Ipswich Asda to fuel up at their very low price of 106.9 p per litre and then carried on in pleasant sunshine and still got to the gig ahead of Dave and Nigel. Dave had come thru central Ipswich and had had a hard time navigating. Nige and I had come over the Orwell bridge and the gig was only a few turnings off the A14. We loaded in thru the front door and it’s a very nice concert room: well furnished and decorated, low ceiling, big dance floor and dry acoustics, lots of room for the band – we thought our kind of club! We set up steadily but as the room was filling up we agreed again not to bother with a sound check. We had time for a quick beer before getting changed in the office where we met Steve (the concert sec’). He wasn’t staying ‘cos he didn’t feel too well but he wished us luck and arranged our payment for the night. The room looked reasonably full, but the barman said there weren’t many in, however, he thought they would like 60’s 70’s. So off we went in an optimistic mood to open up or with an hour and a bit set 1. I had been nursing a cold and was suitably drugged up for this performance, but I still sounded very nasal and felt a bit rough so I was taking it steady and avoiding some vocal pieces. I thought the sound was very good from the off and we got polite applause through the first half of the set. They weren’t dancing much but some seemed to be listening and tapping along to the music. Towards the end of the set the response to the medleys was a bit muted but I think it was a case of the audience were here to socialise and the band is doing a good job of playing background music - so not much response. But the band is appreciated for that we hope! We had a few dancing to the rock’n’roll section and (unusually) Dave called for “Shake Rattle and Roll”; but the dancers were tired by then and soon drifted off! Overall, musically and showmanshipwise I thought we were fine. I had the odd difficult singing bit to back away from, but we bantered away in a relaxed manner, finishing off with “3 Times a Lady” which I thought went well. After a short break, we only had half an hour for Set 2 before the bingo. We started with the “Searchers Medley” then into the “Eagles”. Audience reaction turned out to be similar to set 1, occasionally we would get a couple of dancers up and some applause here and there; they liked the “Eagles” and there was a bit of sing a long to “Alice” but we never really broke thru the whole audience’s reserve. Even Elvis got a muted response. We finished off with “Sweet Caroline” which did get a bit of sing a long and arm waving response. After bingo we went on for set 3 armed with a request Nigel had received from some girls in the corner who said they would dance a bit if we did “Twist and Shout”. We started up with “ 500 Miles” and “Amarillo” then did “Twist and Shout” with Nigel singing it well; but only two girls got up and danced! Anyway we carried on thru our party dance sequence to “Locomotion” getting a bit more response and few dancers here and there. I looked round and Nigel was sporting a straw in his ear as were the girls – some kind of Madonna lookalike fashion craze? Dave called for “Alright Now” which did get some applause. So far it seemed we couldn’t find the secret to making the audience tick. We got a good response to “Unchained and American Trilogy” as we slowed things down. Dave volunteered to sing “Dance the Night Away” and that got a reasonable amount of dance floor filled. Then we tried the Spencer Davis sequence, still too fast in my opinion, but it got little reaction. Finally we hit on “Shang a Lang” and the dance floor filled up – it turns out they were all closet Bay City Rollers fans! Although we were scratching round for material at this point, non of us could remember to fit in some of the new songs e.g. “Can’t Get Enough”, “Wonder of You”, “Blue Bayou” or some of the many reserve songs. But it was close to time to finish so we started to wind down with “Pretty Woman” and signed off with “Wonderful Tonight”. Surprisingly we were asked to do an encore and we finished with “Under The Sun”. All in all it had been a relaxed night on stage, but the audience had been hard work and a few mistakes crept in. Dave said the man in charge seemed happy enough and suggested Dave contact the concert sec’ to line up some more appearances. I think we underestimated how reserved a Conservative club audience would be compared to holiday parks and working men’s clubs. Took me a while to pack up as I was feeling a bit slow with the cold, but the others helped me out with the gear and load up. After dishing out the colas, we set off in convoy to find the A14. Had an easy run home, Dave dropped off the convoy on the A140 and Nige on the A1088; I was home by 1:30 and soon fast asleep. But my cold took a turn for the worse the next day and Nigel started to suffer so we ended up cancelling practice in the week.