Lowestoft Ex- Servicemen’s club

Jacqui was at the ballet in London with her young friend Olwen; so I fed myself and left home at 5:15pm to enjoy a steady run over to Lowestoft, arriving just before 7pm and just ahead of Dave and Jen. There wasn’t a lot of room in the car park so we had to use the overflow yard after we unloaded. It had been very rainy and the car park was a bit flooded. Nigel arrived as we were looking at the logistics of getting the gear on. The good news was the Bose towers just fitted in heightwise. The not so good news was it would be too cramped for 2 guitars and the reverb, so we decided to set up as Foot Tappers lite – Nige and I would need to control the reverb on each Bose by hand (mind you even with conventional gear I remember it was too cramped for 2 guitars). So we got set up but didn’t bother with a sound check, we just agreed amongst ourselves to keep the volume down at the beginning. Had a beer and watched Jenny play bingo - she didn’t win again! Then it was time to get changed = more not so good news. The changing room was being used for a retirement party, so we would have to make do with the toilet! Well Dave had a look in and said “No Way”; so we elected to get changed in the corridor leading to the toilet, this attracted a bit of attention from passing ladies and one gent; but we completed the exercise relatively discretely. Went on to play set 1 just before 9pm and did a longish set including a bit of 50’s sing-a-long, banter and “3 Times a Lady” which went down well with the elder generation there. After an hour we had only just got thru The Hollies and Beatles medleys so we finished up with “I Believe” which was my good call, ‘cos the dance floor was soon packed and they were singing along well and gave us a good round of applause. Dave and Nige joined the smokers in the break and got some good positive comments on the band. Went on for the second set starting with “How Long” which was nicely paced and, despite some small mistakes, I could see it had people bopping in their seats even if they weren’t dancing. We moved on to the Searchers medley and the dance floor soon got busy again. In fact as we got to the Yellow River 70’s medley in middle of the set the dance floor was packed and after a much sung-along “Halfway to Lowestoft” Dave made a good call to bring in “Sweet Caroline” ahead of the ‘Elvis in the building’ routine. Got them all bopping again with the “Bay City – Crazy Little Thing” sequence. Dave and Nige picked up their swapped vocals well in “Shang a Lang” (it sounded just as good as when Nige did the lead). Then it was time to close down with “Love is All Around” - in my opinion that was about the best we had done the second set for several months. In the break Nige and Dave got some more favourable comments then it was time to do the third set (without a shirt change). The audience had changed a bit, some of the oldies had gone home and some youngies (well; under 45s!) had arrived. We opened up with a “request” for “Can’t Get Enough”, which went well for a first airing. I got off to a false start ‘cos I couldn’t hear Dave’s count in but we did the right thing and just winged into a restart. The guitar sound needs a bit more work and I made a mistake a beginning of the solo but we managed to play it at a reasonable volume and you could see there was some resonance with the audience who were bopping along to this quite danceable piece even if they didn’t know it. Played straight thru the party dance sequence to “Hi Ho” and kept them dancing all the way. Dave made another good call with “Unchained” and then it was time to wrap up with “Pretty Woman”. We got such a good response that we encored with a couple of verses of “Wonderful Tonight” trying to strike a balance between playing a bit more and finishing reasonably on time. In hindsight it might have been better to play the whole song ‘cos there were still some (disappointed) shouts for more. We took the risk of getting changed in the foyer by the stairs; this worked without complaint or being mobbed by groupies. Pack up was slow and it was raining as we loaded up. In fact a squall blew up driving the rain into the cars as we were loading up – it all got a bit damp. Had an uneventful ride home, getting in about 1:45am on a showery night. I’m off to Spain for a week now so I hope the boys keep out of trouble.