Sheringham Social Club

A good run over in windy but dry conditions, arriving at 6:30pm followed immediately by Nige who was dropping off his gear prior to popping round the corner to see someone. So I had a peaceful 10 minutes to start set up before Dave and Jen arrived and Nige returned. Got set up but somehow managed to plug the bass bins into each other so had a very thin sound until Nigel pointed out the bass bins weren’t connected. Then I found I’d left my mic on 15dB gain at 16Khz from when I tested for feedback sweep at practice. Sorted those issues out and had time for a brief sound test on my own. I was using a completely ‘wet’ setting on the Lexicon reverb for the first time and this had the effect of placing the synth more to the back and wide across the stage and also separating the vocals a tad. Next time out I’ll try adjusting the cross vocal sends between the Bose to slightly centre them a bit more, but I don’t want to make too many changes on any night in case I have trouble reversing them later on. The guitar through the Roland GT10 sounded a bit toppy but I was happy enough with the new bank of 12 string sounds with boosted bass, middle and volume that I had set up in the week. Nige’s mate Marty popped in and we had a chat about him using the house system at Manor Park. The room was filling up so I stopped fiddling and joined the others in working the crowd. Dave and Nige knew everyone and worked the whole room whilst I just had a chat with Rita and George who’s golden wedding we had done a couple of years before. Had time for a beer and a water before we got changed into the pink for a 8:45 pm start. Got off to a good start and good overall band sound with “Foot Tapper”, although I wasn’t too happy with the toppy guitar sound. Dave was a bit nervy from the off getting his announcements in a tad too early and talking over the applause. His hastiness prevented me or Nige getting in to say much to steady things down. But on the plus side he was enthusiastic and we were going down well. Dave obviously felt a bit under pressure because he knew so many people there. I looked up towards the end of “Heartbeat” to see Michele making an entrance so I waved hello (somehow without missing a beat!) and we carried on with the usual set 1. I thought we had a good sound on stage and the vocals were going quite well now all the colds had cleared up. Got a good response to “Apache” when I wnet out front to do the Shadows walk. I could hear the guitar sounded quite good as I slid round the dance floor. After “Only You” I switched to 12 string to do “Tambourine Man”, but I forgot to switch the GT10 to the 12 string bank, so had a very toppy sound that took me all the song to sort out. But I got it sorted for the “Hollies” and that went well enough, except I forgot to select boost for the solo in “I’m Alive”. We did the new interim Beatles routine playing “8 Days a Week” in A then into “Can’t Buy Me Love” with me double tracking Nige. I thought this went very well, we played it with a bounce, Nige sang it passionately and it got a warm round of applause. Hopefully next time out we’ll add “All My Lovin”. As the set progressed, we managed to get some rock’n’roll in and that filled the dance floor so we extended it with ”Shake Rattle and Roll” and then drifted into “Blue Suede Shoes”. Only snag was Dave couldn’t find the words, so I had a go but couldn’t remember them, so Nige stepped in – and he could. So thanks to Nige we could finish the piece in good order. Finished off the set with “I Believe” getting a good round of applause. Had a good chat with Michele in the break; she was all aglow from “twitching” at Wells. Dan is doing fine and was probably rehearsing with his US band at that very moment. We got changed into the white and went on to do set 2. Started off with the Searchers medley and I elected to stay on 12 string through the Eagles medley and “Do It Again”, it seemed to work and with a bit more adjustment to the sound I might continue that in future. We started up “Alice” and got a great response from the crowd. Quite a few started dancing at that point and they carried on dancing through the “Moon of Love Medley” and “Halfway”. Then we stopped to do Elvis, with Nige and I "CC Rider" rifing on A to bring Dave on to do “The Wonder of You”. We played this well and Dave sang it really well, and we got a great round of applause for it. Carried on into “Sweet Caroline” which had them all singing and dancing and we finished off with “Love is all Around”. I set up my old Shure SM58 for the governor to do the raffle and he announced us back on for set 3 in very effusive terms (i.e. he said we were a great band). Started off with “500 Miles” and ran through to “Hi Ho” but by 11:30pm it was thinning out a bit. So we did a bit of a hurried “Spencer Davis” medley and wrapped up with “Pretty Woman”; that went really well with a lot of shouts for more so we encored with “Wonderful Tonight”. Had a chat with Steve Lemmon who had turned up after work. I congratulated him on his imminent move to Saffron Waldron. He said the band sounded good and our showmanship was a big contrast to Kenny and the Hustlers who were performing across the road at the Tyneside. All in all it had been a very good gig for the band. I got off fairly quick, Dave and Nige were going to see Marty up at Woodlands, he was playing an hour later ‘cos of the clocks changing. I drove home in good time in a gusty wind getting in about 2am. On the Sunday Jacqui and I took some time out to visit a quilting show at Feltwell then have lunch and a walk at Wells.