Norwich WMC

Set off about 5:50pm in a bit of drizzle but the rain got harder and harder as I progressed towards Norwich; almost torrential by the time I arrived on the inner ring road. Despite the poor visibility, I managed to get in the right hand lane for the turn onto St Benedicts St, but the one way then sweeps you off down St Swithins and up to the Charing Cross Y junction where you aren’t allowed to make a sharp right hand turn back onto St Benedicts St. Rather than go round Norwich again, I Iooked around, and then made the illegal right hander onto St Benedicts and then to immediately and illegally park up in front of the bollards blocking access to St Gregory’s Alley (leading up to the club). I suppose the legal way is to carry on round the ring road to Duke St and come back to Charing Cross to make a legal right hand turn at the cross roads. Anyway, moving on from a “Cooks Tour” of Norwich, I was pleased to see Nigel had arrived already and had found a way through the bollards to park in front of the club. I decided I would walk my gear up the alley to the club foyer making several rushed journeys to avoid getting the stuff wet. By this time Dave, Steve and Laura had arrived and, with Nigel’s help, they were rapidly getting the drums in. So I drove off and found the last free roadside parking spot a hundred yards further down St Benedicts. I walked back and gave Nige some guidance as he reversed through the bollards and he and Dave set off in the rain to find somewhere to park. Dave ended up in the multi-story whilst Nige set about negotiating a promising looking alley then, realising it was a dead end he had to reverse back out in zero visibility into the face of traffic!! Once out he had to drive around a bit more to find somewhere to park up. So it took quite some time before he got back to the club. The club was nicely decorated for Halloween, as were some of the staff who looked very fetching in their witches gear. Dave had got set up quickly and so he ventured out into their back yard to help start the Halloween BBQ. Fortunately this was set up under a gazebo, but unfortunately, it was very flimsy and he still got soaked. Meanwhile, Nige and I completed setting up; I was using the Axon guitar synth suitably built in, and integrated with, the reverb rack for this gig. It sounded OK to me, maybe not as full as the Roland synth but it seemed to do the job and is easier to set up. The overall sound on the stage was very boxy and toppy where I was, I think we were getting some rebound from the pillars. It was rapidly approaching show time, so we set off to do a quick change into the pink. The stress of parking and set up probably contributed to a downbeat dressing room atmosphere where we were questioning the meaning of life and why we were even doing this difficult gig. Anyway we left it all unresolved and hurried on down to the stage to concentrate on the start off. Dave did a good band intro in the middle of “Foot Tapper”. Following on with “Just One Look” we got halfway through when we got a signal to turn up the volume. So the Bose’s both got turned up a notch and we carried on as normal through to the Everlys. The on-stage sound was a bit too loud and I was glad of a break to adjust things when the guvnor came up and asked us to pose for some photo’s for the Eastern Daily Press. Then we got restarted to get a couple more numbers under our belt, when the Guvnor asked us to stop again to give a bit of an impromptu interview re’ the photo’s. After that, we soldiered on through the usual set 1 with not too bad a sound until we got to the Beatle medley which we extended to carry on from “Can’t Buy Me Love” into “All My Lovin and I Feel Fine”. It was all a bit hurried and there were some errors but it got a good response. Trouble was that then the guvnor was back to interrupt us again by asking us to make way for the raffle. So it was down tools for 20 minutes as the raffle progressed. Laura won some Tesco vouchers (which she sold to Nige later) and then we were back on in the white to start set 2 from “The Searchers” with me on the 12 string. Like the previous couple of gigs, I did the Eagles and Beachboys on the 12 string and I am fairly comfortable with that now. We got a few up and dancing as we progressed through the 70’s medley. But then the guvnor wanted us to stop yet again so he could read out some announcements. After that we re-started with “Halfway to Norwich” and then we were into the Elvis routine which, on this night, consisted of me and Nige doing a verse of “Mystery Train” to bring Dave on, followed by a great band performance of the “Wonder of You” before slowing down for “Just Can’t Help” - which got the slow dancers on the floor in force. After “Sweet Caroline”, we got cracking with the Bay City Rollers (filling the dance floor again!) and then an ‘improved’ “Crazy Little Thing”. I was playing the chords closer to the Queen arrangement and tried to slow it down a bit. This was all a bit unfair on Dave who hadn’t been party to the conversation Nigel and I had had about improving it; but we got through OK even if it was a bit untogether. After “Love is All Around” we worked through the party dance sequence to “Locomotion” when up comes the Guvnor once more to make an announcement he forgot earlier! But that gave me time to switch the Roland to its BadCo setting to play “Can’t Get Enough” - this was a bad move on my part ‘cos the guitar sound level was much too low and I had to fiddle with the Bose as we struggled on through the song. For the future I resolved to beef up my standard sustain sound rather than have a separate setting for this number. But by then we were over time so we finished off with “Unchained” which Dave signed off to Got packed up and found the rain had abated. With Steve in action load up wasn’t too bad once we’d recovered the vehicles. I got off just before 1am. Apart from some flooded roads in Thetford the journey home was fine and I was in bed for 2:30 am - although it all could have been an hour earlier ‘cos I haven’t changed the clock in the car to GMT yet! Pretty tired the next day so I was let off the visit to Mum which Gina and Jacqui did, and then we all drove over to Ely to have a pint and some lunch as we dropped Gina off at the station.