Set up went smoothly, it was a pleasure to be able to get behind the Bose and Reverb units to plug stuff in without adopting the stance of a contortionist. By the time Nigel arrived (having come through Sudbury) I was about set up. It didn’t take Nige and Dave long to complete their set up and I had a brief listen to their mic sound out in the hall before putting on my background music. Now the strange thing was that, although the sound carried as it should, it was a little on the soft side. I thought this would be easily catered for by turning the master volume up one notch so we did that.
Rita gave Dave our playing times and I set up my spare SM58 mic for speeches. Red shirts, white ties and a couple of cans of Carlsberg later we were ready to go. We opened set 1 up with the standard start. The volume on stage was quite loud so we eased back a little and progressed right through to “Apache” when we got Dave and Rita up to the front of the dance floor to do the Shadows walk. That went down really well but after “Only You” we only had time to do the Hollies medley before it was time to wrap up for the buffet. Mind you I thought we sang the Hollies well and we got a big round of applause for it. When we came off Jacqui said the harmonies were really excellent and the overall sound very good. As we grabbed some sandwiches Dave A said much the same but he added that it could be a bit louder. Discussing it with Nigel we concluded that the curtains were absorbing a lot of the sound and we should have positioned the Bose further forward and to the middle of the stage (like we did at the Jubilee Hall a few weeks previous). It was too late to do anything about it so we would just have to soldier on and maybe turn the master volumes up a bit more. This we did, but it was really loud on stage as we played through a mainly standard set 2. We had a few up and dancing in this set and the bantering was working very well with all three of us contributing strongly. After the Eagles we played a request for a Drifters song with “Save The Last Dance for Me” in D. Dave and I did some pleasant backing vocals to accompany Nige’s lead lines (some of which were made up) and we got a good round of applause for it. After Alice and Elvis made a brief visit to the building, we got the crowd up and dancing with the Bay City Rollers and “Sweet Caroline”. Then we did a new routine - the damaged hand scam! Nigel howled holding his hand in pain as we started “Somewhere Under the Sun”. Dave and I stopped playing to ask if there was a ‘Bass Player in the House!’ Of course we volunteered Dave A to do it; so he came up to play while Nige took Jenny for a turn round the dance floor. Dave did a fine job considering he wasn’t prepared and Nige came back to help us close with “Love is all Around”. But at the end of it I spotted Rita had just started dancing; so we did an extra slowey for her, playing “3 Times A Lady”. Had another break and met up with some of the muso’s attending. By the time we started Set 3 there were only about 40 minutes to do. Dave and I got on stage and got a beat going when in danced the ‘flying scotchman’ - wearing the kilt. So we took time out to do a verse of “Nigel Where’s Your Trooosers” before starting “500 Miles”. Then we played right through the party dance sequence to “Hi Ho”. A highlight being Jenny helping Nigel out of his kilt without him missing a note! We only had a few minutes left at this point so we did “Pretty Woman” to close the show and “Unchained” as the planned encore. But we got such a good response that Dave A asked us to do one more – so we did a spirited version of “Merry Xmas Everybody” earning a great crowd reaction to finish the night on a high. Everyone we spoke to said how much they enjoyed the band and what great vocals we had. We handed out several cards. Then it was the long pack and load up on a very cold night. Jacqui’s mic stand monkey covers got some nice comments from one of the muso’s wives as we packed up. And Dave did plenty of talking to the muso’s while the rest of us worked so fast that we were loaded by 12:30am. But it took another 5 minutes to de-ice cars before we finally got going. We formed a convoy to negotiate the A12 and A14 at a steady 55mph with Dave peeling off on the A140 and Nige on the A1088. Jacqui and I got in about 1:30am feeling alert enough to have some cocoa before retiring for the night.
