Jacqui and I drove over mid afternoon to spend some time with Dan and Michele. I carried on to the club at 5:45ish and got the pass fob to open the barriers from Graham the manager. Soon got the gear in and looked out the window to see Nigel had arrived so I let him in, and Dave a few minutes later. The smallish stage in a corner is a bit of a challenge to set up the Bose but we eventually got going with Dave well forward, the Bose just behind him and Nige slightly hidden by the Xmas tree. No problems setting up but the room suddenly filled up at 7:45pm, so no opportunity for a sound check. I put my music on and then Jen and Laura arrived. We changed into the red and black and had just got going with set 1 when Jacqui arrived with Dan and Michele in tow. (Harriet was having a teenage party and Dan and Michele had been asked to go out for a while). I thought it would be a good night when the audience answered back "uuh huh" to Dave singing "Good Luck Charm". As the audience were enjoying a slap up feed, we picked and mixed through set 1 to play a more sedate repertoire and consciously leaving the Shadows Walk out altogether. We popped in the odd special request e.g. “Beautiful Body, Cheating Heart, Raining in my Heart” to keep the volume down but we opened up a bit as we got into the last 20 minutes of the set. We were going down quite well with a crowd determined to enjoy themselves and as the food was eaten they began to respond warmly to things like the “How Long” the Beatles, Seasons of Gold and the Hollies. We got the chairman and a couple of his guests up to play tambourines in “Mr Tambourine Man” and generally engaged well with the banter. Only problem for me was the lack of room between the people on my left and my guitar footpedal – I was being gently pushed back and the logistics of changing guitar settings was getting tricky – still its them that are paying! After an hour we stopped to let Grenville (The Chairman of the Camping Club) deliver his speech and then we took a break. My MP3 batteries had failed, so Nige put his music on and we both resolved to sort out better interval music progammes in the NEw Year. We resumed for Set 2 playing it fairly standard up to The Eagles and getting lots of dancing, then we did “White Xmas for the last time this year. The audience sang along really well and were well in the spirit of things. It was at this point we brought Grenville and his mates up to do the Shadows walk. It went down a bomb! Then we did the bad hand routine to bring Dan up to play “Rock Around the Clock” The old boy got a good round of applause! We carried on with the set including a well received appearance from Elvis to finish with, of all things, Shang-a-Lang which really got them bopping. Took a break and then resumed at 11:30 pm in the white for the final set. By the time we got to “Unchained” we only had a few minutes to midnight, so Nige did “Hippy Hippy Shakes”. I got the key wrong to start but picked it up as we went. Then it was time and we ushered in the New Year with “Old Lang Syne” (in C might have been a bit high for this crowd), “Okey Cokey, Knees Up Mother Brown and the Conga” Finally got to give Jacqui a New Years hug and then we played onto 12:30am with a mix of stuff e.g. Midnight Hour Shakin All Over, Saw Her Standing There. We got a fine response as we wrapped up with “Wonderful Tonight” and encored with “Great Balls” and “Johnny B Goode” A great night audiencewise. And apart from a few cock ups (mainly on my part) I thought we played pretty good. The management were well pleased. Then it was quick pack, load and off for Jacqui and myself because we were flying out to Thailand on New Years Day. We left Nige and Dave sipping coffee with Graham and drove back via Norwich getting in just after 3 am.
AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR TO ALL YOU BLOGETTES AND BLOGATEERS
