Norwich WMC

It was a very wet, windy and dark day. I set off at 5:45pm and there were a few large puddles to negotiate as I drove up past Thetford to pick up the A11 to Norwich. The traffic news wasn’t good: a tree had fallen across the road where the A11 meets the A140 in Norwich. Visibility was very poor as I drove on and the traffic news suggested diverting, so I took the A47 and went one junction North so I could enter Norwich on the Watton Road. Well by the time I got to the inner ring road the rain and wind was even worse and I wasn’t able to recognise quite where I was. The outcome being that I missed the turn to St Benedicts St and carried on right round the inner ring road to the railway station on the other side of town. So I carried on to complete a circuit of the city and eventually I found my way back and did my usual thing of making the illegal turn at Charing Cross to park on the curb near St Gregory’s Alley. No sign of the others, so I started making several journeys up the alley to get the gear into the club foyer. Odd I thought; I keep bringing the gear in and it seems like its not piling up in the foyer? It was Nigel! He was already loaded in and parked and he had seen my stuff arrive and was carting it up the stairs. We were both doing this in staggered stages so we never actually met until the end! I couldn’t find any on street parking, so ended up in a car park off Pottergate costing £1.60. By the time I got back to the club Dave and Jen were loaded in and Dave took off to look for parking. Got in the club and started to set up. Nige and I agreed to come forward with the Boses and push Dave right to the front to get good sound projection from another boxy stage.

I also set the reverb mixer to give a bit more of Dave and Nige’s vocal into my Bose. For those blogateers who are interested in things technical. Here is a picture of the reverb rack with Axon Guitar Synth on top, Rolls line mixer in mid and Lexicon MPX1 at the bottom.

The thick cable at the top leads to a stage box that Nige and I plug our Bose send and analogue returns into.

And here is my Bose set up - the T1 digital mixer shown in close up on the right.


We soon got things working and I remembered to save the existing Bose T1 Scene (where Dave’s vocal replaces the Bass Drum) as Foot Tappers Practice before reloading with Foot Tappers Live for the show. Once we got it working I thought the on stage guitar sound was a bit bassy so I reduced bass boost EQ and took a bit of treble off the mic EQ to close down a toppy ring from the mic. Dave did a bit of meeting and greeting while Nige and I finalised set up. You can just see Dave's kit amongst all the Xmas trimmings.

The bar man had been having problems with his (beer) gas, but that was conveniently fixed in time for us to have a lager before we got changed - into the red shirts with Xmas ties (courtesy of Kleenezy). We were a few minutes late starting off but soon got into our stride with the usual beginning. The on stage sound was OK if a little loud. But it looked like it sounded fine out front of house. The audience could hear the banter ‘cos we got some good response to our opening remarks about how Dave had organised some “Christmas Crackers” as we pointed out the lovely ladies dancing along to the band! We did an early “Rockin Around the Xmas Tree” which went well even if it was a tad fast for me. While we were at it Dave did “Winter Wonderland as a request for the blonde twins. We got a bit lost but all arrived at the end together. Carrying on with the show, we got the twins up to do the Shadow’s walk with the blow up guitars. Only problem was (yet again) I made the mistake of setting the guitar to 12 string rather than Shadows sound, so had this uninspiring bassy guitar sound to work with. Still it all went down very well. Changing to 12 string we went straight into the Hollies which I thought we played well and it got a good ,warm round of applause. Changing back to 6 string we did the “Mop Tops” which also went well. After “Rock Around the Clock” we were running out of time so we finished with “I Believe” which filled the dance floor and got a great response. Then it was off for a long break for Bingo. During the break I met a Scotsman at the bar singing I Believe". He loved the band and insisted on buying the round of water and lime I was getting in - what a good chap! Changing into the white we opened up Set 2 with the Searchers. After the Eagles and Beach Boys we did a stirring rendition of “White Xmas” which went down a bomb with this audience. Then we followed the usual sequence through “Alice”, “Moon of Love etc”, “Halfway to Paradise”, “Wonder of You” (Elvis made a much appreciated appearance and even hit the difficult high line at the climatic end of the song), Sweet Caroline” the Bay Cities and finishing off with “Love is all Around”. We took a shortish break before returning to do a 35 minute Set 3; playing the party dance sequence through to “All Right Now” (which got an unexpected great response) We only had a few minutes to go so we wrapped up with “Merry Xmas Everybody” complete with Nige in Noddy Holder hat. I thought we played and sang it pretty good and it got a great response with lots of shouts for more, so we encored with “Unchained” to another great response. As we came off we got a lot of complimentary remarks on the show and there was even talk of us coming in to do Xmas Eve. We politely declined, but Phil (The concert sec) was pressing Dave to agree to Xmas Eve 2009 as we packed up. The rain had almost stopped as we brought the cars round for load up. Rather than risk delay with the fallen tree, I made my way back the way I came in and then had a quiet run home getting in about 2 am.