Trimingham Caravan Park

Jacqui was accompanying me to East Runton to meet up with Michele for a visit to the Cromer “End of the Pier” show, so I agreed an early departure time of 4:15pm to take account of Friday traffic and dropping her off. In the event we got away at about 4:25pm and had a slowish run right through to Sheringham where we came across a sign saying the coast road was closed. I arrogantly assumed it was a joke or admin error and tried to get through; but there were some serious barriers across the road so I had to turn back and go right back up to the main road and divert round via Manor Farm. It was a bit later than we planned when I dropped Jacqui off but I had a time to say a quick hello to Dan via Skype. Michele explained there was a burst water main that had closed the road. I carried on to Cromer but there was another diversion – this time for a street Xmas party “Bah Humbug”! Nevertheless, I made good time from Cromer to the gig getting there for about 6:50pm. Nige arrived shortly after and Dave 5 minutes later. While we waited for Andy to come and unlock I handed over some e-ciggie refills to Dave that the band had acquired to pay him back for phone calls and misc’ dressing up trimming expenses. Andy eventually let us in but warned that the site had been very quiet and he didn’t expect many in. Mind you parking up was still a problem with a couple of residents cars in the way! We got unloaded and started setting up. We were using conventional gear to avoid the problems of mounting the Bose off-stage. Nige was using his Behringer with an EV 15” cab for bass and I was using my Mesa Lonestar for guitar and the “old” PA for vocals etc. In the week I had bolted in a TC Electronics Voiceworks unit into the PA rack to provide reverb under control of the usual PA footswitch. Only trouble would be that the indicators on the Voiceworks were very discreet so I would have to pay special attention to reverb changes. Although I had brought the Roland synth, I decided to omit strings from this performance to reduce set up time and see how we got on without it. We got the PA all working without too much trouble (Nige had to lend Dave a monitor lead and the pots on the monitor needed a bit of tweaking) but the sound wasn’t great and I ended up fiddling around with the enhancement and equalisation, eventually getting an semi-acceptable middley sound that didn’t feedback too much. The guitar sounded good but the Mesa gives a much more dynamic response than the Bose meaning I would have to play more subtly to avoid big spikes in guitar volume. We ran through a bit of “Just One Look” and Nige took a step out front to listen and reported that the sound would pass muster. The room was relatively empty so I calculated that the bit of toppy feedback we were close to would be absorbed as people arrived. We had a round of beers (on the house) and I briefed the boys that we would exercising some less often played numbers from our reserve repertoire on the night. The audience had grown to about 20 around the bar area as we started off set 1. The sound was different and maybe a tad loud, but we got used to it as we played through to “Good Luck Charm” without incident. At this point we departed from the usual by doing a good rendition of “Peggy Sue”. While we were ‘off piste’ I got the boys to do a couple of instrumentals with “Walk Don’t Wipe Out” and “Flingel Bunt”, to which I had a Shadows dance to so I could assess the sound – it was OK and yes I could do the walk to it! Then we did “Raining In My Heart” as a slowey and I thought we played and sang it well considering it hadn’t been aired for a while. We carried on mixing, matching and bantering our way through the set doing the usual 12 string 60’s stuff and following up with a good “How Long” (it got a good round of applause), a presentable ”Rockin Around the Xmas Tree” and a nicely paced “Blue Suede Shoes” complete with solo key change to try and baffle Nigel – but he was right there with the B to A! We finished off with “Three Times A Lady” without strings and it worked well enough. We took a break and took on board water and lime (on the house again!) and had just resumed with the opening chords to “Travel lodge California” when in came Jacqui and Michele; I was able to blurt out a quick hello and then we were into the song which we played well. Of course Jacqui and Michele gave it a good round of applause - it was just like having a reasonable sized audience again! The Searchers medley was going well up to my wrong chord as I forgot the key change to “Don’t Throw Your Love Away” which threw Dave out on vocals. But we soon got back on track and carried straight on with a good performance of the Beach Boys and Eagles sequence before departing again from the usual order with a ‘Take That, Take This, Take The …… Other’ tribute to Morrisons supermarket: “Shine”. This went quite well considering Dave and I are still trying to gel on harmonies. We followed up with “If You Had a Beautiful Body” and “Dance the Night Away” which both swang along nicely. I had a bit of finger trouble on the solo but I don’t think anyone was counting! Then we did a subtle “White Xmas” before we got back on track with a longer Elvis routine featuring both “Can’t Help Falling” (Dave nearly missed the key change) and “The Wonder of You”. After “Sweet Caroline” we did the Bay City Roll and wrapped up with “Love Is All Around”. We were just able to say hello to the ladies and hear about the jolly good pier show, when we realised we only had half an hour to go. So we got rapidly back on to do an alternative soft rock session including: “Can’t Get Enough, All Right Now, The Wanderer, You Really Got Me, Rockin All Over The World, Bony Maronie” before wrapping up with “Merry Xmas Everybody” and “Shakin All Over” spot on midnight. After doing a couple of ritual shouts for “More”, Michele said her goodbyes and got on her way back home. Dave was working the small crowd and with Jacqui helping me to pack up, I was nearly loaded before Dave had even thought about packing up his drums. In fact Nige and I took a bet on whether he would ring Jenny to come out and help or he would leave it ‘til the next day. In the event he did pack it up (surprisingly quickly) so we called the bet an honourable draw ;-). Jacqui and I got off about 12:50 am leaving Dave and Nige to continue the glad handing. Had a good run home getting in about 2:15am.