I had developed a blocked ear in the week, but was hoping it would not affect performance too much. Dave was still suffering the remnants of his cold and Nigel had a chest infection so it was going to be an ‘interesting’ vocal performance! Had a lazy run over, not much traffic, so arrived just before 6:30 to find another band, Young at Heart, playing there. Double booking I thought, but I went in and Christine met me and explained the other band would finish in a few minutes. So I had a half of lager and waited. Meanwhile, unbeknown to me, Nigel had rolled up, worked out what was happening and popped over to the Social Club to see Marty. Dave arrived with Jen and Laura on board just as ‘Young at Heart’ were packing up, so it was out with the old and in with the new (or not quite as old). Set up went smoothly and I remembered to adjust guitar EQ to compensate for the 500hz boom in the hall. I also took a bit of top off the Audix mic setting (I might do that permanently because I always seem to be on the edge of an 8khz feedback whistle at most gigs. Finally I increased the analogue return from the reverb into my Bose just a tad to give a bit of lift to the vocals. We can’t work the lights out at this gig so we set our small lights up at the back of the band to give light on stage and silhouette the band. Nige, who had replaced the jack socket on his Hofner in the week, did a bit of fiddling with the bass sound through his Bose. I was over near Jen having a gulp of lager and it sounded great – “meaty sound” I said! There were still quite a few people in the hall so we decided (again) not to bother with a soundcheck and adjourned for a beer. There were about 50 in as we got changed into the white’n’black outfits and emerged for an 8:30 start. We agreed to open up with “3 Times a Lady” to get Christine and Glenn to lead off the dancing and that went well. Then, deciding to keep it simple, we just played through the usual set 1 for an hour with added slowies and deferred Shadows walk (we got Christine and the girls up to do the walk). Also early on in the set we did “Halfway”, with a guest singer from Christine’s entourage doing a romantic version singing to his woman. Although my ear was pretty bad for hearing what we were doing and Dave was struggling a bit with the splutters, we were going down well and later Jen confirmed the band and the harmonies sounded good. Even with a bad ear, the bass sounded nice and full to me and I found I could ease back on some of the guitar playing. Nige felt the band was gelling together better as well; and we both noticed Dave was holding the beat steadier in some of the more complex pieces (eg Hollies and Beatles). After a round of waters we resumed for a standard set 2 just adding “American Trilogy” after “Wonder of You”. We had lots of dancing going in this set from the “Moon of Love” medley through Elvis and the Bay Cities filling the floor most the way. Unfortunately it was a bit of over enthusiastic dancing that led one of the girls to slide into Nigel and his new bass. Nige examined the bass in the break and found the force of the impact had knocked a couple of strings off their bridge saddles!!! But otherwise the guitar was fine (Phweew). By the time we opened up with Set 3 we only had about 35 minutes to go, so we did the usual party dance sequence curtailing it after “Locomotion” to go into the longer version of “Unchained” and then finished with “Pretty Woman”. We got a great response with many shouting for more, so we did the planned encore of “Wonderful Tonight” and still they wanted more. Dave got the OK from the guvnor and we encored with “Great Balls”. Good night considering our combined state of health. Got packed and loaded up quick with help from Nigel and Laura and had an uneventful run back getting in at 2am. Been to the Doc’s since and I’m treating the ear with steam and albus oil.
