Dave texted to say he was held up in traffic and Nige’s mate Marty texted to say he’d just seen him in North Walsham!!! We carried on set up and when Dave rolled up we gave him a hand in. I tried out the Creative MP3 on background music but it hadn’t loaded the play list properly so I reverted to the trusty MP3 man. In the meantime Tina had changed into a fantastic 70’s glam dress. We were also pleased to see Dorothy from Bure Valley arrive beautifully dressed like a 70’s hippy – complete with pearl beads! The other lady organisers also looked suitably glamed up. Our elderly audience were gathering (and my ear was playing up anyway) so there was no time for a sound check. We cracked on and found a changing room and changed into the white kamikaze shirts and headed back for a 5 minute late start. I noticed Dave’s mate Bobby Graham had arrived to support the band. We opened up with Foot Tapper and got a great reception as we played through a selection of regular set 1 songs, the 50’s medley, some country (including a very improvised “Travellin Light”), The Beatles and the Shadows Walk with 3 of the ladies up and dancing with the rubber guitars. It went really well. The banter was going exceptionally well and we wrapped up with “I Believe” so that Dave could judge the best 70’s outfit - but I made sure we complimented the organisers on their great turn out first! Dave did a first class job of judging – a bit like Larry Grayson’s generation game ;-)
The meals were served and we got back on for a long set 2 where again we picked and mixed our way through the usual set 2 repertoire with added “Beautiful Body”, “Walk Don’t Wipe Out” and a well paced “Blue Suede Shoes”. The room was getting a bit hot by the end so we changed into our black shirts / white ties for the final set. This was only going to be about 30 minutes 'cos the buses had arrived to ship the audience out. Because Nige has to remove his shoes to get into the kilt, I elected to wear it for the start with “500 Miles” and the routine went down very well as I came on to dance to “Moggy Wheres Your Troosers”. Trouble was I couldn’t get my ‘troosers’ unrolled after and I was interfered with by two ladies who sorted my trouser legs out! On we went with the party dance sequence stopping after a great “Locomotion” with a conga line moving round the hall. After this the room was emptying rapidly as the crowd was ushered out to the buses. Lots of people came up to thank us personally on their way out and we sold several CD’s. We finished off playing Pretty Woman to the last few stragglers and then called it a day. We all agreed it had been a very successful gig with brilliant banter, well played music and a great atmosphere. It had just started raining as we packed up. I had a good run back getting in about 7:30pm and handed the kilt over the Jacqui for velcroizing.
