Kessingland Community Centre – Wine Club Presentation Night

The boys had played Gressenhall Social on 10/1/09 while I was away on my month long trip to New Zealand, but this was to be my first gig in the New Year. Nige had given a detailed brief on the gig and I had put a bit of home practice in during the week so I was feeling quite relaxed as I set off at 5:20pm. At 2c the weather was milder that it had been and I made good progress to Lowestoft where I picked up the A12 Southbound. I came off at the first roundabout for Kessingland which eventually brought me out near the Social Club where I saw Dave’s van. So I turned round and tucked in behind. Dave soon stopped to ask the way, stopping a passerby who happened to be John from the Social Club! A few minutes later we were parked up at the Community Centre waiting for someone to come and open up. Nige arrived soon after he texted to say he would be late? And he was followed closely by Len (one of the organisers) to open the doors. It’s a big hall and the stage is at the far end. We got the gear down the hall on some big table trolleys we found near the entrance. The stage is quite high and slightly raked and it was quite a heave to get the gear up. Meanwhile Jen had bagged the warmest side room for the band to change. There is plenty of room on stage and set up went well. We had been asked to provide stage lights and Dave had brought the old lights (from Dan’s shed); we soon got them working on separate extension leads. Then Nige opened his guitar case to reveal a stunning brand new Hofner Beatle bass complete with custom headstock warmer courtesy of Jacqui! It looks great with a subtle soft brown to off white sunburst finish. He immediately ran into a little snag by jarring the jack socket on the guitar stand (before the arms were bent to fit the guitar. The resultant crackly connection meant that he had to change to a Planet Waves lead for the night and would have to take the socket apart to adjust – oh dear! The hall was filling up so no time for a soundcheck. I put on my improved MP3 music programme using a spare input into the Rolls mixer to route to both Bose and we retired for a chat. There was no bar so we were dependent on the generosity of Len for a bottle of pear wine and some Murray Mint cordial. I was pleased to hand out holiday acquired Creative Zen Mozaic MP3 players as presents for the boys: the plan being Nige and I would program them up to contain the original Artiste recordings of songs we were doing or were learning so we had no excuse for not getting it right (other than incompetence in my case) - Nige got the job of immediately taking Dave’s away to set it up! Then Nige distributed some really well produced group cards with little photo’s on. We got dressed up in the black ‘n’ white to make a prompt 8:30 start. After “Foot Tapper” we departed the usual running order to do a couple of Jim Reeves waltzs and the old 50’s medley to cater for the oldies. Things we going well so we decided to resume the usual set 1 with “Just One Look” and here we ran into trouble, ‘cos Dave had picked up a cold and his singing became badly interrupted by coughing fits. Somehow we got through that and the next few songs with Nige and myself dipping in to take over Dave’s vocals each time he petered out. At this point I elected to do “Sleepwalk” to give Dave time to collect himself, but he was still full of coughs and splutters at then end. Also we had a pronounced resonance on stage at about 400hz (A) which was off putting. We did a few more numbers culminating in a successful audience participation Shadows walk using a very long guitar lead, but I got the guitar sound wrong again somehow? Then as we finished the set off with “Only You” I had plugged the wrong guitar lead in, so no guitar for the first few lines. Although we were going down well we had been plagued with problems right through this relatively short 40 minute set, but we kept calm! Nigel’s new bass had sounded good my side – the string balance was great and there was a nice slightly woody tone to it. During the break for prize giving Nige got Dave to medicate his throat and we strode forth more confidently to open up Set 2 with the Searchers. This got a lot of people up and dancing so we carried on with “Do It Again” and the Eagles before slowing things up with “Three Times a Lady”. We opened up some bantering with “Alice” and followed up a few songs later with “Halfway” where, as usual, I asked the boys to do girly answer backs in the middle 8. Now Nige has taken to do a gruff comedy second line response in recent gigs, so this time when he did it I stopped the song and insisted he wear a girly wig to get it right – it got a laugh and I thought it worked quite well! Then I joined Nige by donning a girly wig myself as we became the Jordinettes to back the mystery ‘guest artiste’! It took Dave an age to get changed so I’ll be looking to slick this up in the future. We played on with “Caroline”, the Bay City’s, a request for “Sweet Caroline” (which Nige sang well) and some Rock ‘n’ Roll to finish to a great response with “Love is All Around” at about 11pm. While we took a break they ran the raffle. The medication seemed to have done the trick with Dave’s voice, but my voice was in serious decline from lack of performance. Still we only had 30 minutes to do as we opened up set 3 with the usual party dance sequence. By the time we got to “Hi Ho” it was time to wrap up the set with “Unchained” and “Pretty Woman”, encoring with “Wonderful Tonight”. Considering the slightly raggy performance we were surprised and delighted to get a standing ovation from a crowd that had really enjoyed the show. The organisers were well pleased and as we packed up Dave was negotiating a re-booking. Even though I wasn’t ‘match fit’, we had the gear packed up and in the cars by 12:45am. I dropped Len off nearby as I set off homeward. It was an uneventful drive on a fullish moon lit night getting in just after 2am, tired but pleased to be ‘back in the saddle’.