Wensum Community Centre

A mild sunny day, but it was getting chilly as I set off at 5:20pm. There was hardly any traffic through Thetford and I was well ahead of schedule as I hit the A11. Despite making a slow paced run over to Norwich I arrived at the gig at 6:25pm well ahead of schedule. The place was closed so I sat in the car ‘til Nige arrived 10 mins later and Dave / Jen a bit later (just as the guvnor arrived). It’s a squareish hall with a medium sized boxy stage with just enough height for the Bose. Soon got set up and Dave added a row of lights at the back to give some atmosphere. The room filled up rapidly and there were a number of people who had made the trip from NWMC just to see the band (even though we are playing there next week). Fiddled with the sound to reduce top on the mic a bit because we were getting some slap back from a pelmet around the front of the stage. My ear is a little better, but I still can’t hear clearly. Nige put on his 60’s music selection (it even includes a Tiny Tim track) and we had a welcome beer before getting changed into the smart white shirts with black ties and waistcoats. We opened up with “Foot Tapper” as usual and Dave did a bit of band intro at the end. Then we played through the set pretty much as listed. Duh! I got the chords the wrong way round in the middle 8 of “Peggy Sue” but Nige put me right at the end. Through the set the audience applauded enthusiastically and the banter went well; but not much dancing ‘cos kids were scooting around the dance floor. In fact we assembled 3 of the kids (2 girls and a boy) to do the Shadows walk and a fine job they did too, getting thunderous applause at the end! We carried on through the Seasons, the Hollies, the Beatles and a good performance of “How Long” considering ‘how long’ it was we hadn’t played it. Then some rock’n’roll to the finish with “I Believe”, we played about an hour and a quarter in total. I was very thirsty as we came off and dashed off to the bar to get water ‘n lime – didn’t touch the sides! In the meantime Dave and Nige worked the room and then we changed into the ‘Hari Kari’ shirts to open set 2 with the Searchers. Again all went very well. Dave made a good call to curtail the 70’s dance sequence because the floor was still full of children despite the management’s pronouncements for them to be controlled! We did a great Elvis but still need to find a way of slicking the entry up a bit. As we opened up with “Sweet Caroline” the dance floor filled and stayed full as we played through the Bay Cities ending it to a lot of surprisingly warm and genuine applause. As we wrapped up with “Love is All Around” in comes Laura with her mother Valisha and some young friends. But all was matey as Dave gently entertained most of the women in his life during the break! The Govner came over and said we were great, but there was a problem with some folk at the back not hearing some of the spoken banter. I checked with Jenny and she said it all sounded good but felt it might have been Dave’s rushed delivery on some of the announcements. Something for us all to work on: – to speak slowly, clearly and with projection. To be fair the Guvnor also complimented me on my clarity and lack of accent so maybe it was someone’s hearing aid not turned up! Nige got changed into the velcroized kilt for a 45 minute set 3 (it needs a small adjustment to cater for his svelte waist Jacqui!). We opened up with a 'Nigel Wheres Yor Troosers' version of "500 Miles". That got them laughing and then they all got up to dance to "Amarillo" and we kept the dance floor filled right through to “All Right Now”. We followed up with a short version of “Unchained” and then did “American Trilogy” to a great reception. The guvnor came up at that point and requested “Roll Over Beethoven” which Nige obligingly sang and, as it was going well with the dancers, we carried on into “Jonny B Goode” and “Great Balls of Fire”. Then it was time to finish off with “Pretty Woman”. We got such a huge response that I called for two encores. I made a bad call suggesting “Bad Moon Rising”. It wasn’t in Dave’s book so we all had to have a go at improvising a verse. It would have been better to go with Nigel’s belated suggestion of “Saw Her Standing There”. Still we got another round of shouts for ‘More’ so we duly obliged with “Wonderful Tonight”, ending to a really warm reception from the big crowd who had stayed ‘til the end. It had been another really successful night for the band and the guvnor set about rebooking us straight away. Load up was interesting in that Dave was giving some of the NWMC women a lift home so the van looked like it was full of groupies. Even more so when his ex and present wives appeared on the scene. Good run home getting back for 1am.


Groupies in the Van ----- and Groupies, daughter and Wives getting in Van!!