Got changed into the red’n’black (Dave with some difficulty despite some weight loss in the week) and hit the stage a few minutes late for an 8:48 start on a 1 hour set. After a conventional start we began to pick’n’mix a bit because we did have a few ladies up and dancing early on. We had some good continuity between songs; for instance: Dave ran us into the Beach Boys at the right moment to keep the dancers going. It was a good on stage sound where I was but, despite a bit of home practice in the week, I was making the odd annoying error (and so was Dave); but nothing too fatal. For example: somehow we all started out of synch on “How Long” and I had to restart the intro guitar bit – but we kept going! About halfway through the set we did the Nigel ‘bad hand is there a bass player in the house’ routine to bring Dan up to play bass and do the Shadows walk on “Apache”.
We all got a great reception for this and Nigel was pleased to hear his solid Hofner bass sound out in the hall. Thereafter we tended to play to the dancers and cut the banter; working in some rock’n’roll and generally going down well. After the break, we started off set 2 with “Hotel California”. We got thru it OK but it was a bit nervy, I think ‘cos we hadn’t played it together on stage for a few months. Nevertheless, it got a good reception and we set off into the Searchers, where again I was making some unforced errors.
The dancers re-emerged in force for “Alice” and “Halfway” where we did a good ‘girly backing singers’ routine, stopping the middle 8 to get Nigel wigged up to sing more girly! Dave elected to do Elvis unmasked (so we all knew who it was) and, strangely, we didn’t fill the floor after as we went into “Sweet Caroline”. But, as usual, once we got going with the “Bay Cities” the floor was filled and we kept them there through “Shine”; so I led the boys into “Crazy Little Thing” and “Johnny B Goode” into “Great Balls” to keep the dancey atmosphere going. We wrapped the set up with a request for “Somewhere Under The Sun” which went down well with an increasingly vocal crowd. After the raffle it was into the faded dragon shirts and back on for a short third set. We started with a ‘Moggy wheres your troosers’ version of “500 Miles” as I came out in the kilt. Dave wisely cut the song a bit, but I think we must re-arrange this properly as a permanently shorter set 3 opener. Perversely, no one got up to dance to “Amarillo” (but they did sing along), so I called for “Unchained” which did fill the floor. We followed this up with “ American Trilogy” which brought the house down with shouts for more. The we did the debut of “What Do You Wanna Make These Eyes” which went very well with extremely prominent supporting audience vocals. Time was marching on so we decided to do the end “Pretty Woman / Wonderful Tonight” sequence and we got a great reception for both. A gig of two halves I said as we packed up: ‘first half was ladies dancing and the second half was drinkers sing a long’. A bit of a ragged performance along the way but nevertheless it had been a good night for the band and the management were pleased with the turn out. Got away about 1am on a chilly, windy night; getting home at 2:30am after a good run through Swaffham and Thetford.
