I put a bit more oomph on the bass drum but Nigel and I agreed to stick to normal mid-point master volumes for this gig. Everything sounded fine on stage but we didn’t bother with a sound check and I left our music on to fill in the time to the flag ceremony at 8pm. Unknown to me, Nige had set up his own dressing room by the side of the stage while Dave and I used the boys changing rooms. Despite some gay dressing assistance, Dave had trouble getting into his white shirt so we agreed to switch to red. Now I thought Nige was outside trying to find the changing room so I set off to look for him - but to no avail? In the end I did find him at the side of the stage ready to go in his white shirt. I hurriedly explained the change in plan and we both set off to get changed into the red’n’black. Meantime Dave had got dressed in the red with white tie! Rather than relay another change, I concluded it would look good for me and Nige to stay in black ties and Dave to wear the contrasting white so we agreed to just get on with it and hit the stage just in time for a prompt 8:30ish start looking to finish by 9:30pm. We opened up as usual and we got a great reception for “Foot Tapper” and “Just One Look”. But following on with “Heartbeat” I could see Nige was struggling to track down a bassy resonance. I tried to help by bottom cutting the guitar and bass drum in the mix on my side; but I’m not sure he got to the ‘bottom’ of it! Nevertheless, the band was being received very well and we knew we were in for a good night when we heard the audience singing along enthusiastically with “Good Luck Charm” So far so good: so we decided to play some country to meet some requests we had had for a slow foxtrot and waltz. Dave knocked out the “Cheating Heart” medley and followed up with “He’ll Have to Go” as the waltz. With Nige throwing in "Jambalaya" as the quickstep the dance floor was full of happy ‘strictly come’ dancers. Conscious of the time we moved on to “How Long” and got a great reception for that. Next up we had Sir Cliff of North Walsham and then we did a great Shadows walk with the organisers on rubber guitars. I set up a long lead to go out front and I could get a fair way out into the dance floor and I must say the band sound was very impressive. The walk went so well Dave led us into “Flingel Bunt” to do a reprise. Getting back on stage we played “Seasons of Gold” and the dance floor filled nicely and we got a very warm round of applause at the end. We fitted in “3 Times a Lady” as a slowey and carried on with the Beatles, Hollies and “Rock Around the Clock” before wrapping up with “I Believe”. All this went down really well; lots of dancing and applause is just what budding rock stars like! Only snag was Nige and I were not happy with the on-stage sound. He had his resonance and I had a brittle, slightly distorted guitar sound. The distortion is an illusory artefact of being about 5 foot in front of the Bose – the real sound out front is as clear as a bell. But there was little we could do about it and by all accounts, and my own experience with the Shadows, the sound out front was superb! Had a long break for the Easter Bonnet parade which we judged in triplicate (I was Simon Cowell, Dave Piers Morgan and Nige was Amanda!). We found several worthy winners in the junior and senior competitions. Getting back on for set 2 in our hari kari shirts, a wag quipped: “you can’t go on ‘til you cook that Chinese meal I ordered!” We opened up with a well performed “Let There Be Drums”, Nige and I were spot on with the run ups and again the audience loved it. Seeing we only had about an hour to play and the audience was in party mood, we played through the dance sequence from “500 Miles” to “Hi Ho”. This sequence was fraught with small errors but enthusiastically played and received. It was clearly the right time to do “Unchained” as we filled the dance floor with romantics and it was also the right time to get the tartan hats on for a “Bay Cities” revival to follow to fill the floor with ‘teenie boppers’. We carried in with “Shine” which was a bit better vocally, but my hands wandered away from the right chords in the second verse. (plus we need to tighten up the ‘stop’ in second verse). However, it went down a bomb as did “Love is all Around” to follow. We were coming close to time and we did a successful “Pretty Woman” to start the closing sequence. We were looking to do some encores and a youngster in the crowd shouted out for Quo’s “Rocking All over the World” so we duly obliged. After a bit of confusion over key and tempo we settled into a more correct slower groove as I sang this and were rewarded with some good ‘Quo’ dancing out front. Dave and Nige led us into “Great Balls" and as we finished I went for “Crazy Little Thing” and followed up with a really rocking version of “Johnny B Goode” to finish the evening on a high. I wanted to do one more slowey, but Trevor and Dave had already done the closing remarks, so we left the stage with some of the crowd shouting for more but the job very well done. We had had our concerns regarding the on-stage sound and lots of unforced small errors, but many of people came up to compliment us on a great show and Trevor was really chuffed we had kept the crowd entertained all evening. We were packed and away by just before midnight. Rain had dispersed the fog and it was a little warmer for the steady drive home getting in about 1:30am.
