Dave’n’Jen arrived as I was testing and we took a break to sort out Dave’s front of stage position and get the beers in. Resuming the tests I was puzzled by the lack of FX on vocals so out came the torch and I delved into the back of the FX rack. Eventually I found both output leads had came adrift. One routes the processed signal to Nigel’s Bose and the other to mine - the problem was replacing them the right way round. I reasoned it out from the mixer pan settings, but the bingo was being called and I wasn’t able to test properly. So I had another beer and relaxed to the sounds of the bingo. No dressing room so we got changed in the lobby at the back. Nige and I got changed into the smart white’n’black and Dave put on his Chinese waiter dragon shirt. We got the go ahead at 9pm and started off with “Foot Tapper”. All went well until we transitioned into “Just one Look” when some high pitched feedback started. I tried to fiddle with the settings as we carried on through a typical set 1, but in the end we just had to lower the volumes and even then we would get feedback on some notes. Fortunately, the audience wasn’t too bothered and we had a few up and dancing, so we just soldiered on. We had a couple of ladies doing the Shadows walk. One must have had a few because she got her lefts and rights mixed up and kept walking into me! But this gave me the inspiration to fix the feedback problem; I reasoned that I must have replaced the left / right leads the wrong way round feeding the same additive vocal to each Bose rather than feeding each others signal to the other Bose! But the change would have to wait for the break. Along the way we did an interesting “Eyes at Me For” with added audience sing-a-long and we filled the floor with “I Believe” as a mid-set slowey for a change. As we ran up to an hour we ran to a finish with a well paced “Rock Around The Clock, Summertime Blues, Be Bop A Lula” sequence. This brought the dancers out in force, but they were out of breath and sitting down towards the end so we did the big finish with “3 Times a Lady” which brought the romantics out on the floor again! In the interval I fixed the PA problem by swapping the mixer L R settings. A lady rightly commented I was too young to be in the Checkmates in 1959 so I told her it was ‘dog years’ in my case and I was into my 5th incarnation as Rover! We came back on to do Set 2 starting with the “Searchers” and running right through to “Sweet Caroline”. The sound was back to normal thank goodness and, once again, the harmonies sounded very good. The audience joined in enthusiastically for “Alice and Halfway” and gave Elvis a rousing reception. But time was getting on, the last bus seemed to be at 11pm and the audience started to thin out. We tried “Amarillo”, Crazy Little Thing and Johnny B Good” to keep an atmosphere going, but then I made a poor call to end the set with “Love Is all Around”. Only then did we realise we only had about 30 minutes to go – we should have just carried on!. So we just had a quick break and resumed with a short set playing to about 20 and starting with “Shine”. This went down quite well with the small crowd and I must say it was the best we had played it. Dave and I are finally getting our backings in order and it chugs along quite nicely. We picked and mixed our way through a selection including a well felt “Unchained” and nicely paced “American Trilogy” only marred by Dave not waiting for the guitar cue into the ‘sing it fellas’ section and me getting the Synth switch the wrong way to get an organ sound instead of the flute for the solo. We played out with a request for “Dance the Night Away” and I must say, considering it rarely gets an airing, we did it real well; it was well paced, it sounded good, there were no errors and we all finished together – well done to all concerned! Although there only a few left by then, they gave it up with a rousing applause! So we encored with “Pretty Woman” – I got Dave to kick off with the drums under the opening announcements and we did a goodbye from all the band at the end. We packed and loaded efficiently, Jen and Nige once again helped me out with all my bits and pieces while Dave did the glad handing. After a bit of manoeuvring in the tight space at the back we were on the road for 12:30am and I was home for about 1:40am on a full moonlit and chilly night.
