Royal British Legion Aylsham Road Norwich

We all arrived about 7pm. Just needed to tidy up things and tune the guitars. We had thought there might be a different audience from the Saturday but many of the faces we saw were from Saturday and some even came up and said how much they enjoyed it and how much they were looking forward to a repeat performance. We changed into the smart white’n’black and emerged for an 8pm on time start opening with “Flingel Bunt” for a change. This was very well received by some Shadows enthusiasts on my left! As we carried on with “Just One Look” once again the floor was full of dancers. We rang a few changes in this set e.g. we did the other two Everly’s songs – interestingly the audience took “Walk Right Back” as a cue for a barn dance, so I put in a guitar solo to help things along. This time we gave “I Believe” an airing as the slowey and the audience were singing along so loud that Dave and I missed our cues for the end. Once again we felt obliged to keep them on the floor so we followed up with “Raining in my Heart”. After Sir Cliff, we brought up a couple of gents to do the Shadows walk. Reading the audience we went early to the rock’n’roll and I slipped in “Be Bop a Lula” to bring us to the 40 minute point. We expected to play an hour so we then embarked on a new concept: A Buddy Holly Medley. We had a bit of banter and then all put on the black rimmed glasses. I opened up with “That’ll Be the Day” and Dave got the pace just right. We stepped through it nicely and the dancers were right on board. Then we made the planned abrupt transition into “Peggy Sue”. With Dave just taking the pace on a little bit everything was going to plan. It was as we transitioned into “Oh Boy” that things went awry. We had embarked on a 1 hour set, but no one had told us bingo was at 8:45pm. As we got through a promising first verse, the house lights came on and the bingo caller made some gestures to cut the music. So we wrapped up in a somewhat dishevelled way - but the bingo man asked the audience to show their appreciation anyway! During the interval one of the locals had requested “Hotel California” and we picked up a couple of birthdays to celebrate. So we returned to open up with “Walk Don’t Wipe Out” and then I followed up with “Travelodge California”. Surprisingly it brought some up to dance and we got a rousing round of applause as we finished it. It is quite difficult to play on the Fender 12 compared to the PRS, but apart from one blip in the solo, we did a good performance. So we carried on with the Searchers and Beach Boys. We skipped the Eagles and went straight to “Alice”. Now this crowd were under strict house rules not to swear and Nigel’s advice to use “Heck” was very well received and they stuck to it! We brought Elvis on to do “Wonder of You”. Just time for “Sweet Caroline” and “Shine” and then it was time to wrap up with “Love is All Around”. We took about 20 minutes off and then resumed with “500 Miles” which got a great reaction and followed that up with the usual party dance up to “Hi Ho”. Then we did a short version of “Unchained” before doing a special request for “American Trilogy” again. I messed up on switching to the flute sound, but we got through fine and it was well received again. Dave did a shortish country barn dance based on "Cheating Heart" which went well. The audience thinned out after that. After “Dance the Night Away” we did the Spencer Davis sequence and Shaking All Over” to vary things a bit before cruising to the usual finish. Another successful night. I was really tired as we packed away, but once in the car I had my rattle to keep me awake; and I was home by 1:15am.