Sheringham Social Club

A sunny day, and despite a strong East wind, temperatures were mild enough for me to travel without a pullover. I decided to go via Norwich in case there was a lot of traffic heading to Wells. But it was cup final day and traffic was light, so I was the first arrival at the gig at about 6:40pm. I had just unloaded when Dave (with Martin and Laura) showed up and by the time I parked my car and walked back Nigel was also there. Set up went fine on the sizeable stage and, as there was no one there, we ran through a bit of the Beatles medley particularly “Nowhere Man” as a sound check. I had a bit of trouble pitching my harmony to start, but by the time we’d run it through a few times we were all spot on and it sounded good. Dave and Nigel worked the room while I went through Dave’s book. We were determined to give some of the practiced material a go on the night and I wanted Dave to have the latest versions of the arrangements. John and a group from Weybourne had come to see us and he came over to say hello. As it got to 8:15pm there were quite a few in the room; in fact as busy as I have ever seen it and a good mix of ages from family groups through to oldies. We got changed into the red’n’black and took to the stage about 8:45pm to open up with “Foot Tapper”. Dave did a voice over in the last verse which was a good idea but, once again, put too much into it too quickly; so his points about requests and the OSA were lost. We went straight into the short version of “Just One Look” and got a surprisingly warm reception. So we carried on through to the Everlys with banter controls set to medium, and we continued to get a good response from an audience who, at this early stage, were more in the mood for entertainment than dancing. After “Only You” which went well and brought a few up to dance, we introduced Nigel to do a newey with: “Brown Eyed Girl” from Van Morrison. I got off to a dodgy start forgetting that there were 2 guitar phrases to introduce it, but thereafter it ticked along nicely and was a refreshing change. We picked and mixed through the 3 Seasons and “How Long”; and then we gave the new Buddy Holly routine an airing. We make a bit of a thing about each being the best Buddy Holly: ‘cos I have the glasses’; so all three of us end up wearing them! The glasses bit went well, but I got off to a shaky start on the guitar intro to “That’ll be the Day” and shortly after I messed up the solo – I seemed to lose sight of the neck: but I can’t even blame the glasses as they are lens less! However, “Peggy Sue” and “Oh Boy” went well, and I think I played the guitar solo on “Oh Boy” good enough to compensate for the earlier cock ups. Sir Cliff made an appearance and I did a lonely Shadows walk which still earned a great round of applause. Then it was time to do the Beatles and hooray!! – we played it through largely right. Although it was just a teeny bit fast, we got all the transitions right, the harmonies were good and there was even a bit of audience sing-a-long in places. The hour was coming to an end so we elected to follow up with a good rendition of the Hollies and “3 times a Lady” which brought out the dancers in force. During the break Dave continued to work the room hard and it was becoming clear that quite a few people had come out specifically to see the band. Dave went to get changed into the kamikaze shirt as Nigel and I took to the stage. It only took a minute to check tunings so I took a bit of time to introduce Dave to the audience, saying he would be with us shortly - once he had finished his shift at the local Chinese take away! I got the audience worked up to give him a great round of applause as he entered the room and then we got straight on with “Let There Be Drums”. This went so well that Dave called for “Wipe Out” and we obliged by turning it into “Walk Don’t Wipe Out”. I had primed Nigel to follow up the drum display by introducing me to do “Eyes” and he did a fine job. We got a bit of audience sing-a-long response to this and, following the false ending, we got a good round of applause. I changed to my Fender 12 string and we played through the Searchers to the Eagles. All a little bit fast I thought, but we had a few up dancing so maybe it was me and my slow heartbeat! Next we made a poor choice of “Alice”. There were several children in the room and the audience didn’t have the stomach for the rude answer backs - with hindsight it would have been better to do “Halfway”. But, time was marching on, so I called for a skip of “Halfway” and we got on with the “Elvis” routine. Dave is starting “Wonder of You” most oddly at the moment. He is getting the count in right, but then going for the ‘Whoah Oah’ too early and throwing the chords out of sequence. We recovered OK but it is unnerving. So, we played this through a bit raggedly; but we got a great response. Then we played out with “Sweet Caroline” to close the set for the raffle. Martin won some beer and then won again but kindly asked for the ticket to be re-drawn. During the break a cruise ship entertainer: ‘Johnny Golden’ came up to request something fast and then another old boy requested something by “Raymond Frogatt” saying he had heard we were playing here because Roy Waller of Radio Norfolk had announced the gig on his show and suggested we might do a ‘Froggy’ song. To oblige, we took to the stage to do the final 40 minutes, starting with “Somewhere Under the Sun”. I made a mess up of the guitar intro and didn’t hear the ‘play it boy’ intro for the guitar solo; but a large section of the audience clearly loved the song and we got great applause. We got on with “Amarillo” going through “Hey Baby” to the “Twist”. There weren’t too many dancers so we stopped the party dance stuff for a long “Unchained” and “American Trilogy” Despite our playing it with some ragged edges, Trilogy was ecstatically received. At this point we elected to do “Mony Mony” into “Baby Come Back”. Nigel was proved right as the dance floor filled as he had predicted. Unfortunately, I couldn’t remember the guitar part for the transition but we kept going and eventually I remembered it! After that it just remained for us to wrap up with the “Pretty Woman” outro. At the end we were asked to do one more, so we set off on the “Quo” medley. This got off to a nice slow pace and transitioned well through “Whatever You Want” to “Caroline”; where Nigel called for a rapid close due a signal from the guvnor we were well over time. But I was so engrossed in messing up yet another guitar solo, that I missed the cue and we ground to a halt in a bit of a car crash ending! Despite the problems it had been a good night for the band and we were pleased with ourselves as we packed up. Laura seemed a bit tiddley and needed some fresh air. Gordon kept an eye on her. I was away by 12:45 and home for 2:15am going back via Swaffham.