Caxton Club Beccles

Got away at 5:15pm but was making such good progress as I approached Diss, that I eased right back on the speed and pushed the average fuel economy up to 35mpg. I turned into Morrisons car park to find Nigel, Dave’n’Jen already there. They were looking at Dave’s van tyres. In the week he’d had a puncture, the spare wheel was found to be badly corroded and today he was ‘barely’ legal and travelling without a spare. After a feel of Dave’s tyres, we set off in convoy following Nigel’s lead into Beccles and down a narrow alley to Gaol Lane before doing a bit of formation parking in a small yard at the back of the club. It’s a nice looking club house, bit like a cricket pavilion. Nigel led the way in and introduced us to Paul the guvnor who opened the fire doors for us to bring the gear in. Very nice, cosy, concert room with the bar over to one side. Nigel was delighted to point out the remodelled stage which would now easily accommodate the 3 of us - the old stage would have been very cramped apparently. Dave took the view that the room was intimate enough not to need the bass drum mic. We soon had things working and sound checked with “Nowhere Man”. The on stage sound and harmonies sounded good but the overall band sound was reported by Paul out front as bassy and a bit loud. Then I realised the guitar volume was wound right back to compensate for the volume on the Roland GT10 which was wound right up. Winding back the guitar volume so far back has the effect of taking all the top end sparkle and twang off the guitar sound. So I fixed that and we had another go and it all sounded OK then. Dave had discussed set times with Paul and we had 3 x 45 minutes to do with a prompt finish at 11:15pm. So I knew we would have to be quite tight in organising the show to fit our normal 1 hour sets in. The first casualty was the 12 string as I concluded that I would only use the 6 string to keep things slick. Then, after I took some soundings from the boys, I decided to give stronger on stage direction than normal for this gig. The room began to fill just before our 8:30 start. There was quite an age range, but it looked our kind of gig and Nigel was well known to many of the audience. We got changed in the store room. Nige and I put on our smart black’n’white, I had to borrow Dave’s black tie ‘cos mine was lost (in the depths my suit bag it turned out later). Jenny had suggested Dave wear all black and we could see this was a good idea. It took Dave’s size down a bit but, with a white tie, it still complemented what Nigel and I were wearing. The room was about half full as we took to the stage and opened with “Foot Tapper”. I signalled to Dave I would do a “Hello--- Beccles” voiceover at the end. The audience responded nicely and we ran smoothly into the short version of “Just One Look”. As we progressed smartly though “Heartbeat, Good Luck Charm and the Everlys” with medium bantering, I thought we were getting a slightly restrained, polite response from the crowd. But it was early in the night so we kept plugging away with a selection that included: “Only You, Brown Eyed Girl, How Long, Seasons of Gold and The Young Ones” with Dave wearing the Cliff teddy boy wig and glasses. Some wags near the bar thought Sir Cliff’s doubled up eyebrows were sexy! To follow I took to the Shadows walk with a slight misgiving. On the one hand, we hadn’t really got the crowd as on-side as I would have liked; on the other it might liven things up? Well, there weren’t any takers to accompany me on the walk, so I staggered through a lonely walk. But we did get a good response, which pepped us (and the audience) up a bit. However, in the light of recent experiences, I think I might position this routine later in the show. As we carried on with the Hollies we continued to get a good response; but time was nearly up, so I called for “I Believe” as the big finish. Dave croaked up a bit after the first couple of lines, but Nigel took over and we managed a creditable big ending with all 3 voices which earned us a great response from the audience. In the break a local characteress called Dot offered to accompany us on tambourine. So we resumed with “Mrs Tambourine Woman” as a special request to open set 2. We followed this up with a sequence of 3 songs to introduce the band members. First Dave with “Let There Be Drums”, it was a tad fast, but it went down a bomb with the crowd, a real ice breaker moment! Then Nige introduced me as the ‘rock royalty’ from the Checkmates to perform “Eyes at Me for”. We got some good sing-a-long going there and the crowd were now well on our side. Then it was Nigel’s turn to be introduced as one of Ray Charles ‘Raelets’ to sing “Tell Me What I Say”. This was first time out with this song and I made a bit of a mess of the introductory instrumental sections but it rocked along nicely in the end and we got another good response. We ran through the Searchers but, with no sign of any dancing, I omitted “Do It Again” and we went straight into “Take it Easy – Lying Eyes”. Pretty much everything we played now was getting a good response. I wisely decided to rest “Alice” and called for “Halfway to Beccles”. This did bring a few up to dance and we had a loud chorus of accompanying singers from the bar area. We also upped the bantering at this point and did a fine middle 8 stop for Nigel to be fitted with a girly wig to do his high answer backs. Then Elvis made an appearance to a rapturous reception. Dave is still getting his introductory ‘Whoa oh ohs’ in too early and throwing the chords out of sequence but the audience loved joining in on them. (I suppose Nigel and I could start on Em rather than the G?) It was Jenny in the audience who guessed it was Neil Diamond up next and off we went with “Sweet Caroline” with more audience participation doing swinging arms and vocal accompaniment. Once more we were running out of time so I called for the big ballad “Love is All Around” and we finished to a great reception. In the break we all worked the room (even I did a bit) and we were asked to do a Froggy number by the ex-concert sec’. So we went back on for set 3 to open with “Under the Sun”. We followed that with “500 Miles into Amarillo and Hey Baby”. We were getting a lot of audience response but not much dancing; so I cut the party dance sequence at that point and we did a short “Unchained” to fill the dance floor and followed up with “East Anglian Trilogy” which had everyone in the room singing along. We got a huge round of applause for that. Following Nige’s earlier advice and in complete contrast to what we had been doing, we then set about some soft rock with “Johnny B Goode”, “Alright Now”, Can’t Get Enough”, and “Status Quo”. There were some errors in this sequence but, again, we got a surprisingly good response from most of the audience to repertoire I would have thought was a bit out of their comfort zone. In fact Dot (in her 80’s) later commented that she was pleased we had done “Johnny B Goode” – it was one of her favourites! With time running out I called for “Pretty Woman” and we signed off on that with the usual routine of the delayed ‘show your appreciation to Dave’. At the end we got a huge response with shouts for MORE! Paul gave us the OK to encore. So I got the boys to wrap up with “Saw Her Standing There” which Nige and I played with the same bar count on the solo this time! There was a lot of positive interest from the crowd as we packed up. Several used the E word (Excellent) We all felt good about delivering a sharp but friendly show that had gone down very well with a nice crowd. We are looking forward to getting a full house on our next visit. Load up was easy. I was just about to shut the car door when Jenny came up with one of my bags she had found in the dressing room. Easy run home and asleep by 1:30am