Norwich WMC

I had had an eventful week with Jon and Carl popping in to see us en route to Spain, Elsie's funeral and, although the building work completed Monday, Rocky started decorating Tuesday! Dave had been in Skegness all week and I hadn't heard from him, but I assumed all was well and set off for the gig a bit later than usual at 5:50pm. I arrived outside the club at 6:45pm to find it was still locked up. Nige appeared. He had been driving round in the hopes of finding a parking space – to no avail. After a few minutes the club was opened by Mickey and Colin and we started the load in. We had all our gear in by the time Dave'n'Jen arrived. Dave had been on a removal job and professed to being a bit tired. We got the drums in in quick time and Nige and I set off to the multi-storey car park (at £1.60 a time). Meanwhile Dave found a space outside Pizza Express. By the time we got set up and tested, it was after 8pm. Laura and boyfriend and Gordon had arrived in support and Dave'n'Nige started to work the smoking yard. I suddenly realised it was 8:20pm so I went to get the boys organised for an 8:30 start. Dave was in full flow in the yard and I had to prise him away to get him to change. By the time we had struggled into our black shirts with new white ties (from Skegness) it was well after show time. In fact we were about 10 minutes late starting up with “Flingel Bunt” (to vary things). We carried on with “Just One Look”, “Heartbeat” and “”Good Luck Charm” as normal, but when we got to the Everlys, I called for “Walk Right Back” and “When Will I Be Loved” for a change. Not a bad sound on stage. Nige had placed his Bose slightly more centrally and it made a difference where I was. 'cos I could hear their vocals and the bass significantly clearer. Also I think the sound carries better to the hall from there – we had none of this “turn it up we can't hear you” banter from the audience! I don't know if it was Dave being tired, but the banter and the rhythm section was nicely relaxed and we were going down quite well with a crowd that knows us. I called for a slowey and after a bit of discussion we did did “Three Times a Lady”. We hadn't played it much over the last few weeks and I thought we performed it very well with a relaxed feel and vocals nicely synchronised. We got a few up dancing to it and I carried on with “Raining in My Heart” which went well despite me forgetting some words. I introduced the band and the audience clapped in all the right places – fantastic! Then we set Nige off on “Brown Eyed Girl”. I need to pay a bit of attention to the bass break and ending, but otherwise it was good and well received. We had talked about improvising Cliff's version of “Do You Wanna Dance” earlier in the evening and with a few people having a dance we decided to give it a go. Nige knew the words and took the lead line. In the chorus's Dave took the high harmony and I went for the bass line. The whole song ticked along very nicely; I got the essence of the guitar solos pretty well and we filled the dance floor. We carried on with the Eagles “How Long” which kept them dancing. As it ended and, while we had them dancing, I minimised the banter and we got underway smartly with the 4 Seasons medley - “Seasons of Gold”. This was also well performed and nicely paced, and we got some good applause as we finished. Next up was “Rock Around the Clock into Summertime Blues” which was again paced well. Dave called for the Hollies next and we were just finishing another good performance when up come Phil the concert sec to do the Bingo. “Did you start on time?” he asked. “Yes Dave was well into his shirt by 8:30” I quipped. There was a longish break for bingo and then we came on for set 2. I got Dave to start with “Let There Be Drums”; it was slower than of late only a teeny bit fast. But it went down very well with this relatively enthusiastic (but smaller than usual) WMC audience. Dave then introduced me to do “Eyes at Me For”, this went well and we had them singing along nicely. Next I asked Dave to do his Sir Cliff impression and I made the point that “in Cliff's early days he was known as the Elvis without sideburns” as I adjusted Dave's wig to fold the side boards away! Then we did the Shadows Walk routine, getting Hughie and Brenda up to do the dance to Apache. While I was out front I could gauge the sound. A very good mix; sometimes the guitar can be a little bit too powerful, but I thought we were perfectly balanced on this occasion. We carried on with the Searchers; the floor was nicely full with dancers, so we ran on into “Do It Again”. I think we had a brief break at this point while the raffle was drawn. We resumed with The Eagles and then “I Believe”. We hadn't played it mid set for a long time and I thought it went very well on the night. Next we did “Alice” - the audience at this club has been well trained by Nigel to keep it clean and they did the “Who the Heck is Alice” answer backs with some enthusiasm. Then it was “Halfway, Elvis, Sweet Caroline and Shine”. All well played and very well received. We followed up with “Amarillo” and went right through the party dance sequence to “Hi Ho” by which time it was approaching 11:30pm and the dancers were flagging a bit. So we did a long version of “Unchained” and Dave signed off. However, we got such a good response that we had to do an encore; so it was “Pretty Woman” followed by a rocking version of “Johnny B Goode”. Although there hadn't been huge attendance at this gig we had turned in a good performance with a relaxed feel and won the audience over. We had forgotten to do some things we had planned e.g. Nigel was going to do a toast to Henry Allingham the First World War veteran who had just died aged 113; and somehow we had run out of time to change shirts! But overall we had done a good job and we were happy bunnies as we packed up. By the time I got the gear downstairs, retrieved the car and loaded it was about 12:30am . I missed the turn for Westgate St on the way out and ended up going through some of Norwich centre before I took another wrong turn and ended up on the East side of the inner ring road. Still it was just a case of following it round to eventually pick up the A11 and then a quick run home getting in about 1:40am.