Ringsfield Village Hall 40th Wedding Anniversary Bash

With Dave diagnosed with swine flu in the week, Nigel had lined his mate Martin up to dep. I spent a bit of time organising the dep book and show flow in the week so I was fairly confident as I set off just after 5pm on a warm, sunny afternoon. After a bit of a diversion on a short cut around Bungay, I made good time to Ringsfield and found the village hall where Google indicated and already well stacked with parked cars. It's a medium sized village hall with a high roof and was already full of people who had been celebrating all afternoon. I introduced myself to the celebrating couple Jo and Tony – apparently they had booked us on the strength of an internet search for a local band and liked what they saw on the web site. Tony showed me to the stage. High, wide but a bit ricketty and short on depth? I had all my gear in when Nigel arrived and he had all his in when Martin (our dep for the night) arrived. Martin has a beautiful wood finish Sonor kit. He needed a carpet on the dodgy stage so I 'borrowed' mine out the car and set it down over the gaps in the stage. Too posh for drumming on he quipped! We got set up quickly, Nige and I angled the Boses in a bit to try and get some fold back to Martin who was unable to set up much in front 'cos of the lack of depth on the stage. The sun was beginning to go down as we completed and fortunately Martin had suggested he bring in his lights – this was a good move because our clients wanted to set up a bit of a dancey atmosphere by having the main lights off, with just some coloured table lights providing low level illumination in the hall.
We got organised with beers and I introduced Martin to the dep book which has all the song arrangements set out. Nige and I got changed into the white shirts, black waistcoats and black ties. (Martin was already dressed to go) We hit the stage about 8:15 pm intending to do an hour. We started up with Foot Tapper, a tad faster than I'm used to, but Martin got all the little drum fills and feels in the right place and it felt good. We went straight into the longer version of “Just One Look” with Nige taking the lead vocal line, me doing the usual and Martin fitting in. It all sounded fine and we got an appreciative round of applause at the end. We took a couple of minutes out to introduce ourselves and then got on with “Anniversary Waltz” to get Jo and Tony up to lead the dancing. We followed up with “Heartbeat” which was well played. Skipping “Good Luck Charm” we did “Walk Right Back - When Will I Be Loved” with Nigel filling in well on the banter and, although there wasn't much dancing going on, we got a good round of applause. We wanted to ease Martin in vocally so I got Nige to do his “Beautiful Body” next. Martin fitted in well to our vocal blend and I did my best doing Dave's quips between lines – I can't get his Norfolk boy accent though! After that we thought we'd try a slowey. Nigel had volunteered to do the Bee Gees “Words” and he led us into a pretty good rendition; Martin and I added some gentle high harmonies as the song progressed and, given it was the first time we had ever played it, it was great. It also went down well with the audience and you could see that if we ran it thru a couple more times we could easily add some strong Bee Gee-esque harmonies; improving on the original which didn't actually have much harmony? The audience included a few people of a certain age so I decided to do my “Walking in the Rain” 50's medley next. I was mighty impressed by the way Martin picked the changes up. Although the crowd didn't get the answerbacks, they applauded loudly at the finish, so I announced we would take it even further back in time by getting Martin to sing “Lady is a Tramp”. This was the first time I had heard him sing lead and although Nigel had briefed me as to his qualities, I was mighty impressed. He sings great, but he also gave it a bit of Frank Sinatra voice mimicry as well – a nice touch which the crowd appreciated. Next up was “Rock Around the Clock”. With Nige and Martin uneasy about doing it in Dave's and my preferred key of A, I made a quick decision to ad lib it. I almost regretted that once we got going 'cos I could only make up some nonsense words about 'nose drops off on the floor'; but we got a few couples up and jiving and so it was the right song choice. We followed up with “Summertime Blues” which Nige sang and then “Be Bop A Lula” with me singing as usual. I carried on with Cliff's “The Young Ones”, sightly problematic to read the words and sing with the low light levels on stage, but we carried it off OK. Next we went for “Apache” and the Shadows walk. A young lad volunteered to do the walk with me holding his toy guitar - he did a fantastic job and it earned a massive round of applause. When I got back on stage, Nige had been briefing Martin how to fit in on our medleys; so we decided to do the “Four Seasons” as the 3 Seasonings - Salt, Pepper and Halibut? This is a complex piece and Martin just fitted in as well as anyone could – remarkable! Apart from drumming it well he added some great high harmonies, probably an octave above mine! We were so pleased with the result, we decided to have a go at the equally complex Beatles medley next. Martin covered for Dave's vocal in “All My Lovin” and Nige did the lead on “I Feel Fine”. Again it went as well as it could do and earned a strong round of applause. Looking round we thought we would need a slowey to finish the set. Nige suggested Martin to have a go at “Three Times a Lady”. I had a bit of trouble getting the guitar settings for the start right in the dark, but once we got going Martin sang it really well. Not knowing the Foot Tappers unique song flow, he followed Lionel Ritchie's arrangement which Nige and I fell into neatly - joining in the long harmonised 'aaahhs' section. This waltz filled the floor but we had been on stage for an hour so we took a break at that point. Tony came over said how much they were enjoying it and asked the band to have a drink on him! Another chap came over and requested an Elvis number – I sounded out Martin about doing “Wonder of You”. We had about 15 minutes break and then resumed with “Under the Sun” with Nige taking the lead. I had chickened out of using the 12 string because of the dark so I think we skipped “Mr Tambourine Man” and got straight on with The Searchers medley next. Again Martin fitted in just perfectly and we soon had a few dancers up. Nigel did the lead vocal in “Don't Throw Your Love” and led Martin into “Do It Again” as we finished. This went well and kept the dance floor busy. We had a quick check with Martin that he could do the two Eagles songs and then we were off into them and once again it all went very well with the three voices blending as though we'd been singing together for several weeks not several hours! Looking for some more dancey stuff, Nige led us into “Moon of Love – Beautiful Sunday” with Martin taking the lead and filling the dance floor. As we came out of that we cooled it down a bit by doing “Halfway” and then did the request for “Wonder of You” which again got the right vocal blend and went down a bomb. My memory is a bit hazy but I recall we followed up with a bobbing rendition of “Sweet Caroline” and then wrapped up the set with Boyzone's “No Matter”, which I thought went very well with me taking lead line 1 and Martin lead line 2; Nige had no difficulty with the key change and Martin followed the Foot Tapper arrangement perfectly to close to a great response from the audience. We were under instructions to finish at 11pm prompt so we only had a quick break, resuming with about 45 minutes to go with “Dance the Night Away” followed by “Do You Wanna Dance” - so the floor was filled by the time we briefed Martin to take the lead on “Amarillo” and follow us through the party dance sequence. Off we went; Martin picked up a great rhythm and some great 'Tony Christie' vocals got the audience dancing and singing along. We slipped seamlessly into “Hey Baby” which I think Martin sang lead on and we got the audience doing a jolly sing-a-long in the middle. The switch to the “Twist” went well but, to avoid being sued for causing a bad back, I kept it short and we got underway with “Locomotion” which got them doing the 'chug a chug' dance nicely. On we went with “Hi Ho” which got the arms waving and sing-a-long going and then into “All Right Now”. I had been dubious about this because from the off we'd been asked to keep the volume down. But I think by running the Bose at just under 12 o'clock, no matter how deep we dug the overall volume was fine – so we went for it. Digging deep I even switched to bridge humbucker for the solo. Nige had briefed me that Martin would go for a drum solo at this point and we left him to it. Very nicely done, well paced and inventive, and a great sound. He cued us back in to the last few notes of the guitar solo, but I only realised what he wanted after I just missed it! But we all got together a couple of bars later with the chorus - and he earned a great round of applause for it! We did “Unchained” next as the romantic slowey. Incredibly Martin timed the vocal like the Righteous Brothers, This is very hard to do when you are playing drums (or guitars) and Nige and I had some difficulty synchronising the harmony lines. But, by holding the harmonies back in the mix, I think we got a convincing effect and it went down a bomb! We were close to the end now, so I called for “Johnny B Goode” as the rocking finisher and then we encored with “Wonderful Tonight” taking our leave of the crowd at just after 11pm to a great reception. Martin had done a truly great dep job fitting in like a glove and Nige also, in his usual quiet, understated way, had stepped up and filled in vacant MC and singing roles well beyond the call of duty. As we packed away, we got some nice appreciative comments from people who obviously had enjoyed the show. We got on the road about midnight and although there were some patches of fog I was home by just after 1 am, tired and a bit sore of throat.