Sheringham Social Club

I had a good run over in slightly warmer and more humid conditions than of late. I got great petrol consumption - nearly 35mpg. I was first to arrive and had most my gear in by the time Nigel rolled by. He didn't unload straight away because he had to make a visit to drop off a birthday card. While I parked my car in the main car park Dave and Jen arrived. Despite some twinges in his leg, he was in good shape and we soon had his gear in. I managed to push Dave along the stage a bit as we set up - so I had enough room to set up the Fender XII as well as the Godin 6 string. When Nige arrived he complained of feeling a bit rough – swine flu we thought! Anyway to be on the safe side he wouldn't shake hands or handle any drink glasses. After set up we were testing out the gear and it sounded good; but, because the stage is not that deep, we weren't getting enough foldback to Dave. I came up with the idea of boosting Dave's signal by pushing a bit more of Nige and Dave's mic signal through my Bose and that seemed to do the trick. Interestingly, we didn't take the mic volumes to the limits of feedback and adjusted our overall instrumental sound down just a tad. It is quite a late start here and we had a few minutes before people started to arrive to go through some subtleties on “All Right Now”. Then we set off for a beer and to work the room a bit. We got changed about 8:30pm. Nige and I put on the white shirts with black ties and Dave did a negative by wearing his black shirt with white tie – it all looked good (from a distance) as we took to the stage at 8:45pm for a low key start to a half full room with quite a few oldies (well my sort of age anyway!) around the sides. We started with the usual “Foot Tapper into Just One Look” intro. We had agreed to turn the banter controls down to medium for this audience. Departing from the usual sequence we did some country with “Cheating Heart and I Love You Because” This all went down quite well with an audience who were just at the 'drink and chat' stage of the evening. We got into lounge lizard mode by doing “Lady is a Tramp” which was well received. I thought “Girl From Ipanema” was a little bit hurried and at that point we decided to play safe and revert to the usual “Heartbeat, Good Luck Charm, Cathys Clown, Bye Bye Love” sequence. All very well played and a well balanced sound; and you could see the audience starting to warm to our show . Surprisingly Nigel wanted to swap vocal with Dave for “Beautiful Body” so rather than risk messing it up I called for “Brown Eyed Girl” bantering that Nigel wanted to sing about something brown – I couldn't imagine what! We did the intro fine but, same as the previous night, I made the mistake of falling back to a G chord after the intro riff – it should be F f f f! After that we played it well and rhythmically it felt good. I must say that looking around I could see it got some of the ladies jiggling a bit even if they didn't come up to dance as such. That set the pattern for the rest of the set really. We did a good Beatles, and nicely felt “3 Times a Lady” with the band playing well together and even getting the occasional bits of dancing going. Gordon arrived halfway through the set and got us a round in – we gave him the drinks order from the stage! After about 45 minutes, I think we were doing a good 4 Seasons and at the end Dave said 'right times up' and announced we were taking a break. A well performed set really. The only problem I thought we had was the abrupt end. For me its much more professional to finish on a big slowey and announce it as the last number before we take a break. We came back on after about 20 minutes and started on the 12 string with the Searchers. Once again we had a good band sound and feel; and, as we played through to the Eagles (complete with introductory chicken noises from Nigel), we were rewarded with some dancing and healthy rounds of applause. Next we did “Let There Be Drums” and like the previous night Dave wanted to lengthen it, which led to some confusion. Personally I think it is better as arranged – too much of a good thing means we have to omit other good things. We did “Alice and Halfway” as entertainment sing-a-long preludes to an appearance by Elvis. He arrived in the building sang “Wonder of You” and left 'em begging for more! “Sweet Caroline” and “Shine” got them dancing and as the band was steaming I called for “Do You Wanna Dance” and that filled the floor nicely and kept the dancey atmosphere. As we finished it Dave called for the Hollies Medley to keep things going. I thought this would be a tough call vocally at this time of the evening, but we did a great job and, remarkably, people danced to it. Dave then did another abrupt ending. Apart from the end I thought this must have been the best we had played set 2 (probably ever!). In the break Dave introduced a couple of ladies who liked Billy Fury and requested that next time I sing the right words on a couple of verses of “Halfway to Paradise” – 'I would if I could remember them” I quipped! We resumed with about 40 minutes to go with the party dance sequence which we started with a slighltly cocked up version of “500 Miles”. My fault - I got to the middle break a line early! We had the floor nicely filled with dancing right through to “Hi Ho” when it all turned sing-a-long and arm waving. Like the previous evening we did a short version of “Unchained” which filled the floor and then followed up with a very well received “American Trilogy”. It was getting close to time, so Dave called for “Johnny B Good” which rocked along well and had some of the audience doing frenzied, mad dancing and then we wrapped up with “Pretty Woman” with a well bantered ending where Nigel and I signed off to our bits of applause and forget Dave . But Nige finally did ask the audience to 'give it up for Dave' and we ground to a halt amid shouts for 'more'. So we did “Wonderful Tonight” as the encore and that calmed things down nicely. As we packed up I thought we had done a pretty good job considering Nige was under par and the voices were a bit shot from 2 nights. In fact apart from the abrupt set endings I thought we had played together well, as opposed to playing well as individuals - but not quite together! It was drizzly as we loaded up. Gordon offered me some freshly picked Saphi from his car boot. Not knowing it was a delicacy, I declined - Ms J gave me a right telling off the next morning! I got away about 12:20am shouting goodbye to Nige who was still glad handing passing motorists at that time of night (someone he knew I think)! I had a good run to Swaffham but then got stuck behind an erratic driver so only got home about 2:20 am.