Wyverstone Village Hall Fundraiser

My old road manager from the 70's, Jack Hale (now a Reader at Newcastle Uni), and son George came over for the weekend, so I put up a couple of back seats in the Galaxy and loaded them and Jacqui in to make the 30 minute journey to the gig. It was very dark in rural Suffolk as we made our way and we thought there must be a time warp when we passed the village boundary sign for 'Stowlangtoft', not once, not twice, but three times. Arrived to find the hall open and Nige and Alex already there. With assistance from Jack and George we had the gear in very quickly. Met up with Steve and Stuart the organisers who were in good form and quickly got the hall stage lights fixed - they had to replace some bulbs. There is plenty of depth on this stage and I briefly considered using the 12 string but bottled out in the end. Set up went smoothly until I tested out the reverb. I hadn't realised how sensitive the Bose analogue input is in the reverb chain and you have to have the analogue input set to at least one quarter. Eventually things tested out OK and we got changed for an 8pm start. Started off gently with Foot Tapper etc and after a bit of jazz with “Phoenix and “Lady is a Tramp” we quickly moved onto to the Four Season and Beatle medleys. We got a surprisingly good response to everything we did, but particularly the rock'n'roll when we did “Blue Suede Shoes running into Whole Lotta Shakin”. Did “Move It and Easily Fall” by Cliff. We played for about an hour and took a break for some beer and buffet and then got on with set 2. Started with “Under the Sun, Tambourine Man, Hollies, Searchers” - all familiar stuff. We did risk the Eagles “Lying Eyes” but slipped back into to rock'n'roll before wrapping this set up with “Johnny B Goode” and “Dream” (a tad fast). After another break for the raffle and roll a coin at the bottle, we got on with a long 90 minute set 3. Steve did offer to pay more for extending the set but I said 'no! – donate it to the charity'. We started with “Dance the Night Away, Amarillo and Hey Baby” Then Nige slotted in a surprise with “Spirit in the Sky” - took me a minute to get sorted on guitar but it went down OK. Further along the way we rocked things up a bit doing: “Midnight Hour”, “All Right Now, “Can't Get Enough” and “Really Got Me”. We had had a few requests for things we couldn't do, but someone finally requested something we could have a go at: the Stones! So we rattled out improvised versions of “Honky Tonk Women” and “Jumping Jack Flash”. Nige put some up tempo dancier stuff in with “Hippy Hippy Shake, Lets Dance and Mony Mony” and then inevitably we had a request for some Quo; so we rattled out “Rockin All Over the World, Whatever You Want and Caroline” all a bit improvised 'cos we hadn't done them for ages! We finally wrapped up with Nige surprising me by singing: “You'll Never Walk Alone” - he did pretty darn good despite my taking a minute to find the music! This was followed by lots of applause and shouts for more, so we did a final encore of “Apache” with a couple of girls playing tennis rackets. It had been a great night and Steve was well chuffed with the result. Jack and George seemed to have had a good time leaving behind the wreckage of several beer bottles. We got packed and loaded quickly with the extra help and it was freezing outside. Made a slow and peculiar journey home in the mist and cold, only going through Stowlangtoft once and getting in about 1:30am.