Seacroft East Runton

Made good time over via Norwich on a cold windy night and got a barrier key from the bar. Just got parked up and up comes Nige. We just got the first few bits in and up comes Martin, our dep for the night - for what was probably his last outing with the Foot Tappers? I shifted the Xmas tree and we all got set up neatly on the smallish stage. As we completed set up, the couple in charge of site development came over to say goodbye – they had enjoyed having the band in but would be going on to Brighton in the New Year. The place was filling up so we didn't sound check as such; but we did spend a bit of time restoring PA settings and making fine adjustments to get a quality sound that would carry. No boomyness here! Had a beer and got changed ready for an 8:15 start. We were a few minutes late getting started as we made a few last minute adjustments: Nige and I both agreed to take the Bose masters down a notch so we didn't blast them out – a very good move in hindsight! Made a good start with the usual suspects. It was a good on-stage sound from the off and we got a good reaction from the reasonably full room. So we settled into a bantery, dancey sort of set. I introduced Martin as the Kareoke Kid to do “Lady is a Tramp” and we did the Beverly sisters intro for the Everlys. Got a lot up and dancing with the “Blue Suede/Rock Around the Clock” Rock'n'Roll stuff. Bantered and played through the Beatles and got a good reaction for that. Even treated them to “Crystal Chandeliers” with false “Lilly the Pink intro! We only had two sets to do, so we started to pick and mix through some set 2 stuff such as the Searchers and got Martin to wrap the set up nicely with “The Wonder of You”. While we were off we got a couple of requests for Johnny Cash and Neil Diamond, so I said we'd oblige. Sir Cliff's “Do You Wanna Dance” got them up and dancing, then we fitted in “Fulson Prison” as the Johnny Cash request getting a good round of applause. “Sweet Caroline” filled the floor again and we kept them at it with with another request for “Shang A Lang” followed up by the “Moon of Love” medley. It was soon time to start close down; I asked the boys to play “Pretty Woman” so I could have a go at singing it before New Years Eve. It went down well and I have learned that I'll need a bit of a boost on my mic for the close mic verse vocal on that. We wrapped up with “Walk Alone” which earned a great round of applause and shouts for more. Nige said we'd encore with a 'fasty' and a 'slowey', so we raced off into “ Hippy Hippy Shake” and Martin finished off the night with a stirring performance of “Words”. A great ending to a very good night for the band. As we packed up we tried to work out why the sound is so good there. Nige spotted the absorbent backdrop and suggested that might help? They can be expensive and time consuming to set up but I reckon it would help, even if we simply draped a black curtain in the corners of difficult gigs it would cut down the nasty reverbs we get from certain corners. My contribution to the debate was to propose a review of the linking set up in the new year with the idea of returning feeds from the reverb / mixer into T1 input 4 which would give us some control over the boomy frequencies that we can't get with the analogue input to the L1. I would also like to review reverb settings to make the repeats more pronounced. As we loaded up we were all a bit sad with it being Martin's last session. He has done a great job over the months for the band and he said he would miss the easy Foot Tappery atmosphere. But we all know we must move on to address our separate futures; I wished him well but added that I sensed our paths might cross again in some shape or form. Had a good run home getting about 1:30.