Ms Jacqui decided to accompany me so I had advised the boys to be on best behaviour! We set off in good time and, despite the threat of freezing fog we had a relaxed run to Norwich, parking up at the bus stop near 'Keir Hardie Hall'. After a few minutes I saw the club lights come on and I got the doors opened for load in. Just then Nige and Alex rolled up, parking skillfully between the bollards. I moved my car as close as I could, asked Jacqueline to guard the vehicle and began the load in, trudging up and down St Gregory's Alley with the gear. Once we had the gear in Nige and I set off for the multi-storey car park (Alex found a spot on the street). Soon got set up and happy with the sound. The place was done out nice and Chrismassy. Jacqui had been talking to some of the locals including the twins who had come in matching Santa Claus outfits – very fetching!
Jenny arrived and we got changed and on with the show. It was a good on-stage sound. We played a good mix of our usual and Chrismassy stuff; Nige did “Blue Xmas” and I did “Rockin Around the Xmas Tree”. We got the twins up to do the Shadows walk to a great reception. It wasn't packed but it was busy enough, we were going down nicely with the crowd and we got quite a bit of dancing going. Nige and I mixed in some buskable material including “All Right Mama” and “Good Golly Miss Molly” and generally kept things going well continuity wise. We wrapped up with “Words” then took a break for bingo and a beer. We resumed for set 2 with our dedication of “Somewhere Under the Sun” to Dave, followed by “Tambourine Man” and the “Searchers” which both went very well. We did a nice Everlys' “Dream”, “White Xmas” and a bit of country for a barn dance; generally catching the audience mood nicely I thought. Phil the guvnor, came up to do an announcement so we took another break. Jen said goodbye as she set off home at the end of the break – it had been good to see her looking so much better. We got on into the final set doing quite a bit of the party dance stuff. We were bopping along so strongly we managed to get the power switched off by the volume monitor. Confidence was high so Nige took on “Unchained” which went down really well with the crowd. I elected to take on “Sweet Caroline” and again the song went down really well. Having done these we think we could do both of these regularly where required. With the experience of doing it live now, I realise that I need a touch of very close mic work on the verses of Sweet Caroline to get the bass notes through, but I was quite comfortable on the chorus's and pleased with the resultant audience reaction. Nige signed off poignantly saying it would be the Foot Tappers last appearance at the club and he thanked everyone for their support. Then we finished off with “Merry Xmas Everybody”; I'm finally getting familiar with the chords and its nearly time to put the song away for another year! A very good night for us really. A few folk came up at the end to ask if it really was our last time and I explained that we would be re-launching as “Sky High”; so I did look forward to seeing them again under a new name. Doing a bit of name dropping, Alex and I had to explain our fame with our previous bands. But, off the record, I think it will be our last time at the club because the launch of Sky High will be accompanied by a significant price increase. Jacqui packed up my guitar and stands and I got the rest ready for load up. Nige and I went to get our cars, paid the £1.60 fee and, only as we exited, did we realise the barrier was up – they were letting folks out free for Xmas but we had paid – the only consolation being we had helped the night time economy of Norwich!!! (Apparently Marty had got his ticket revoked from the previous gig using this phrase!) We had a good journey home getting in about 1:15am on Xmas morning.
