Had a good run over in pleasant enough weather and arrived about 10 minutes earlier than planned to find Mick and Nigel already there unloading. The little car park at the back was full so after I unloaded, Nige and I shuffled round so I could park in the club’s yard. Got the gear set up and we immediately ran into trouble with Mick’s headset mic. Running it through Nigel’s Bose there was a big boomyness pitched at a low A. Eventually we concluded this was emanating from the corner near Nige’s Bose; so we switched it to my Bose. I saved a new scene as FooMikTap and set up the T1 Tonematch for a SM58 and swept through the low frequency spectrum with the parametric equaliser to find the offending frequency. It turned out to be a low A (about 85Hz) and I filtered out a tight band to remove it without upsetting the basic mic sound too much. Time was marching on and people were starting to come in, so we abandoned the idea of a full band sound check, pulled the volumes down a bit, crossed our fingers and hoped for the best! Got changed into the white shirts, black ties and black waistcoats for our start at 8:30pm. Despite there being a club outing to a country gig the room was fairly full as we opened up with “Foot Tapper”. A good on stage sound and the audience also looked happy with the volume. We got a good round of applause so I introduced the band and each of us got a little round of applause. Already – this is my kind of club! We carried on with the usual “Just One Look Heartbeat” and vocally things also sounded OK, although I did push Mick’s volume up a bit in the mix (just a tad) and we carried on with the following set list:
WALK RIGHT BACK – WHEN WILL I BE LOVED
PEACEFUL EASY FEELIN Mick started How Long by mistake but somehow we recovered without stopping.
HOW LONG
ALL SHOOK UP
BLUE SUEDE SHOES
FERRY CROSS MERSEY
RAINING IN MY HEART
MOVE IT
BEATLES MEDLEY Shortened and wigged up with Nige wearing the blonde wig
WORDS
Nige and I had discussed livening up the sets for this gig so Sets 2 and 3 went like this:
UNDER THE SUN Dedicated to Dave
DAYDREAM BELIEVER Went well for a first outing and got people up dancing
HOLLIES MEDLEY Also went well for a first outing with Mick
SEARCHERS MEDLEY
CRAZY LITTLE THING Again it got the dancers up, but needs the backing vocals!
MOON OF LOVE – BEAUTIFUL SUNDAY - YELLOW RIVER
HALFWAY TO PARADISE
GREEN GREEN GRASS OF HOME
WONDER OF YOU
SWEET CAROLINE
HI HO SILVER LINING
MONY MONY
DANCE NIGHT AWAY
DO YOU WANNA DANCE
HIPPY HIPPY SHAKE
WALK OF LIFE
SWEET HOME ALABAMA Not bad for a first time but improvised guitar parts need a bit of work!
ALL RIGHT NOW Shortened the solo a few bars
UNCHAINED MELODY Packed the floor
YOU'LL NEVER WALK ALONE They all sang along.
JONNY B GOODE with extra drum, bass and guitar solos, lots of shouts for more so we encored with:
CAN'T GET ENOUGH Mick hadn’t played this before with us but he knew it and we did a great job.
Although it had been a bit of a ragged performance in places, the audience were very enthusiastic and we got a number of compliments on the vocals, the sound and how smart we looked. All in all a very good night for the band. Got home at 1:30 on a moonlit night.
WALK RIGHT BACK – WHEN WILL I BE LOVED
PEACEFUL EASY FEELIN Mick started How Long by mistake but somehow we recovered without stopping.
HOW LONG
ALL SHOOK UP
BLUE SUEDE SHOES
FERRY CROSS MERSEY
RAINING IN MY HEART
MOVE IT
BEATLES MEDLEY Shortened and wigged up with Nige wearing the blonde wig
WORDS
Nige and I had discussed livening up the sets for this gig so Sets 2 and 3 went like this:
UNDER THE SUN Dedicated to Dave
DAYDREAM BELIEVER Went well for a first outing and got people up dancing
HOLLIES MEDLEY Also went well for a first outing with Mick
SEARCHERS MEDLEY
CRAZY LITTLE THING Again it got the dancers up, but needs the backing vocals!
MOON OF LOVE – BEAUTIFUL SUNDAY - YELLOW RIVER
HALFWAY TO PARADISE
GREEN GREEN GRASS OF HOME
WONDER OF YOU
SWEET CAROLINE
HI HO SILVER LINING
MONY MONY
DANCE NIGHT AWAY
DO YOU WANNA DANCE
HIPPY HIPPY SHAKE
WALK OF LIFE
SWEET HOME ALABAMA Not bad for a first time but improvised guitar parts need a bit of work!
ALL RIGHT NOW Shortened the solo a few bars
UNCHAINED MELODY Packed the floor
YOU'LL NEVER WALK ALONE They all sang along.
JONNY B GOODE with extra drum, bass and guitar solos, lots of shouts for more so we encored with:
CAN'T GET ENOUGH Mick hadn’t played this before with us but he knew it and we did a great job.
Although it had been a bit of a ragged performance in places, the audience were very enthusiastic and we got a number of compliments on the vocals, the sound and how smart we looked. All in all a very good night for the band. Got home at 1:30 on a moonlit night.
