Nigel and I had been recruited to dep for Brian (ex Midnight Hour) at this venue. A sunny mild day! Arrived about 6:45pm to find a wedding party in the concert room. They had the room booked ‘til 7pm and wouldn’t serve ‘strangers’ so Nige and I went to the main bar for a beer. Brian and his mate Jamie met up with us there and we whiled away the time until we could get in the concert room. We eventually got access and loaded in and set up. Brian has a massive drum kit and following our advice he set it up well forward to get the benefit of the Bose at the back.
I got my Bose set up and selected a new T1 scene (FooBtap Current) to save the mixer settings for this do. I was taking Brian’s walk off mike (he uses it handheld to go out front - we think it is a Shure SM58) into channel 1. Nigel was taking Brian’s vocal from his drum seat mic into his T1. We fiddled about quite a bit until we got passable sounds and Brian tested to his satisfaction. He doesn’t like reverb so I set the aux send down to 50% on the walk off mic. The acoustics of the boxy stage gave quite a bassy sound on guitar so I backed that off a couple of dB. As the place was filling up we decided not to soundcheck and hope for the best! Nige and I got changed into the black waistcoats, white shirts and black ties in contrast to Brian’s more ‘cheesecloth’ look.
We had time of a bit of a chat about running order before we took to the stage at 8:45 pm. Brian started with an interesting introduction of Nige and me as deps and then we opened up with “Flingel Bunt”. It’s a messy sound in the boxy stage; but we earned a round of applause and no one was holding their ears - so I think it sounded OK out front! We carried on with “Just One Look and Heartbeat” with minimal announcements and we had several ladies up and dancing. After “Cathy’s Clown / Bye Bye Love” we were quickly into the rock’n’roll with “Blue Suede” and “Whole Lotta Shakin” I called for a slowey and Brian started to announce Glenn Campbell when we decided to opt for “Words”. This went pretty well and we ended up doing quite a nice three part harmony accapella ‘da da da da...’ section to round it off. Now this had filled the floor well, so Nige called for “Raining in my Heart” which also went well. I set off into “Move It” which got the rock’n’rollers going again and I was thinking of calling “Price of Love but we decided to give the Beatles medley a go. Got off to a good start but soon lost the dancers and although we got through it all without a fatal breakdown, it was fraught with small errors and would have been better terminated after “All My Lovin” rather than soldiering on to the end. However, at the time, I wasn’t confident that I could see Nige through the large drum kit to signal an intention. On the plus side Nige and I are getting quite adept at switching the lead vocal lines around by feel to get the right fit. (In the light of recent experience I think we will revamp the Beatles medley to shorten it for this type of gig) We also fitted in the “Hollies Medley” not bad considering we hadn’t done it for ages. We were getting close to time so we decided to wrap up with “Apache” with added Brian drum solo at the end, with Nige and me coming back in for the last phrase to finish it. I went out front a bit but the lead was a bit tight to do a proper walk. However, I can report the band sounded good and we finished to a good round of applause. For set 2 we started with the “Under the Sun” dedication to Dave and an easy paced “Tambourine Man”. Then it was Brian’s time to go out front. He brought on Jamie G to play the drums and we set off into a sequence of “Walking the Dog, Mustang Sally and Summertime”. I picked the key of A for all of these which was fine for guitar but a bit high for Brian in “Summertime”. But he coped well – quite a crooner really! Brian came back to the kit and we got on with “The Searchers Medley”. This worked well and we filled the floor with dancers. We carried on with “Do It Again” and “Lets Dance” before I called for “Halfway” to slow it down. This suffered an extended delay because I hit the wrong guitar pedal taking me into some weird edit mode so I had to reboot the unit! After that we got Brian to sing “Wonder of You”, I followed up with “Sweet Caroline” and we were finished to a great response. A good entertaining and dancey set! After the break for a somewhat disembodied raffle, I was surprised to see the room still fairly full. We opened with “Moon of Love” which didn’t hit their dancing spots then “Dance the Night Away” which did bring out some line dancing ladies. Oddly “Amarillo” failed to get them dancing, but “Do You Wanna Dance” did. We turned to a slowey trying “Love is All Around” which was a bit messy because we had 3 different versions in mind! But it did fill the floor! I started “Crazy Little Thing”. This brought the dancers out and Nigel kept them there with “Hippy Hippy Shake”. To bring us into a closing sequence we bashed out an extended “Johnny B Goode” complete with drum solo, bass solo and Brian tapping the strings on Nige’s bass. So I called for “Wonderful Tonight “ to close. We got a good response so we encored with “Saw Her Standing There”. We had kept quite a few people on the floor and I thought, that despite a few rough edges, we had turned in a good show. Nige and I had stepped up to the vocal plate a few times and Brian had fitted in surprisingly well at times. As we packed up I overhead Brian talking to John (the concert sec); he was giving Brian a bit of a hard time about our extended “Beatle Medley”, saying it puts off the dancers and that’s what they like to do here. They like rock’n’roll and then he suggested we should have done some country. Brian said his new band “Blitz” would be doing plenty of dancey stuff e.g. Michael Jackson. Well John nearly fell off his chair! “They are all pensioners here” he said - “they don’t want Michael Jackson!!” Actually; with a few adjustments to the show, The Foot Tappers would be perfect for this venue. But, despite probably being right, John is hard work so I decided to keep clear as we loaded up. Fairly cool and showery as we set off. Got in about 2am a bit tired.
