Broad Farm Flegborough

Carl is over from Spain and accompanied me on this gig, first of three this weekend. We set off at ten past five and ran immediately into Bury rush hour traffic. With added bank holiday weekend vehicular activity making it slow going, I decided to avoid Thetford and set off across country to the A11 via Garboldisham. Once on the A11 we made good time to the gig arriving at 6:45 to find Nige and Mick pretty much unloaded. Carl was useful getting the gear in and helping with the Bose lift on the height restricted stage. The weather is a bit cooler than we have been used to and the club management were trying to warm the place up with a massive gas heater. We were soon set up and it was only then that Mick and I realised that I had placed the bass bins where he needed to place his music stand. I shuffled my gear a bit to give an extra couple of inches but in the end Mick had to move over to Nige who moved even closer to the edge of the stage. Then I got Carl to set up my vid cam to test out the potential for generating a promo video. We had a pint and I looked round at the audience. It was the usual mix but I thought the ‘livelier modernish’ numbers we had tried out would go well. Only trouble was we did some chatting to a few people there and, by and large, they wanted 50’s rock’n’roll! There was also some confusion over start time so I ended up consulting with Archie – the man in charge who confirmed the night would run earlier than the contract stated. This would mean one set of 45 minutes and one more of just over an hour. So we dashed off to get changed and took to the stage about 8:25 in our black shirts, white ties and white waistcoats to open with Flingel Bunt. This went pretty well and “Just One Look” confimed the Bose was delivering a good on-stage sound. The only snag was the vocals were a bit ‘off’: probably a result of some of us feeling under par and not loosening up enough. But after a few numbers we settled down and tightened up vocally; and we even started to get a little response from a small audience of about 30. We continued to work hard to please but we were all making small errors. Nothing that the audience would notice that much, but a bit demoralising all the same! Despite this we had the confidence to try out some rarely played numbers such as: “Jail House Rock, Sky High, Proud Mary and Bad Moon Rising”, Also some of the newer numbers in our repertoire such as the two “How Longs” and How Sweet It Is” are gelling better and being better received. By the end of the first set I thought we were beginning to win the small crowd over nicely. But by the time we got on for the second set it was starting to get cold and the audience had thinned a little; but it was ‘Jim’s’ 72nd birthday. Jim had been the only one up and dancing so we gave him a rousing chorus and then played a bit more rock’n’roll for him. I also got him up to do the Shadows Walk – he did it better than me and earned the biggest round of applause for the evening. We did give “Uptown Girl” an airing but it was pretty bad. I need to sort out the guitar parts on the middle sections and the vocals were adversely influenced by my string of wrong or late chords. However, “Summer of 69” went well enough and I did it without the music! We wrapped up with “Walk Alone” but had a good enough response to plug “Saw Her Standing There” in as an encore. Although the band were quite down about the performance, the guvnor Archie was happy with it. With Carl helping out, pack and load went well and we were on the road just after midnight. Got home at 1:30am after a good run despite missing the exit for the A11 from the A47 and having to come back one junction! Looking at the video the next day the band wasn’t as bad as we thought.