Tyneside Sheringham

Yet another good run over to Sheringham on a sunny but chilly evening. I arrived at 6:30pm to find Mick setting up. I started to get my gear in when Nigel rolled up looking a bit pale and lurgified. He wisely kept his distance as we brought the gear in so we could avoid the germs. Nige and I had exchanged thought sin the week on how we could get a better sound and avoid the boomyness in this venue. The first decision we took was to swap sides so my gear was on the offending boomy wall. Then we placed the bass bins on the floor well forward of the troublesome boomy corner. Next we inserted acoustic foam sheets underneath the bass bins to decouple them from the floor. Penultimately we agreed Mick’s mic would come into my Bose and, finally, I fiddled with the parametric equaliser to remove the troublesome narrow 90 hz frequency band from the mics and guitar. All this took some time, and despite some people arriving in the concert room, I insisted on a brief sound check with a bit of “Peacful Easy Feeling”. It took a couple of goes to get it right but we ended up with the best on-stage sound we have had at this gig – definitely worthwhile! We still had had time for a couple of beers before we got changed into the black shirts, white ties and white waistcoats for the 8:30 start. We were a couple of minutes late taking to the stage to face a reasonable turn out audiencewise; I chose to open up with “Foot Tapper”. We still have a bit of confusion with Mick as to where it ends so the finish was a bit messy and the audience were wrong ‘footed’ into not clapping. Nevertheless, we did our introductions and carried on with the usual openers. It was during “just One Look” that Nigel suffered a dodgy mains lead connection, his Bose kept switching off. Mick and I managed to bring the number to a natural close so he could fix it properly. We carried on started to work the audience and were rewarded with a bit of dancing and audience response. Recently I have taken it upon myself to pick the song flow, it seems to give us an edge in continuity if I do this - Nige and Mick know they are welcome to intercept with their suggestions (or veto’s) whenever they want. On this night I was sensitive to Nige’s ‘chest infection lurgi’ so tried to avoid some of the songs he would normally lead on. “All Shook Up” got a good dancing response and some of the crowd joined in lustily on the ‘all shook ups’; next time I’ll ask Mick to mime and let the audience sing at least one ‘all shook up’. We did another good Beatles medley to a good response and finished the set with “Words”. Midway through Nige and I agreed I would take the hi line and he would take the lo line when Mick is singing. So we finished the song on an impressive 3 part harmony accapella ‘da da da da da da da’ During the break Mickey Bream from Hustler arrived with a tale of woe about their PA packing up the previous night. He also solved the mystery of who the ex-Foot Tappers drummer working with the Diamonds is – its Alex! Nige and I were very pleased for him. Going on for set 2 we opened with “Under the Sun and Happy Birthday”, then it was “Tambourine Man which brought out some 60’s dancing. The dancers kept going through the “Seachers” but looked like they needed a break at the end, so I called for “Ferry Cross the Mersey”. This was a good call, quite a few members of the audience joined in and it got a great round of applause. We carried on with “How Long” which went well with the crowd despite my losing my way in the guitar solo’s; but I did manage to get the rising riff right in the ‘rock youself to sleep’s’. Aiming at the dancers we tried “Moon of Love into Crazy Little Thing” to get them back on the floor before I dropped in “Raining in My Heart” as the mid set slowey. We followed on to run through the: “Halfway, Wonder of You, Sweet Caroline, Hi Ho” sing-a-long-a-s to finish the set. After a 10 minute break we opened up set 3 with: “Dance the Night Away – Do You Wanna Dance” which got the dancing going nicely so I called for “Runaround Sue” which filled the floor. By the time we got to “Hippy Hippy Shake” they’d run out of puff again so went for “Green Green Grass of Home” and this got a great sing-a-longa reception. We only had a few numbers to play so I gave “Shakin All Over” an airing. Then it was “Unchained” which filled the floor, “Apache” which brought up a few Shadows walkers as well as guest dancer Helen who came up to do the walk with the toy guitar. Last number was “Walk Alone” but that went so well we ended up encoring with Johnny B Goode. Mick had been having a generally good night on the drums but in this rocker he played a very powerful and great sounding solo and then a great big ending. There were still shouts for more but we were over time so we wrapped it up as gently as we could. One of the better gigs at this venue for the band I thought. Pack up went a bit slow; I was feeling tired; more so than last week when we did loads of gigs. Got home about 2:10am very tired, and ached and slept a lot the next day so I put it down to a virus. Feeling better as I write this on the Monday so hope that’s the end of it!