I persuaded Ms J to accompany me and then she persuaded Dan and Michele (Dan is over from USA) to pop over to see the band. A sunny and mild day – we had a good run over arriving at 6:45 to find Mick there. Nige rolled up a few minutes later and Richard (concert sec) arrived at 7pm to let us in. Set up was a bit slow and we had boomyness from the Bose. But after last week we know how to deal: I took Mick’s mic into my TI and para EQ’d the 98hz boomy frequency out. Mick set up his lights on the floor, this was quick to do but created a glare in the eyes and health and safety problems for the kids that were running about. I made a mental note to ask Mick to put them at the back at similar venues. Mick set up his new PC music prompt computer to match Nigel. That only leaves me on the old paper based system! Oddly enough the boom got less of a problem after we completed set up so I was able to reduce the parametric EQ cut level quite a bit. Met up with Dan, Michele and Ms H and we enjoyed a beer before the band got changed into the black shirts with white ties and waistcoats for an 8:30pm start. We opened up with “Flingel Bunt into Just One Look”. The on-stage sound was poor with a nasty slap back echo from a valance above the stage. We had some dancers up in “Heartbeat”, so I called for “All Shook Up” to keep the vibe going; then we followed up with “Cathy’s Clown” with Mick singing lead; I switched to high and Nige picked out a low harmony so that by the middle of the song it was sounding quite good. “Bye Bye Love” brought some dancing out, but as I was on a semi-acoustic setting I called for “Peaceful Easy Feelin” a bit quicker than normal please! Again there was an inconsistency to the vocals – sometimes impressive, othertimes ragged with chunks of unison. I’ll try to review this at home to see how we can improve it. Having said that it went down very well with the ‘crowd’ - by now there were about 20 in. Next we wigged up for the Beatles. This went fairly well up to and through “Nowhere Man” with good harmonies, authentic bass lines and driving rhythms. (Dan commented on how good “Nowhere Man” was). Then Mick seems to lose his way with “I Feel Fine”, so Nige took over lead in the verses. The 3 part harmonies in this song are still lacking: I think the intention is Mick sings lead, Nige close below and me on the hi falsetto line, but Mick seems to fade out. I think this is because Mick can’t easily do the bossa nova rhythm and concentrate on vocal, so we might need to re-arrange. After the Beatles we did “Ferry Cross the Wensum” (which went down well) and some rock’n’roll before closing with Words which brought up the slow dancers.
We turned the volume down a tad to try and improve the sound for the second set starting with the “Searchers” medley. The sound on stage was better but the performance was still a bit patchy. I fitted in “Daydream Believer” next; I’m gradually getting there with this vocally but still a way to go – I’m wondering if raising the key to G might help. Next we did a request of “Under the Boardwalk” for the dancers. Then we did quite a good “Brown Eyed Girl” with Mick doing more of a cha cha cha rhythm for the dancers. Dan and co set off shortly after and we followed on with some more strictly come dancing; doing creditable performances of Jim Reeves waltz’s and “Lady is a Tramp" as a quickstep. All this went quite well with the small audience with whom we were beginning to develop a good rapport. We switched to playing some more ‘modern’ stuff with Ace’s “How Long” and “How Sweet It Is”, both of which went quite well considering we hadn’t played them recently and, interestingly, they got a good response from the audience. We carried on through the Billy Fury, Elvis , Neil Diamond, Jeff Beck sequence to finish the set on “Wonderful Tonight”. We all had some glad handing to do in the break and then we were off for the final set opening with: “Dance the Night Away” and then “Runaround Sue” which I got off in the wrong key – sorry Mick! We played on through a selection of dancey stuff to do a big finish on “Walk Alone” which got a good enough response from the half a dozen or so people still in the hall, for us to encore with “Jonny B Goode”. A lot of the audience came up after we finished to say what a great band we are and what a shame it was there weren’t more attending. So despite it being a patchy night performancewise it had been quite rewarding egowise and we felt good as we packed up. We did feel sorry for the promoters, however, and I was quite sympathetic to Richard who wanted to change the date they had booked in December. Ms J was quite tired, so I got away ahead of the boys; managing to leave my music stand bag in the process. Not a bad run home on a cold night for a 1:30am arrival.
