A new gig for us and we were doing it as “Sky High”. Nige had done it before and suggested we arrive closer to 7pm ‘cos they tend to open up a bit later than most places – can go on later to midnight ish. I set off at 5pm and, despite it being good Friday., the roads were very quiet and I made such good time to Fakenham, that I had to ease back to avoid being too early. Even so I still rolled up at the gig at just after 6:30pm. Mick was already there having had a similarly good run. Nige arrived about ten minutes later. It was that cold that we decided to sit in our cars for 5 minutes ‘til the doors opened. I was ready for a visit to the facilities and was quite relieved when Robin the manager opened up just before 7pm; and fully relieved a couple of minutes later after a trip to the boys room! It’s an easy load in straight onto the playing area on the dance floor then bags back in the vehicles. It didn’t take long to set up. Mick was on the headset mic again and it seemed OK as we tested things out. The room was filling up already so Nige put the musak on and we skipped soundcheck. A beer or so later we got changed into the “Sky High” black shirts, white ties and white waistcoats to open up with the usual “Foot Tapper, Just One Look, Heartbeat” opening sequence. It was a fair sound on-stage, but Mick’s headset mic was down in the mix. Nige tried to bring it up, but in truth, it needs to be close over the mouth (particularly when singing lead) to deliver the tone and volume needed. I think Mick believes that the bendy gooseneck won’t allow this, but we ought to look closely at how we can bend it to get it closer or abandon the concept. This problem of weak sound form Mick’s mic would continue to plague us throughout the evening. However, the room was full, some people were quite responsive to what we were doing and we got bits of banter going quite well, so it was turning out to be good gig despite the technical problem with the mic. The average age at this gig is quite a bit lower than we are used to so we were playing a more lively repertoire than usual. We played both versions of “How Long” (Eagles and Ace) and we slipped in “How Sweet It is”. These were a bit ragged because we aren’t used to playing them but it all went down well with the crowd. There wasn’t much dancing going on but people were definitely listening and appreciating the band. We opened the second set with “Hotel California” which went very well considering Mick hadn’t played it before with us. We had the pleasure of announcing an engagement and dedicating “Wonderful Tonight” to the couple. We played our theme tune “Sky High” which, surprisingly, a couple in the audience remembered was from Jigsaw. This was better performed than on Monday and we got good applause for what was intended as a high impact number. We played the long version of “Lying Eyes” and as we got a bit of dancing going we ran through a dancy sequence including songs such as: ”Crazy Little Thing”, “Hippy Hippy Shake” “Moon of Love”, “Mony Mony”, and “Johnny B Good”. We had a long final set to play and we rocked it up a bit to include “Walk of Life”, “Alright Now”, You Really Got Me” as well as some of the usual “Amarillo” stuff; but It was the slowies like “Unchained” that really filled the floor. Approaching midnight we announced the last number with “Walk Alone” which got a great sing-a-long response and earned an encore so we bashed out “Saw Her Standing There” to finish. As we packed up Nige had a word with the governor who said it was ‘excellent’ so we were pretty pleased as we packed up. It was as we were loading up that Nige spotted a toilet cistern graveyard that I couldn’t resist snapping! Had a quick run home with Nige on my tail to Swaffham. I finally got in about 2:15am.
