Toppers Bar Restuarant, Newport Road, Hemsby

Bleak bank holiday weather. It was easy to navigate to Hemsby, but once on the Sundowner Chalet Park it was quite hard to find Toppers. I was looking for a couple of large concrete top hats as a landmark but I ended up having to ask holiday makers as I wound my way through the warren of routes through the park. Finally I rolled up to the gig to find Mick already unloaded. It is an easy load in through the fire doors, turn left and there is the stage. There’s plenty of room on the stage even though Mick was setting up his lights on the big stands. The club has obviously been recently refurbished and it all looks quite smart – probably thats when the large top hats were taken away. The strong wind made it a but tricky to get the gear in and keep the doors open; and when Nige arrived it was even a bit rainy as well. Once in we set about set up. I was quite near a corner so I mounted my bass bins on the absorbent foam to avoid boom. It all set up and tested out OK and I wandered off to have a word with the boss man: Matthew. I found him in his office and sounded him out as to what he was looking for. ‘Play very quiet’ he said, ‘We want live music ambience but quiet enough for people to have a drink and a chat’. ‘OK’ I said and I briefed the boys accordingly. We got changed in the office: black shirts (so Nige could get another wear out of the previous nights shirt!), white ties and white waistcoats. There were about 30 in when we took to the stage and opened up with “Flingel Bunt”. Good sound on-stage, but there was no reaction as we finished? I introduced the band anyway and we ploughed on in a similar manner for a couple more songs before we got the message to turn it down. No problem – we took it down quite a bit on the Bose and carried on feeling out the audience with a variety of material. We seemed to be getting a good sound at the lower volume and we got some applause with “Ferry”, “Take It Easy” and “Folsom Prison” (a couple of country fans in there). But, by and large, we continued to ‘take it easy’ with what I thought was quite a good low volume easy listening balance. I was making sure we stuck closely to the set times we had been given and we came off only a couple of minutes over time. Set 2 was more interesting: we started off with “Under the Sun” and the “Searchers” and then Ace’s “How Long” which we played quite well despite the low volume. We were starting to get a bit of reaction from the audience now and the applause got quite strong on the ‘join in’ sequence of: “Wonder of You, Sweet Caroline, Hi Ho”. We added “Amarillo” to this lot which brought a young girl out to the front to clap the responses. We finished with a fair performance of “Words”. But when we resumed for the final set there were only about 20 left and we were asked to turn it down a bit more. Mick found this most difficult and, as we started to lose cohesion as a band, the set became a chore. But we did end on a high note doing “Walk Alone” which got a good response. For once we didn’t feel up to an encore, so we signed off as best we could and set about getting changed and packing up. I did have a word with the guvnor, saying I hoped he liked it and he indicated all was fine. So I took it that we had done as good a job as could be done at this gig. Nevertheless we were all a bit down hearted as we packed up and Mick went as far as asking us to get a dep if we wanted to do this job again. So it was a grim old ride home in the wind and rain and I I was sufficiently tired that I had to hit the emergency cola to get me through the last few miles. Reflecting on what we could have done better, I think we should have been less egotistical about reaction with this audience and we should have been more disciplined in getting our heads down to play a wide range of material at low volume as requested. Anyway it turned out that in the week following, the club cancelled all the acts due to play there saying it was a restaurant / bar focussed on people out for a quiet drink or meal and entertainment wasn’t necessary – so that ends that chapter! Felt a bit viral in the week but it didn’t amount to much.