During the week Mick and the band had parted company as amicably as possible and we recruited Ray for the job going forward. A crash on the A11 near Thetford had made traffic bad on my proposed route via Swaffham. I decided to cut across country to pick up the A11 and carry on to the gig via Norwich. Ray and Nige were already there as I arrived at 6:45pm. The site seemed a little quiet as we loaded in - there were no vehicles in the overflow area where we parked up. We set up with volumes lowish at about 5 to midnight on the masters and Ray was going to use his hot sticks. After a beer I got the boys geared up for an 8:15 start in the black’n’white shirts. There were about 25 in as we started off with “Foot Tapper, Just One Look and Heartbeat”. We got a good response and a good sound from the off. We played a typical set 1 – The Beatles medley got some good reaction as we hammed it up a bit with the wigs, We finished off after 45 minutes with “My Girl” now becoming quite good as a closer alternative to “Words”, Sadly some of the audience had started to drift away. Not our fault it seems because several came over and said they were really enjoying the band but had to go to other arrangements. We opened up set 2 to maybe 12, but about halfway through that had dwindled to 8, 4 of whom were in the conservatory. In fact we played our last set to just the 4 in the conservatory – they did applaud but we couldn’t hear them too well! I went out front during Flingel Bunt and I must say the sound of the band was impressively spot on: perfect volume for this small gig, great balance and the drums and bass made a full rhythm section so you really didn’t miss the rhythm guitar. I was also really pleased with the guitar sound which I had changed lately to make more middley. We soldiered on playing and announcing professionally but we took the opportunity to air several songs that haven’t seen much action lately, inc:
- FBI. Bridge Chords: E C F E C F B E
- Phoenix: Nicely done at a relaxed pace
- Save the Last Dance: would benefit from Ray joining in on “aahs”
- Girl from Ipanema: I got off too fast, it works better as a slowish Bossa Nova
- Eyes at Me For: went well: it would benefit from Ray joining in on “aahs
- Pretty Woman: went well
- Proud Mary: would benefit from a rehearsal to get guitar synched to bass.
- Bad Moon Risin: went well
- Hotel California: Ray did a great job considering it hadn’t been played before
- Summer of 69: Works at low volume, guitar needs more practice!
- Can’t Get Enough: Got off a bit too fast but went well after restart.
- Midnight Hour: just fine!
- Somebody Help Me went well, but I messed up on Keep on Running, trying to remember chords and words and not succeeding with either!
The management were sanguine about the low turn out, saying that had been the pattern for the last couple of weeks. Pack up went a bit slow ‘cos I’m still suffering a bad back but we got away before midnight. I took the Norwich route and was home for 1:15am.
