Caxton Club Beccles

Some good news - In the week Nige had spoken with Greg who has taken the drum stool position with the band on a permanent basis. Greg immediately cocked up by diarying this gig as Sunday and it was only my spotting of a "see you on Sunday" line in an email that allowed us to get him out to the gig on time! I made good time in stormy, humid conditions and arrived to find Nige just parking up. And then Greg arrived to create a traffic jam on Gaol Lane. The snag was there were no more parking spaces, so Greg and I ended up parking in the club delivery yard. We got loaded in and, without thinking, we set up on the stage in the ‘old’ formation with me on the left, Greg in the middle and Nige on the right. This was to prove problematic later as Nige found it tricky to ‘conduct’ Greg ‘cos, as a right handed drummer, his natural inclination is to lean to his left. There was no one around so for a few minutes we messed around with bits and pieces of songs including a spirited rendition of Black Sabbath’s “Black Night”! One of the girls from the bar showed me how to switch on the stage lights – unfortunately a bulb was out on my side which made it difficult to read my crib sheets as it got darker outside. We changed into the white’n’black and took to the stage for an on-time 8:30 start with “Foot Tapper”. Good sound from the off and Greg carried us along briskly and rhythmically making it relatively easy for me to play the guitar part. We got a good round of applause from a three quarter’s full room and then carried on with a typical vintage set aimed at the majority of over 50’s in the room. We wrapped up with “The Beatles and Words” and took a 15 minute break. It had got increasingly hot’n’humid during the set so Nige and Greg took some air while I talked to a chap from the crowd. He used to be a guitarist in the Midlands and he complimented us on our sound for a 3 piece and said we did a really great job of the Beatles medley – nice to hear that from a muso. We resumed in even hotter conditions for set 2 with “Under the Sun” dedicated to Dave. Blaming it on the heat and lack of light, I lost my way in running the show and remembering words in this set. Nothing the audience would pick up on much but annoying just the same. I suppose it would be worse if I didn’t know I was forgetting words! We got a bit of dancing going with “All Shook Up and Move It” and carried the set through to a strong conclusion with “Wonder of You, Sweet Caroline” and “Wonderful Tonight” which filled the floor with romantics. The audience had changed a bit for our third set. Some of the oldies had gone and some younger folk had arrived. We opened with “Dance the Night Way and Do You Wanna Dance” which filled the floor pretty well. We followed on with a rocky “Hippy Shake” with Greg in fine flowing form and then we carried on rocking with “Summer of 69” and “All Right Now” before we took a breather with the mid-set slowey “Unchained”. We carried on with “Walk of Life” and more rocking with “Johnny B Goode” complete with drum breaks; before the final number “Walk Alone”. Although this was most enthusiastically sungalong by the crowd, it only elicited a couple of shouts for ‘more’! But we obliged anyway, encoring with “Saw Her Standing There” which did generate a lotta shouts for 'more' - but we were now well over time so we made our exit as best we could and set about the long change’n’packup on a still hot’n’humid night. The drive home was fine and I was back for 1:15am feeling in better form than the previous week. The next day we met up with Nige at Jenny’s at a bit of a garden do to remember Dave a year after he passed away. A lot of people there and it was good to hear the younger ones such as Steve’n’Emma and Pete’n’Laura doing well and planning their futures. Mog - signing off as the 'apostrophe kid'