Lowestoft Ex Srvicemans Club

I still have the use of the Galaxy until Carl picks it up, so I thought I might as well get some more use out of it. Set off about 5:25pm aiming for a 6:40 arrival. It was relatively slow going though and I let the sat nav take me through Lowestoft. It took me West to join the A12 North of the town before turning to head South. It (or I) missed the turning for Alexandra Road and I ended up coming up my usual way via the pedestrianized zone off Gordon Road. I arrived to find Nige already there and we set about getting the gear in on a dark blustery night. Because of the small stage we decided to go back to old positions with me on the lef so Nige could use the pool table for his computer prompter. I set my Bose up well into the back corner. We needed to be set up by 7:30pm so they could start the Bingo and by 6:50pm No Greg? Nige called him to see where he was. It turned out he had been well lost in Lowestoft for half an hour but was just arriving. By the time he got his gear in we were trying to soundcheck. I was suffering high pitched feedback from my Bose in the corner position. The lack of space and Greg setting up made it very difficult to deal with the sound issue; and they wanted to get Bingo underway so we decided to abandon setting up until a break in the Bingo. Part of the problem was the resonant stage feeding vibrations up the mic stand which kicked off feedback. I tried to move the mic stand off stage, but the wiring was so tight I couldn’t do it without starting wiring afresh so I decided to put up with it and reduce the top on the mic mix. This helped but delivered a slightly ‘honky’ vocal tone - good enough for rock’n’roll I consoled myself! We got changed into our black gear, white shirts and black ties in the corridor and we were walking in line through the concert hall heading to the bar, when the Bingo caller saw us. Bearing in mind it was Halloween weekend and the place was done out ghoulishly he quipped: ‘watch out - the morticians are here’. We bowed and continued to the bar for a much needed beer. Here we met up with Graham the singing taxi driver. He was pretty good at Elvis in the bar so we jokingly suggested he have a sing with us later. Then it was showtime. We took our places for our opening with “Foot Tapper”. It was very cramped and I wasn’t looking at my guitar neck as Greg counted us in. Consequently I started in the wrong key and had to quickly slide my hand down the neck to get into C as we played the first few notes. The sound wasn’t great but we got a good response from a half full room of people over a certain age. After the first few songs, we settled down. There wasn’t much dancing going on until I called for “Around the World”. This waltz filled the floor. Vocally it sounded better than previous outings so I extended it a bit. As we ended I was looking for another waltz to follow up but the dancers started to disperse. We finally got going with a smooth version of “Phoenix” and some of the dancers came back. We carried on with some gorilla talk to introduce “Daydream Believer” and then some rock’n’roll in the shape of “Blue Suede - Great Balls” which went well enough but only got a couple up dancing. We went back to sloweys with “Ferry Cross the Mersey” and only got a few dancers up this time so I called for the “Beatles” as entertainment to close the set. This got a good response and we took a welcome break on what was proving to be a difficult night. After the break we resumed with “How Long” by Ace which we played well. Next up I took the boys into “Tambourine Man” which went down well. Carrying on with the “Searchers” we got a bit more passionate and were rewarded with a good round of applause. I slipped in “Move It” and “All Shook Up” to get some dancing and audience interaction going. It was hard going because, although it was only about 10:20pm, many of the ‘old uns’ were getting their coats on to get the last bus. “Raining in My Heart” filled the floor, so we extended that. After a well received “Folsom Prison” country ‘request’ (debuting Greg’s train drums), I announced “Halfway” I was only halfway through it when I spied Graham the taximan, so I invited him over to sing it. This livened up the audience quite a bit so we kept him at it while we did “Wonder of You” to finish the set. As we came off Graham asked if he could do another: ideally “My Way”? Not knowing the chords we negotiated “Green Grass of Home” for the resumption. In the meantime a different Graham had come up to request “Hotel California” – ‘no problem’ I said. So we took to the stage for the last set opening with “Travel Lodge California” so named to reflect our minimalist arrangement which misses a couple of verses. Graham gave us a good reception for that. We fitted in a good "Brown Eyed Girl" then we brought up the other Graham to do “Green Grass” – it was a bit disjointed, but entertaining nevertheless and he got a good round of applause. So now he called our bluff by insisting on doing “My Way”. I worked out his key was D and Nige and I set off on a busking session with extremely avant guarde jazzy chords from me! Mercifully it was soon over and we were able to continue with “Crazy Little Thing” as called by Nige. Looking round I could see it was time to finish, so we set off into an extended “Johnny B Goode” to close. Greg surprised us with a very fast drum break and we finished to good applause; but thankfully no encores because Greg had to be away quick to get to a party! We got changed and I couldn’t find my shoes. It turned out some wag had put them on top of a cupboard – I knew no none would pinch them! As we packed up I reflected on how well we had done to turn what was looking like a poorly attended chore into a poorly attended success. The management were well content. It turned out a bus load of the usual audience had been away to a Halloween event and that accounted for the poor turn out. We spotted some of them in fancy dress as they were dropped off nearby. We got Greg off in double quick time – but Nige had to chase after him with the suit bag he nearly forgot! We got loaded and away just before 12:30am. I had a quiet run home getting in just after 1:30am.

Trimingham Woodlands.

My replacement vehicle for the Galaxy arrived on the Friday (unfortunately with a manual gear box) and I decided to try it out on this gig. The seats fold down to create a flat load area that is only a bit less in area than the Galaxy – just the job! So Jacqui and I set off in the morning to have lunch with Dan and Michele at the Village Inn West Runton. An increasingly wild and wet day unfolded as we got North of Swaffham. By then I had got used to the idea of a clutch and gears again and the new car is very quiet, warm and comfy. I left Dan’s about 6:20 for the gig and arrived at 6:40. It was very stormy and I parked up in front of the stage door under a chestnut tree that was thrashing around in the wind. I got one of the bar ladies to open up and had just got my suit bag in when Nigel arrived. We had most of our gear in when Greg arrived and he soon got his in and we were able to close the door and shut out the storm. Load in is straight onto the stage. The club is bigger than I remembered and it is nicely decored indeed. Set up went well. The club has no stage lights but Nige had remembered to bring our wooden light racks and, because the stage is big, we were able to set them up out of our eye lines to deliver a reddy orange stage wash that slightly silhouetted the band. It was still dark on my music stand so I set up the clip on stand light. We were ready to go with quarter of an hour before showtime when Jen arrived. I explained that Dan and Jacqui would be along later and we got changed into the white shirts. We opened up with the usual starting sequence which went well until Greg missed the change to “Bye Bye Love”. It was a very good on-stage sound. I put this down to the fact the Nige and I had drawn the curtains at the back to absorb sound reflections off the back windows. The place was only about a third full but the audience were very generous with applause and quite responsive to our slightly off-beat banter. Dan and Jacqui arrived as we opened up with a ‘modern’ number: “Peaceful Easy Feeling”. I think because it is a big room, we had been playing with a bit more attack than usual and we stepped this up a bit more as we got into this song. Using the harmoniser we got a fullish sound to the vocals and the whole thing worked really well and earned a good round of applause. We changed tack with “Blue Suede into Great Balls” but that seemed to go down just as well. I called for “Ferry” as a slowey to see if there were any romantics about but no takers so, carrying on in entertainment mode, we did the Beatles. Again we attacked this a bit stronger than normal and got a good result with a great round of applause as we finished. We finished a bit early with a good performance of “Words” and took a break to meet up with Dan and Jacqui. Resuming for set 2 I called for “Take It Easy” as the opener. This song is very demanding for me because I am switching the harmoniser in and out, singing lead, changing guitar sounds and it is a complex arrangement. But I think I am beginning to get somewhere with it and just need to play it through with the band a few more times to get it thoroughly engrained into the feet, voice and fingers! Nevertheless it was well appreciated by the crowd. I had intended to go from this into Ace’s “How Long” but my eyes skipped the cue; I announced the “Searchers” and the thought got lost. We had some dancers up to the Searchers but we soon wore them out. It was time for a bit of audience participation! We invited Dan up to play bass on “Mustang Sally”.

Nige tried to sneak off, but I made him to come back and sing it! We played it well enough and I think the audience was impressed as they gave up a good round of applause. We continued with a sequence including “Move it, All Shook Up, Love Potion 9 and Moon of Love”. Not many takers for dancing but Dan took Jacqui and Jen out for spins on the dancefloor as we ploughed on. We hadn’t done “Moon of Love” for a while and whilst Greg got the start spot on, we arrived at the drum break in the middle and he was some what surprised and had to improvise his way through it – he did it well enough I don’t think anyone noticed! We aired “My Girl” as the mid set slowey and made a pretty good job of it and were rewarded by a few dancers getting up to have a slow dance. We did the closing sequence of “Halfway (Nige had to be wigged up for a gruff voice), Wonder and Sweet Carol – ine” to finish the set with the audience singing along. Dan had to take his leave after set 2 and the audience had thinned out a little. I thought it would be an opportunity to try something different so I called for “Hotel California” to open set 3. Apart from a few muffed notes in the solo, it went pretty well and we got a great response from the remaining audience. Dan had requested “Brown Eyed Girl” but he had gone home? We did it anyway! I muffed the guitar start as my attention was drawn to fixing the reverb settings which weren’t quite right. But Greg got a great rhythm going and we had a few scattered couple dancing away happily to it. We rightly decided to omit all the party dance stuff and picked out rockier numbers including “Hippy Hippy Shake, Rip It Up, Summer of 69, All Right Now” These went down surprisingly well and I called for “Midnight Hour” as a change. Again Greg got a great rhythm going and we kept a few folks dancing. I noticed it was coming up to time so we drifted into closure with a rocking version of “Johnny B Goode”. Greg missed the cue for drum break in the middle but the remaining audience didn’t notice and loved it as they rocked in the aisles. There was a half hearted shout for ‘more’ as I signed off but Nige had negotiated an 11:45 finish to suit the bar staff so he had the jolly good idea of putting some background musak on which was a good compromise. Pack up went well enough, Nige and I decided to take a set of lights each. Load up was also OK as the storm had abated. We all said our goodbyes and Jacqui and I set off back via Norwich. We took it easy as the car is still ‘running in’, but we had a good trip achieving over 45 mpg! Jacqui said the band had sounded really good and it was also good to hear us attacking the repertoire a bit stronger than usual. Overall a very good night for the band.

Sprowston Sports and Social Club Norwich

Back from Spain and the bad back had cleared up nicely. I hadn’t played at this club before, so I Googled and streetwalked it to be clear as to where it was. Set off about 5:10pm and all went well until just after Thetford where the A11 was closed and I was diverted on country roads to East Harling and then back onto the A11. It was getting dark as I approached Norwich and by the time I got to the Wroxham Road it was a dark evening. But the street lights and signage was good enough to get me onto Blue Boar Lane without missing a turn and the Club was an easy find. Despite losing a bit of time en route I was first there at 6:30pm on a chilly evening. The bar fellow showed me the back way in to load straight on to the small stage and I had just got a couple of things in when Nige appeared. Greg rolled up a few minutes later and we soon had the gear in. Although the stage is small it is deep. We had to place the Bose inside some low ceiling beams but right at the back so Greg had plenty of room to set up in front.

Greg had brought along a TAMA gigging kit he had acquired in the week. Nice looking kit coloured ‘girly pink’ I suggested, but Greg would only respond to ‘manly pastel red’. Set up went well until I forgot to test out the reverb. When I did remember, the mains lead to the reverb unit had pulled out, so I had to fiddle in the back of the rack – uttering an expletive that shocked Nigel! We had a beer and enjoyed some of Nige’s pictures from his recent tour with ‘Blitz’ – a gig at the Oasis Scratby actually! Tom the promoter came up to agree times etc. He said it was likely to be a quiet night ‘cos the club’s advert had failed to appear in the paper. However, he had done a big ‘Sky High’ poster in the club, but he didn’t expect many members to show up. We got changed into the black outfits – an easy decision ‘cos Greg had forgotten his white shirt cuff links. There were only about 10 in the room as we opened up at 8:35pm with “Foot Tapper”. The curtains at the back and sides of the stage absorbed quite a bit or extraneous noise and the on-stage sound was very good. The audience seems to like it as well as we carried on with a very typical set 1. I must admit my bantering was a bit over relaxed and obscure but we got some good response from the small audience which had grown to about 15 by the time we wrapped up with “Words”. After a short break we opened set 2 with “Under the Sun, Tambourine Man and the Searchers”. We actually had a couple of dancers up for a while during this session. Next up was “Apache”. I was putting on my Hank glasses and turned round to face the audience when, much to my surprise, I found Nige had coaxed a couple of blokes up to do the walk with the toy guitars. They were a bit ‘cak footed’ but they played along with the routine perfectly. While I was out front I noticed we had a really classy band sound (I had taken a bit of top off the guitar earlier and it definitely paid off). The ‘Walk’ went down just great with the audience giving us huge applause. Thinking we had broken the ice we settled into playing some safe, singalong rock’n’roll with “Move It and All Shook Up”. Sing-a-long was good but dancing remained very sparse so I called for “Halfway” to get us back into entertainment mode. This went very well with Nige doing his manly backing singing and getting the blonde wig for his troubles. We followed up with “Wonder of You” and “Sweet Caroline” which were very well received. I called for “Wonderful Tonight” to finish and a few couples did venture up to have a slow dance. In the break we had a request for a ‘Sir Cliff’ song, so we opened set 3 with “Do You Wanna Dance”. We tried to get some party dance atmos going with “Amarillo – Hey Baby – Hi Ho – Hippy Hippy Shake” but, although they were very well received, no dancing? We even gave “Summer of 69” a go but still no dancing; not even for “Unchained” Nige’s voice was getting a bit shot but he’s a trouper. Fortunately, it was approaching time so we settled into a finish with “Johnny B Goode” and encored with “Walk Alone” - we came off to some very warm applause. Actually Tom was very pleased with the band, its sound, our easy going entertainment and repertoire. He was just a bit sorry for us that there weren’t more there. Greg got an accolade being picked out as a quality drummer fitting in real well with the band. Tom said he’d like to give us another go as the ‘Foot Tappers’ with better promotion. The club can finance the occasional quiet night, but It does seem that a following is needed to play some of these Norwich gigs successfully. We packed and loaded and got on the road by about 12:30am and I was home for just after 1:30am. Voice a bit shot the next day.

Checkmates Re-Union Gig at King Edward Hall Lindfield

I pulled a muscle in my back on the Friday – probably from too much coughing! Fortunately I was able to get an appointment with Louise, the local Osteopath, to check it out. With that, Nurafen and careful application of frozen peas I was feeling OK enough on the Saturday morning to load the gear. While I was laid up I took some time to set up the T1 mixer for 3 mics under a Checkmates setting. So we set off on Saturday morning in good partial cloud travelling weather, taking the A12 / M25 down to the Dartford crossing. Once over the river, we stopped at Clackets Lane Services for a stretch and then carried on in increasingly rainy conditions to Lindfield arriving about 1pm for lunch with old friends Jenny and Miles. I arrived at the hall at 5pm to meet up with Raye, Graham and his son Adam who I commandeered as my roadie for the night. Mercifully the rain held off until we got the gear in but as we were sorting ourselves out on the stage, the rain set in hard and wet for the night. I got Raye to set up slightly on Graham’s side. This allowed me to set up the Bose centrally next to Raye. Graham was using half his Trace Elliott rig and I was using my Mesa Lonestar. Setting up took a long time with a bad back, but equalising the mics was straightforward. Once set up, we had about an hour to run thru stuff and soundcheck. Then it was beers in and relax for a bit. Trevor from the Lindfield club was promoter for this event and told us it was well sold out! True to form the hall was pretty full by 8pm. We got changed into the green and took our places behind the curtain as Trevor did his intro; the curtain came back and it was showtime! We played and read the audience pretty well throughout the night and everything we did was very warmly received. They even got most of the jokey remarks (the clarity of the Bose paid off). This was how the sets outturned:
Set 1:
WHAT YOU WANNA MAKE THOSE EYES?
STAND BY ME
HEARTBEAT
WALK RIGHT BACK
WHEN WILL I BE LOVED
MR SANDMAN
BE BOP A LULA
APACHE did the walk
WALKIN IN THE RAIN
SINGIN THE BLUES
IT DOESN'T MATTER ANYMORE
PUTTIN ON THE STYLE
ROCK AROUND THE CLOCK
RAINING IN MY HEART
I BELIEVE
WIPE OUT
Set 2
Lady Is A Tramp - Easy Pace
SLOW BOAT TO CHINA
I WONDER WHOSE KISSING HER NOW
RED SAILS IN THE SUNSET
THEM THERE EYES
MONA LISA
MOVE IT
RIP IT UP
ALRIGHT MAMA
ALL SHOOK UP
HALFWAY TO PARADISE
F B I – did another walk
SHAKE RATTLE AND ROLL wrong key do it in A in future!
MAKE BELIEVE
LET THERE BE DRUMS went well – we all remembered it!
Set 3
GREAT BALLS OF FIRE
WANDERER
SAW HER STANDING THERE
TWIST AGAIN
AMERICAN TRILOGY
ROUTE 66
JAILHOUSE ROCK did it in A Graham prefers B
UNCHAINED MELODY
JOHNNY B GOODE
LUCKY OLD SUN
EARLY IN THE MORNING
WHAT YOU WANNA MAKE THOSE EYES?
SHAKIN' ALL OVER
After 3 encores, we were pretty tired at the end. Pack up was very slow. Adam did a sterling job shifting my gear which I was thankful for ‘cos the back was aching a bit. Luckily the rain had abated for the load up and we shook hands and said goodbye about 12:30am. Only a short journey to Jenny and Miles house where we crept in like naughty teenagers and had a well deserved sleep. Next morning we elected to get off after breakfast as the weather was a bit wild and showery. We had a good run home via the M11, it only took about 2 and half hours.