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.
