A new gig for us at a regular live music pub in Cambridge. I checked it out on the net and somewhere in the blurb it said: "The Grapes brings you live performances from
local Cambridge bands. Covering the greatest tunes from ANY decade, most bands
have been playing on the circuit for a long time. A NIGHT NOT TO BE MISSED!" Seemed our kind of gig?
Chris the bass picked me up at 5:50pm to form a 2 vehicle convoy heading West; Chris the drum would be coming later. An uneventful ride towards the city centre on the Histon Road took us to the venue by 6:30 and straight into the pub car park. We were able to park up with several yards carry to the back door and then several more yards carry to the performance area, so not too bad a load in. The performance area was a railed off raised lounge. The guvnor came and fixed sound proofing to the windows (polystyrene), cleared some chairs and tables and voila: a sizeable playing area with a bit of a dance floor! Chris the drum arrived and we set the Bose well to the back so there would be a bit of sound carry to the main part of the pub as well. Power was well off to Chris's side and I had to run a mains lead from there to my main protected distribution board and then a lead back to the bass side. With set up complete I had plenty of time to test the sound (the pub was busy so not a sound check as such). Like most pubs we would be restricted in headroom by changing resonant frequencies on the PA. The guitar and bass sounded good and a chap came over to ask me a few questions about the guitar sounds I was testing. Chris the bass had a new cold and said: 'it was making him feel he wasn't in the mood'; Chris the drum was still recovering from a cold. I, currently coldless, thought we'd best have a couple of beers to improve the mood a bit! Show time was at 9pm so we had plenty of time to while away on not a lot.
By show time the clientele was much the same - mainly 30 plus's with a sprinkling of 40-50 somethings and a few younger folk round the pool table. As I looked through to the other bar I could see some older folk, so I was hoping for an OK crowd. We had come dressed in black shirts and blue jeans, no ties. The venue and clientele weren't that well turned out so we stayed like that and still looked smarter!
We opened with "FBI". All seemed OK soundwise, but there was only a muted response as we finished so I did a bit of introductory chatter. We carried on with "Heartbeat - Smiling" and we started to get some attention and little ripples of applause. I pushed the echo up a little because the vocal sound seemed dry to me. It was only as we ventured into rock and roll with "Rock Clock - Alright Mama" that we got a reasonable response and even a few on the dance floor. I decided to skip the Xmas stuff and we got on with the Band intro songs: "Act Naturally, Ring of Fire, Eyes at Me For". We hadn't done the latter for a few weeks and it was worth airing even if we were a bit rusty. I did tease some of the oldies down in the other bar with this one, inviting them to remember this song from the late 1950's then going "Do wappy do wappy" stop then 'silence' - they clearly couldn't remember it! The Beatles (sans wigs) went down well and we had a few singing and dancing along with us. I pretended we were more pro than we are by asking Chris where we were the previous night - 'Coventry' he replied! No connection to the Searchers there so we just got on played the medley. There was an 'old boy' off to my left who clearly was enjoying the banter and the music (and a few drinks). "Runaround Sue - All Shook Up" was well received and after a bit of prompting we got the crowd to answer back on the latter. We finished off with "Wonder of You" which did get some applause so I thought job well done really. It being a kind of 'take or leave it' venue I was relaxed and in a good mood myself. The mood of the rhythm section had improved with playing and I thought we had the measure of the crowd, so confidence was high.
A fairly standard set 2 came and went. I replaced American Trilogy with "Albatross" as the set closer to exercise it and promptly made a mistake in the first high section, but slid into the correct frets quickly - so not too noticeable!
We went on for set 3 opening with "Great Balls - Saw Her Standing There". These got good responses with applause and dancing and I took the boys on quickly through a long sequence starting with "Dance the Night Away" and ending about 20 minutes later with "All Right Now". It being the last gig for a couple of weeks, I went for it vocally and thought I did a good job, and I enjoyed it. Chris drum was too croaky to do "Another Brick in the Wall" so I called for "Hippy Hippy Shake" quickly and caught the boys dithering - it took them half a verse to get going but the song did energise the crowd into drunken dancing. We did a bit more dithering over what to do next so I said lets exercise some stuff in progress and we did "Rockin All Over the World & Road to Hell" - I half forgot a solo in the former and both were a bit less together than last time, but it got some more finger time under the belt. After playing our outroductions with "Johnny B Goode" we were dithering over the encore to fully finish. In the end I said 'nothing to lose' - lets do "Summer of 69"! This was very much a work in progress; I recall we had played it through only once before at a practice session to see what rockier numbers might work. Actually we did it better than I thought we might and the audience didn't notice me struggling to shout the chords of the bridge and singing it at the same time. I was pleased with my guitar sound and playing and got most the words right so it was a good call. I also think the boys were pleased that I had the confidence in them to busk it through dependably.
Then it was pack and load. Chris had a word with management who declared themselves well pleased and keen to have the band back. We all agreed we liked the venue so Chris will make it so! I was delayed opening my sandwich bag that Ms J wraps up so tightly - in effect we set off home separately. But even on a slow run I was home by 1:30 am to find Ms J and Neice in law Nat still up and making cocoa. Phil, Nat and the boys had arrived while I was gigging.
Chris the bass picked me up at 5:50pm to form a 2 vehicle convoy heading West; Chris the drum would be coming later. An uneventful ride towards the city centre on the Histon Road took us to the venue by 6:30 and straight into the pub car park. We were able to park up with several yards carry to the back door and then several more yards carry to the performance area, so not too bad a load in. The performance area was a railed off raised lounge. The guvnor came and fixed sound proofing to the windows (polystyrene), cleared some chairs and tables and voila: a sizeable playing area with a bit of a dance floor! Chris the drum arrived and we set the Bose well to the back so there would be a bit of sound carry to the main part of the pub as well. Power was well off to Chris's side and I had to run a mains lead from there to my main protected distribution board and then a lead back to the bass side. With set up complete I had plenty of time to test the sound (the pub was busy so not a sound check as such). Like most pubs we would be restricted in headroom by changing resonant frequencies on the PA. The guitar and bass sounded good and a chap came over to ask me a few questions about the guitar sounds I was testing. Chris the bass had a new cold and said: 'it was making him feel he wasn't in the mood'; Chris the drum was still recovering from a cold. I, currently coldless, thought we'd best have a couple of beers to improve the mood a bit! Show time was at 9pm so we had plenty of time to while away on not a lot.
By show time the clientele was much the same - mainly 30 plus's with a sprinkling of 40-50 somethings and a few younger folk round the pool table. As I looked through to the other bar I could see some older folk, so I was hoping for an OK crowd. We had come dressed in black shirts and blue jeans, no ties. The venue and clientele weren't that well turned out so we stayed like that and still looked smarter!
We opened with "FBI". All seemed OK soundwise, but there was only a muted response as we finished so I did a bit of introductory chatter. We carried on with "Heartbeat - Smiling" and we started to get some attention and little ripples of applause. I pushed the echo up a little because the vocal sound seemed dry to me. It was only as we ventured into rock and roll with "Rock Clock - Alright Mama" that we got a reasonable response and even a few on the dance floor. I decided to skip the Xmas stuff and we got on with the Band intro songs: "Act Naturally, Ring of Fire, Eyes at Me For". We hadn't done the latter for a few weeks and it was worth airing even if we were a bit rusty. I did tease some of the oldies down in the other bar with this one, inviting them to remember this song from the late 1950's then going "Do wappy do wappy" stop then 'silence' - they clearly couldn't remember it! The Beatles (sans wigs) went down well and we had a few singing and dancing along with us. I pretended we were more pro than we are by asking Chris where we were the previous night - 'Coventry' he replied! No connection to the Searchers there so we just got on played the medley. There was an 'old boy' off to my left who clearly was enjoying the banter and the music (and a few drinks). "Runaround Sue - All Shook Up" was well received and after a bit of prompting we got the crowd to answer back on the latter. We finished off with "Wonder of You" which did get some applause so I thought job well done really. It being a kind of 'take or leave it' venue I was relaxed and in a good mood myself. The mood of the rhythm section had improved with playing and I thought we had the measure of the crowd, so confidence was high.
A fairly standard set 2 came and went. I replaced American Trilogy with "Albatross" as the set closer to exercise it and promptly made a mistake in the first high section, but slid into the correct frets quickly - so not too noticeable!
We went on for set 3 opening with "Great Balls - Saw Her Standing There". These got good responses with applause and dancing and I took the boys on quickly through a long sequence starting with "Dance the Night Away" and ending about 20 minutes later with "All Right Now". It being the last gig for a couple of weeks, I went for it vocally and thought I did a good job, and I enjoyed it. Chris drum was too croaky to do "Another Brick in the Wall" so I called for "Hippy Hippy Shake" quickly and caught the boys dithering - it took them half a verse to get going but the song did energise the crowd into drunken dancing. We did a bit more dithering over what to do next so I said lets exercise some stuff in progress and we did "Rockin All Over the World & Road to Hell" - I half forgot a solo in the former and both were a bit less together than last time, but it got some more finger time under the belt. After playing our outroductions with "Johnny B Goode" we were dithering over the encore to fully finish. In the end I said 'nothing to lose' - lets do "Summer of 69"! This was very much a work in progress; I recall we had played it through only once before at a practice session to see what rockier numbers might work. Actually we did it better than I thought we might and the audience didn't notice me struggling to shout the chords of the bridge and singing it at the same time. I was pleased with my guitar sound and playing and got most the words right so it was a good call. I also think the boys were pleased that I had the confidence in them to busk it through dependably.
Then it was pack and load. Chris had a word with management who declared themselves well pleased and keen to have the band back. We all agreed we liked the venue so Chris will make it so! I was delayed opening my sandwich bag that Ms J wraps up so tightly - in effect we set off home separately. But even on a slow run I was home by 1:30 am to find Ms J and Neice in law Nat still up and making cocoa. Phil, Nat and the boys had arrived while I was gigging.
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