After the traumas of the previous week and a rather boozy second half of the week at the Beer Festival, I had developed a slight sore throat. Ominously, we had decided not to get a dep singer in - we were going to play the weekend as a trio. Moreover, I was out of practice on my own vocals due to the distraction of sorting out and fitting in the singer who had now left the band. But it 'was what it was' and I geared up manfully to do the gig to the best of my ability. I rewrote the set lists taking the liberty of bringing in "Flingel Bunt" to start set 3 - to get another instrumental into the show.
Come the day Chris propped round in the morning to drop a bass cab off for me to take. He would be taking Ian but he said there wasn't much room for lights. It was a warm sunny day as we set off at 5pm for the run to the coast. Roadworks south of Norwich slowed us down but we arrived in Hemsby just before 6:30pm. We parked up near the fire exit and enjoyed a slow load into the club. A good sized stage faced into a big and wide, soft furnished, concert room with a dance floor off to my left. Chris soon found there were no performance lights and regretted his decision to leave his at home. He settled for the white spots above the band. We worked though set up slowly. The Bose PA only just fitted in by pushing the false roof panels in a couple of inches! I looked round and Chris had set the Bose up in a corner on his side where the lines of sound would be obscured. Too late to change but I suggested next time we put it between the bass cab and the drums. There was a moment of fear when the mixer powered up. Sometimes with low voltages you get an uncertain outcome and this was the case here - it didn't boot up right first time. Fortunately when I rebooted we were OK second time around - phwew! The place was fairly empty so we did an instrumental sound check with "Flingel Bunt". Ian wasn't that familiar with it so it was a good job we tried it out. Then we did "Smiling". I was pleased with the very good on-stage sound - on the dry side and no nasty resonances. I had run the PA up quite loud to try and fill the room and a couple out front (unprompted) said 'lovely sound!' I backed it off a tad and we took a beer break. It seemed none of us wanted to discuss the singer experience so we settled into mild banter to while away 40 minutes to show time at 9pm. About 8:45 pm we got changed into our smart black n white in the storeroom behind the bar - nice and warm!
Feedback from people in the break was positive and we took to the stage to open with "Apache" in a positive mood. I thought we played this well - Ian puts in lots of the Shads features and on this night I concentrated on playing rather than walking. We did get big round of applause as we finished. I did my usual trick of asking the crowd who the Shads used to back. 'Harry Webb' came back one wag, I indicated we would do one of his and Ian surprised me as he got underway with "Do You Wanna Dance". The set list showed "Move It" so I had to change guitar and PA settings to fit in. But we got through OK, maybe a bit more ragged than we can do, but it went down well enough. As we carried on with some rock n roll I could feel the voice getting croaky. The two Creedance songs went well and got some dancing going. We approached the end of the set with a good rendition of "Hot Love" which had fully populated the dance floor and earned a big round of applause. I was going to take it into "East Anglia Girls" but couldn't feel my way into it. Ian read my hesitation as time to stop and we stopped in good order without going up a tone for "East Anglia Girls". Big decision now on how to close the set? I found myself announcing "American Trilogy" saying we would need lots of sing-a-long as I had a sore throat. We hadn't done this for quite a while and I was struggling to feel it right while at the same time favouring the voice which was now sounding hoarse. Fortunately, there was some sing-a-long going on in the crowd. We got to the 'glory glory' phrase and I annoyingly mixed up chords and phrasing - not fatally though. On the positive side we did a good transition to the flute sound and a very big end with lots of strings and drums. Ian does a very powerful job! As we left we could see the hall was well over half full now.
We took our break and I nursed the voice with a pint of water before resuming with "Flingel Bunt". Ian needs to listen to the beginning but once underway we did a good job. I got us underway with "Dance the Night Away". Quite a few came up to dance. I'm still messing up the guitar playing the horn parts - nothing the crowd would notice but annoying to me as I fall back to the chords. Its one of those things I need to play through a few time before the gig so the fingers do it on auto pilot. We carried on into our long dancey song sequence and soon had the dance floor busy and quite a bit of sing-a-long going. The only 'really hard on the voice' number in that sequence was "Pretty Woman" and it did sound strained, but we soon moved into easier singing territory such as "Hi Ho". They shouted for "The Twist" and we gave it to 'em - in my low key of G. We did fit in one slow song "Rainin in my Heart" which brought up a couple of couples to dance. After "Hippy Shakes" I brought in our "Mystery Train - Hound Dog" pairing to introduce the band. That went well - "Hound Dog" is easy to sing and the band does a strong dancey rhythm. We eased down with "Mustang Sally". I wanted to extend this with a solo to give the voice a break, but Chris misread my signal and carried on into his 'all the ladies sing - ride sally ride' routine. But as we came to the end Chris said we were close to midnight and it was time to wrap up. We tore into "Johnny B Goode". It was a great finisher and we got a good round of applause from the by now much thinner crowd. Having just done the band intro we passed on the band outro routine and just played it straight. We worked hard to deter any call for an encore as we quickly moved off the stage and headed to the storeroom to get changed. People on the way out seemed happy with the band and Jackie the governess in charge said we'd done a very good job: She said the audience had liked the music and the band sounded good; and we did well to get them dancing 'cos they don't usually dance on these quiet weekends before the season gets going. We were buoyed up by this 'cos I think the mood in the band was that we were struggling a bit with repertoire changes, my vocal problems and the fact that the audience was fairly distant so we didn't get how well it was going down.
Pack and load in the rain was a chore but we finally hit the road just before 1am. I was home for 2:30am after an unenjoyable drive in the sleety rain; navigating the road works on the Norwich bypass was a pain. The voice was well shattered when I woke up the next day though .....
Come the day Chris propped round in the morning to drop a bass cab off for me to take. He would be taking Ian but he said there wasn't much room for lights. It was a warm sunny day as we set off at 5pm for the run to the coast. Roadworks south of Norwich slowed us down but we arrived in Hemsby just before 6:30pm. We parked up near the fire exit and enjoyed a slow load into the club. A good sized stage faced into a big and wide, soft furnished, concert room with a dance floor off to my left. Chris soon found there were no performance lights and regretted his decision to leave his at home. He settled for the white spots above the band. We worked though set up slowly. The Bose PA only just fitted in by pushing the false roof panels in a couple of inches! I looked round and Chris had set the Bose up in a corner on his side where the lines of sound would be obscured. Too late to change but I suggested next time we put it between the bass cab and the drums. There was a moment of fear when the mixer powered up. Sometimes with low voltages you get an uncertain outcome and this was the case here - it didn't boot up right first time. Fortunately when I rebooted we were OK second time around - phwew! The place was fairly empty so we did an instrumental sound check with "Flingel Bunt". Ian wasn't that familiar with it so it was a good job we tried it out. Then we did "Smiling". I was pleased with the very good on-stage sound - on the dry side and no nasty resonances. I had run the PA up quite loud to try and fill the room and a couple out front (unprompted) said 'lovely sound!' I backed it off a tad and we took a beer break. It seemed none of us wanted to discuss the singer experience so we settled into mild banter to while away 40 minutes to show time at 9pm. About 8:45 pm we got changed into our smart black n white in the storeroom behind the bar - nice and warm!
Set Up - you can clearly see the guitarists foot pedal array, for once plenty of room!
We opened with our usual suspects of "FBI - Heartbeat - Smiling" garnering some polite applause from the 20 or so in for the start of the night. As we continued with familiar rock n roll numbers I could see the hall filling up and we did get one couple on the dance floor. Chris sang his "Act Naturally" and got an OK response, but I judged that this crowd weren't massive country fans so we sidelined a possible airing for "Ring of Fire". Next we wigged up for the Beatles and then played the Searchers Medley. I was happy with the PA sound and was just using the harmoniser to add a high line. Probably 'cos I was out of practice playing as a trio, I was having a bit of trouble coordinating all the guitar and PA effects changes with my foot pedals; but I didn't let it bother me and took my time. We were starting to get some response from the increased audience and "Mr Tambourine Man", up next, got a good round of applause. The audience is relatively distant at this gig so its hard to hear how its going down. Next I called for "Halfway to Paradise" thinking a slowey was worth a try. We got going OK - Ian did a nice fill into the song. Once underway, the big echo produced an intrusive slap back, so I switched back to the 300mS echo mid song - this fitted the bands tempo better. I could tell the audience were singing along, but there were no slow dancers so I kept it short. I was quite confident with "Runaround Sue" which I chose to sing in the high key of C we had moved to for Paul. The audience seemed to like this and I took us into "All Shook Up". As we finished Chris indicated we needed another few minutes. My throat had held up well so far so I announced "Wonder of You". It went well - we bigged it up towards the end i.e. lots of volume and strings. Ian added a few tentative 'ah ah ah ahs' and I'm sure the audience was singing along as well. I chickened out on the big Elvis ending as we eased to a close singing in the lower octave. Despite some rough edges at the end (Chris hit the big finish Eb at the wrong point on the bass and my voice was fading at the same time) it went down remarkable well. I put the muzak on and we took our break. Feedback from people in the break was positive and we took to the stage to open with "Apache" in a positive mood. I thought we played this well - Ian puts in lots of the Shads features and on this night I concentrated on playing rather than walking. We did get big round of applause as we finished. I did my usual trick of asking the crowd who the Shads used to back. 'Harry Webb' came back one wag, I indicated we would do one of his and Ian surprised me as he got underway with "Do You Wanna Dance". The set list showed "Move It" so I had to change guitar and PA settings to fit in. But we got through OK, maybe a bit more ragged than we can do, but it went down well enough. As we carried on with some rock n roll I could feel the voice getting croaky. The two Creedance songs went well and got some dancing going. We approached the end of the set with a good rendition of "Hot Love" which had fully populated the dance floor and earned a big round of applause. I was going to take it into "East Anglia Girls" but couldn't feel my way into it. Ian read my hesitation as time to stop and we stopped in good order without going up a tone for "East Anglia Girls". Big decision now on how to close the set? I found myself announcing "American Trilogy" saying we would need lots of sing-a-long as I had a sore throat. We hadn't done this for quite a while and I was struggling to feel it right while at the same time favouring the voice which was now sounding hoarse. Fortunately, there was some sing-a-long going on in the crowd. We got to the 'glory glory' phrase and I annoyingly mixed up chords and phrasing - not fatally though. On the positive side we did a good transition to the flute sound and a very big end with lots of strings and drums. Ian does a very powerful job! As we left we could see the hall was well over half full now.
We took our break and I nursed the voice with a pint of water before resuming with "Flingel Bunt". Ian needs to listen to the beginning but once underway we did a good job. I got us underway with "Dance the Night Away". Quite a few came up to dance. I'm still messing up the guitar playing the horn parts - nothing the crowd would notice but annoying to me as I fall back to the chords. Its one of those things I need to play through a few time before the gig so the fingers do it on auto pilot. We carried on into our long dancey song sequence and soon had the dance floor busy and quite a bit of sing-a-long going. The only 'really hard on the voice' number in that sequence was "Pretty Woman" and it did sound strained, but we soon moved into easier singing territory such as "Hi Ho". They shouted for "The Twist" and we gave it to 'em - in my low key of G. We did fit in one slow song "Rainin in my Heart" which brought up a couple of couples to dance. After "Hippy Shakes" I brought in our "Mystery Train - Hound Dog" pairing to introduce the band. That went well - "Hound Dog" is easy to sing and the band does a strong dancey rhythm. We eased down with "Mustang Sally". I wanted to extend this with a solo to give the voice a break, but Chris misread my signal and carried on into his 'all the ladies sing - ride sally ride' routine. But as we came to the end Chris said we were close to midnight and it was time to wrap up. We tore into "Johnny B Goode". It was a great finisher and we got a good round of applause from the by now much thinner crowd. Having just done the band intro we passed on the band outro routine and just played it straight. We worked hard to deter any call for an encore as we quickly moved off the stage and headed to the storeroom to get changed. People on the way out seemed happy with the band and Jackie the governess in charge said we'd done a very good job: She said the audience had liked the music and the band sounded good; and we did well to get them dancing 'cos they don't usually dance on these quiet weekends before the season gets going. We were buoyed up by this 'cos I think the mood in the band was that we were struggling a bit with repertoire changes, my vocal problems and the fact that the audience was fairly distant so we didn't get how well it was going down.
Pack and load in the rain was a chore but we finally hit the road just before 1am. I was home for 2:30am after an unenjoyable drive in the sleety rain; navigating the road works on the Norwich bypass was a pain. The voice was well shattered when I woke up the next day though .....
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