The Old Royal Oak – Review
Last Saturday night we were back to our old haunt in Burton, The Old Royal Oak. It’s been quite a while since we played Burton and what better way to mark our return than to play the Oak. We were expecting a good one, judging from the positive response we had had on our Facebook advertising, with the help of Sue Cutting creating the event and getting a good number of Goings.
Glen was the first to arrive and was discovered by me on my arrival contemplating his naval in the car, or I think that’s what he was doing, anyway we were soon all there and discussing what was to come. We noticed that there were already a fair few punters in residence and could see that a steady stream were arriving, some making themselves known to us and sporting their TTB membership badges, well done lads and lad-esses.
We started to load up the stage, I did my normal thing and positioned my amp stand in roughly the spot I thought I should go, much to the amusement of Glen who thought I was staking my claim to stage area – well he might have a bit of a point but I am ever flexible and willing to move the odd inch or two so no problem.
John arrived with his new shiny silver speckled drum kit, giving it a run out for the first time, having spent hours at home tweaking and tuning his skins to get the best sound from them.
Our new bass bins for the PA proved a little bit of an issue as they were a lot bigger than the old ones, and the restricted space on stage meant that we had to be a little bit creative in their positioning. After a bit of furniture removal we managed to get them onto table tops, positioned to squeeze the sound through the gap in the railings.
The Oak was now getting quite full and by the time we had done the sound check there was a great crowd in place, eagerly awaiting our start.
We had been working on a few new numbers and in order to get the best from them had re-jigged the set list, which I had printed to be sure we all knew the running order, unfortunately I had left them all at home on the laptop so, we had to have a frantic re-visit before our start and set out the set on Marks i-pad.
So we were ready to go and to start Mick squirted the smoke machine for effect and all poised and ready to hit the first chord, dee daa deee daaa deee daaaa- oh shit, the fire alarm was in full swing – apparently a new detector had been fitted which we didn’t know about – so no smoke then, ok. The crowd now had our attention, might be an idea to get our own alarm to start things off.
Once the alarm was sorted we got under way and played our hearts out, we always give our best to an appreciative crowd, and boy what a crowd, dancing from the off, cheering and head banging abounded throughout the whole first set, well done to the guy with the wellies doing his welly stomping, head banging, jiggly strut air guitar dance. Thank you Burton, you lot know how to rock.
The re-jigged first set worked a treat and was a lot livelier than before and lasted the full 55 minutes, leaving us all bit wilted by the time the welcomed break came – but what a set, just what we imagined.
By the time the second set was due, you could not move in the Old Oak, Glen struggled to get back to stage after his fag break it was that rammed, hey hey, just how we like it. Second set under way, now came the new numbers, Radar Love, Rock and Roll and in the encore Delilah, they all seemed to go down great, although a few tweaks needed to tighten them up a bit, they fit in great, anyway by the end of the night we had completed some 32 numbers, lost a few pounds in weight and well and truly got our Rock Fix – A great big thank you to all who came down to support us and make it all worthwhile, you are our favourite crowd and we love you all.
I always know when it’s been a good one, as later on when back at home, my Tinnitus had twittering birdies harmonising with it in stereo and was set to 11.
We are back in Burton this Friday and hope to see a lot of you there, Burton Rocks OK.
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