Hi Everyone Well it’s Christmas time again. Doesn’t seem five minutes since the last one. We had a good turnout with 16 present. Considering a couple were sick and two away. Thanks to Clem and GeorgeR who brought keyboards. Thanks to Maureen who played and sang. GeorgeR,Sue and Les played a selection of Christmas tunes and others. Everyone went away with a raffle prize. The quiz went well.Three couples got eleven out of fifteen.( Les and Celia) Sue and David) Denis and Margaret).So they decided that all should get a prize. I think the star turn was the appearance of Santa Claus. Thanks to everyone who attended and making it a most enjoyable evening.
The next night is Monday 9/12 . There will be a Kn 7000. and possibly two other keyboards.
Hope to see you there. All the best. John

Hi everybody, yes it was a good night,good food,good friends,good music, I think a vote of thanks is in order to John Taylor our chairman,he single handedly arranged everything,raffles and food without his efforts it wouldn’t have happened. Thanks again John.

Well done JohnT. What JohnT organises for you all up in the North must be treasured. Two more organ clubs in our area have gone to the wall. As the people running them get older, nobody seems willing to step in and help.

When our organ club in Weston-s-Mare started up it was all a case of those joining bringing their keyboards, and we met in a small Church Hall. Then, as things expanded, we started having professional Artistes come and play to us .. with an odd Members' evening. Now it is all professional Artistes coming and playing to us. We have our next meeting tomorrow, December 5th .. our Christmas do. Elizabeth Harrison is coming to play. We meet in the W-s-M Football Club, where there is a small stage with changing room off. We have a bar (well, the Football Club bar) and a kitchen available for our use. At any of our meetings, those that want it can order sausages and chips to have in the interval. And at the Christmas do we all bring some food to share about. All highly organised, as you can see. But doing it all this way costs a pretty penny. It's £7 to get in; and then they do a raffle @ £1 per strip (I'd better say "of numbers" or you may all get the wrong idea!) to boost the coffers.

But our Membership is dropping, and the people running it all are getting on a bit. We are OK for 2020 as all the Artistes are booked, and paid for. We shall never go back to our roots as the objectives have changed. So as I said at the start, treasure what you have up there, and long may it continue.

Hugh

Hi George Thanks for your kind reply. Much appreciated. It was a good night. John

Hi Hugh. Thanks for replying, much appreciated. Like all clubs numbers are dwindling due mainly to people getting older.
We had two clubs running The Musicmakers and the North East keyboard club. Members are the same so really they have amalgamated. The beauty of the club is that we play ourselves and under no pressure from other members. If we make mistakes it is dampness in the keyboard. We don’t have guest players. We have about 16 members.
We have a room at a workingmens club. They do not charge which is good as hiring a room would be prohibitive. We give them a small yearly donation.
We charge £12 per year for players which covers the donation, Christmas party, and any other donations to charity if a member dies. This year we had a free year as we had a bit in the bank. If and when the club closes all monies will go to a charity of the members choice.
Thank you for taking an interest. Will try to get some posts done but very busy at the moment. John

John. Of course the other advantage of doing things the way you do is that you are playing and listening to keyboards you all currently own (well, one or other of them). And if you are watching how someone does something on their keyboard, you can pick up ideas for yourself. And you can always ask how something was done. With the professionals that come to us, there is no correlation between what they play and our own playing. They have probably spend hours setting up Registrations .. and probably wouldn't tell you how they do something even if you asked them.

So enjoy what you do!

Hugh

PS. It's not posts we need at the moment. It's for Members to VOTE for the November Challenge. Not a single vote cast yet (so I suppose that means not even me!).

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