Face Of Cheam

This one day festival is becoming a bit of a regular annual haunt for me, this being the third year running I’ve been in attendance. Having decided to get value this year we got there early rather than spend most the afternoon in the pub. Even then we were too late to see The Holloways who were just finishing upon our arrival at 2pm.
Having watched some punters play ‘Rock Star’ on the Xbox 360, we took a position near the front of the main stage for Noah & The Whale whose current song about Sun Sun Sun is becoming a summer anthem. I quite liked their quirkiness, sounding a bit like They Might Be Giants. They also asked for the smoke machine to be turned off, quite rightly, as it was a windy summer day having no effect to the atmosphere whatsoever.
The Hives were next. I knew to things about them. One they were Swedish and two their bass player looks like Barry from Eastenders in their ‘Hate To Say I Told You So’ video. They impressed. Fairly rocky, although the singer fancied himself too much by climbing the speakers too often.
Into the tent now for The Maccabees. These were ok although the tent was a bit smoky. They seemed to go down well with the crowd but for me they failed to be memorable as indeed when writing this all I can think of is that they were quite good.
Back to the main stage for Supergrass. I was really looking forward to a festival greatest hits set, but instead it was a lethargic, disappointing performance with only a couple of hits, ‘Moving’ and ‘Richard III’. It was during the latter song I made my way back to the tent for Reverend & The Makers, arriving with beers in hand for their hit ‘Heavyweight Champion Of The World’. Having apparently only missed a couple of songs before I was really impressed. Much better than when I saw him at the Roundhouse a few months ago, even including a couple of lines of ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ in the final song acknowledging the headliners. Afterwards the Reverend hung around at the back of the tent for signings and autographs, a nice touch from someone supposedly quitting music soon. Nice to see there are a few artists still prepared to make time for their fans.
Finally, topping the bill, was Iggy & The Stooges. In his sixties, Iggy was still eccentric energetic and had his top off from the first song Loose. Really enjoyable he got hundreds of people up on stage during ‘Real Cool Time’ and ‘No Fun’. The only problem was he played the classics really early on with ‘1969’ and ‘I Wanna Be Your Dog’ in the first four songs, and half way through his set there was nothing left you wanted to hear. As it was a Stooges show, there were no solo Iggy songs such as Lust For Life or China Doll that could have extended the set. A shame. Still impressed to have seen a band that have influenced much of the music I’m into.