Face Of Cheam

The Paddingtons are from Hull and their guitarist who once dated Aggy Dean has a big badge promoting this. This gig was good fun as they rumbled through songs from their new album which is released the first week of November, the best of which is 'What's The Point Of Anything New?' a statement indeed. They did a couple of songs from their debut album too ending with 'So To A&E' which had a couple of stage divers on stage singing along. With Tuborg as the draft beer and Sagres in the Emterprise pub beforehand only Spurs winning put a dampener on the wet Wednesday evening. Even chatted to an old couple on the train on the way home who had seen Joe Brown at the Albret Hall!

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At the Southbank Centre last weekend was the 18th birthday celebrations of Heavenley Records. With three of my favourite artists on the bill this planned my weekend. First up on the Saturday was Beth Orton making her first stage appearance for three years, surprisingly in a support slot to The Magic Numbers. Beth was hypnotic. I really could not take my eyes of her as she performed acoustically. I remember seeing her a few years previously where she had a similar magnetic presence, but that gig went on far too long where this 50 minute set was perfect and left you knowing that you had seen something special. The Magic Numbers on the other hand were just another band. Didn’t really know much about them prior to this and probably still don’t except that the singer is a large bearded bloke. Not bad but just not good.
Sunday saw Dot Allison support St Etienne. Dot only had her debut album (Afterglow) on Heavenley and her set drew mainly from this. She had a full band with her and was remarkably heavy ending with a great version of Strung Out. However, the sound suffered because of this and her vocal elegance could not really come through as it should. Still good to here her ‘rock out’ compared to the acoustic shows of hers seen in recent years.
In between acts we saw a bit of Tim Burgess do a DJ set and said hello to him after getting myself a beer. He now knows my band covers Sproston Green!
St Etienne sensibly stuck to a hits set with Only Love Can Break Your Heart played early on. Sarah Cracknell looked lovely as ever, and told the security to let people stand down at the front to dance away as they wished. In the encore they were joined on stage by the heavenly records founders before ending with Like A Motorway and He’s On The Phone, played like a eurovision cover! A really good weekend, that concluded with a purchase of a souvenir T-Shirt and a complimentary programme.

An indie club night in Kingston? Yes there is and a good one too. Remembering MaCluskeys from my youth this was my first visit in a decade. The reason, to see the new line up of The Pipettes. Alas, my crush Rosay has left along with riot Girl Becky, to be replaced by two lookalikes. Very good thery were too with a set combined with songs from their first album (Your Kisses Are Wasted On Me, Pull Shapes being highlights) and new songs from a forthcoming album, one of which, a reggae song about bleaching hair sung by Gwenno could well be a single. Best of all though was the value, £5.00 on the door and £2 a pint. A thouroughly good night. Though this being the first clubbing on a school night for me in years, was suffering the next morning.

Last Friday I was at the Roundhouse for Ash. Ash were the first band I ever saw that were younger than me (the only time I had previously seen then). Strange then, that twelve years later for my return to this band they were celebrating their debut album 1977, which they were touring when I first was there! 1977 is a classic Britpop album and the show opened with Ash performing it in it’s entirety. This proved a hit with Girl From Mars, Oh Yeah and Kung Fu sounding as fresh as ever. Once this was completed they then played a couple of b-sides from the same period, ‘Sneakers’ their covers of Star Wars Cantina Band Theme and Abba’s Does Your Mother Know. The Star Wars thing was accompanied by people dressed as Stormtroopers on stage. Their first single after their debut album, A Life Less Ordinary, was then played to close before their encore. The encore included their other two catchy singles, Sometimes and Burn Baby Burn. An enjoyable show, heaped in Nostalgia. Was Britpop really that long ago?

Goldfinger are probably best known over here for their rock cover of Nena’s 99 Red Balloons. I made a late decision to go after listening to their greatest hits album the night before and realising that there is more to them than their rock/punk covers. Opening with ‘Spokesman’ this was essentially nearly all the tracks on the greatest hits album. In fact they only did one from their latest album, a catchy song called ‘Get Up’. Actually all their songs had catchy singalong chorus’s such as the fantastic ‘Counting The Days’ and ‘Superman’ which the singer dedicated to himself having become a father ten days before. ‘Mabel’ had people dancing up on the stage after one person called up apparently sucked at singing it. A highlight for me was them saying that Portsmouth was horrible, where they played a couple of nights previously. Also the song ‘f*** Ted Nugent’ with lots of derogatory name calling at him. Bizarrely ‘White Christmas’ was covered halfway through the set and there was an unnecessary 10 minute interlude with the drummer chatting to the crowd. However, the encore picked up with another cover of ‘Feel Like Making Love’ and the show ended with ’99 Red Balloons’ segueing into ’99 Luft Balloons’. A good show with the foresight to have their t-shirts on sale for only a tenner. If more bands had this pricing policy then I’d probably buy a few more t-shirts, which in this case are better value than the £3.45 beer on sale inside!