Face Of Cheam

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!