A, GoldFinger ------ Barrowlands

If "A" are the British Corporate Music Conglomerate’s best hope of competing with over tattoo-d MTV imports then it really is in the shit. Which is fucking great. The thousands or millions that they have squandered on this straight-to-Oxfam shite could have spent on world peace, curing cancer, or pizza for everybody, but no… sadly, it wasn’t. It was spent on plucking some old sub-Feeder tossers from the obscurity they deserved and prodding them onto the stage at the Barras on a rainy Monday night, in order to get a reception colder than Christmas from a crowd who hadn’t paid to see them.

OK, so the place was half empty, and the sound ropey at best. And the band was tired, having just flown back from Hamburg. Presumably they went there to learn how to cook pressed, round all-meat patties. You always need something to fall back on.

Jason Perry looks like an average bloke….and sings like one. He swings his arm annoyingly, while telling us all how much we wanna rock. No, we don't. Not to this pish, anyway. Tonight, Matthew, I am Shakin’ Stevens. He makes some cop-out joke about Mars Bars in batter. Someone flings a pint. Unfortunately, the glass is plastic.

Thanks for this, music industry man.

See, the thing that the Marketing experts can't grasp is, the great mass of hoodie-clad and pierced youth doesn’t listen to daytime radio. Barely a few of them would tune into the "alternative" shows on late night. They have a different grapevine… word of mouth, file-sharing MP3 downloads, burnt CDs passed on in the back of the class. They have a scene that follows its own taste, and up here in Scotland at least, they are far less susceptible to London-based focus-group market bullshit. And that is why so many paid £12 a head to come and see hilarious Californian Ska-Punks GOLDFINGER, not the over-hyped cod-yank shite who where the supposed headliners.

I’m not saying that Goldfinger were in any way "cool". Certainly not in the way that readers of this magazine would have it. In fact, they are one of the cheesiest bands I have ever seen. Every single ska-punk-rock-metal cliché and riff was used, abused, spat out and drunk back, all in half an hour. They had the gurning bassist. They had the communal moshing. They had a stage invasion (which, disturbingly, brought to mind that video for the Grange Hill anti-drugs record…-remember? All self-conscious limb flailing and mouthing words they didn’t know). They had the youngest stage diver I have ever seen. He was eight. No shit. They covered "99 Red Balloons". Jesus. And they had a crowd member eat a chocolate bar out of the drummers arsehole.

Naturally, they went down a storm. I clapped appreciatively, for the first time in my life, feeling old. But then again, there were so many underage punters they should have installed a sandpit. And, try as I might, my moshing days are gone, I am now a head-nodder, relegated from the pit which was once my home. I now worry about chord-changes, slap-back echo, whether the cymbals are in the mix, and all that crap. I just don’t get it. And I won’t get it. Ever again. And maybe, neither will you. Which will suit your teenage brother or sister just fine.

Cubic gorilla