Coldie Lookin Chain - Chelmsford V 2005
You either love 'em or hate 'em, but you can't deny they're good at what they do. Anyone who was feeling a little sleepy or hung over on the Saturday at Chelmsford or Sunday at Staffordshire would have been woken up in style by a party Goldie Lookin' style.
They opened with a track which left us in no doubt about what they would enjoy doing to Alicia Keys, before the classics 'Half Man Half Machine' and 'Guns Don't Kill People, Rappers Do' had the V stage crowd jumping.
One of the problems that GLC have on a stage that size is, that if you're not standing in the right place or the sound quality isn't great, then the main element of what they do, the lyrical content, is somewhat lost. Fortunately from where I was you could hear virtually everything and at this point, the gag hasn't quite worn thin yet.
They showed off a bunch of new tracks, in fact half the set was stuff from their next record. It doesn't take a genius to work out what their new material sounds like, and it's fair to say that the samples in the tracks are what makes a GLC song work. Their choice of music ranges from eighties classics to cult TV themes and one of the highlights of this set was a track performed over the 'Grange Hill' music.
They rounded off with the fans favorite 'You're Mother's got a Penis' and were gone in just over half an hour, which is probably about the right length as after that the humor starts to wear off.
How long they can keep it up remains to be seen, but as a way to get a festival going it certainly does the trick.