Groove Armada @ Greenwich Music Time

Last night I went to see Groove Armada at Greenwich Music Time. It was the third time I'd been to Greenwich Music Time but the first time I'd seen Groove Armada in concert.

I guess the first question is why has it taken me so long to see them in concert? Well I loved "At the River" when it first came out, but found there other tunes were quite hit or miss. Then over a decade later I heard "Paper Romance" which I thought was the best thing they'd done, so much so I bought the "Black Light" album which I thought was very good. As the years have gone by I've started to appreciate some of their older tunes that I perhaps didn't like on first hearing, which brings us to the present day.

To the gig itself then, being an outdoor gig where umbrellas are banned I was hoping it wouldn't rain and fortunately it didn't. As with most gigs I go to I feel I must have a rant about the beer, not only was it £6 a pint but the only beer they sold was Carlsberg which is horrible. I've said this before and I'll say it again, I'll happily arrive at a gig at the beginning of the night and watch the support acts if I could buy decent beer at a reasonable price.

On the stage when I arrived was Horse Meat Disco, a name I'd heard but knew nothing other than that. It was a DJ set playing some well known records such as "Big Love" by Fleetwood Mac and "Blue Monday" by New Order, which I thought was a decent warm up.

Then Groove Armada arrived on stage. They began with a short medley of their hits i.e. a few seconds of each, I wondered if that would be all we'd hear of the hits of whether we'd hear them in full later.

The first actual tune we heard was "The Girls Say". Then came "Look Me In the Eye Sister" and "I Won't Kneel" from the "Black Light" album. Singer St Saviour came onto the stage to mime them, it turns out she had lost her voice so fair play for turning up.

Despite being nearly a decade old, "Black Light" is still their most recent proper studio album so I was hopeful we'd hear plenty of material from this. The bulk of the earlier tunes in the set though were from the "Soundboy Rock" album including "Song 4 Mutya (Out of Control)", unsurprisingly Mutya herself didn't turn up to sing it.

The high point of the gig though, as expected, came when they did "Paper Romance". St Saviour was back on the stage to mime again and it sounded like they'd kept Ben Duffys vocals on it too. This was followed by "Easy", the only one from the "Lovebox" album they played that night. Then came "I See You Baby" and "Get Down" before they left the stage.

For the encore they came back and did "At the River" which I think they needed to do, if anything because we were by the River Thames. It was followed by "Cards to Your Heart" from the "Black Light" album and to finish off they did "Chicago" followed by "Superstylin".

Was it worth the wait then? Yes definitely, Groove Armada are one of a very small number of music acts where I prefer the newer material to the older stuff so in my mind the best time to see them is after the newer music was made.