Originally published by L.S. Media. November 8th 2009.

No matter your age, if you love music there will be a band that you listen to on a regular basis that you never will or got to see play live. Sometimes you might be fortunate and only like the current bands that dominate your formative musical years and get to experience them all.

But what do you do if your taste of music straddles a time period before you were born! Ah yes it’s easy to lament the lack of chance of seeing Queen with Freddie or Meatloaf, after all they were touring long after I got into music and it is my own fault for not making more of an effort to see them.

It’s the bands that came before… The Beatles…Well that’s o.k. I have seen all the footage I want to see and my favourite Beatles era came after they stopped touring anyway so that’s not a problem. Free…Well the much missed Paul Kossoff died in 1976 and I am not sure I would have got away with going to gigs at the age of five, so again not a lament in sight but the Small Faces, now there’s a band I never got to see and have regretted it since I first heard the song Tin Soldier at around the age of eight.

There is a tiny glimmer of hope though in the tribute band the Small Fakers who arrived in Liverpool’s Cavern to huge applause from a crowd of people who hadn’t come to turn the clock back and bemoan the lack of talent in the music world today but who had come to revel in the band that made mod culture cool.

Opening the special evening with Whatcha gonna do about it from the 1966 debut album The Small Faces, the band immediately put any fears out of the collective audience and played so well that one member of the audience was overheard to say that the lead singer even looked like Steve Marriott!

Other hits and favourite songs followed throughout the long and wonderful set including Hey Girl, All or Nothing, Shake and My Mind’s Eye before going on to tackle some of the songs off one of the best albums of the sixties, Ogdens’ Nut Gone Flake. The excited audience lapped up the ode to prostitution in Rene, Long Ago and Worlds Apart and the fantastic Song of a Baker without hesitation.    The band did everything right and I am sure that both the sadly missed Steve Marriott and Ronnie Lane would have approved at the thought of their timeless songs given the respect they deserve by a group of young but extremely talented lads.

The Small Fakers finished the night on a superb high with the encores of Happy Days Toy Town,  the cheery, infectious Lazy Sunday and the beautiful Afterglow (of your love)

The Small Fakers will be taking part in the mod revival weekend at the start of May next year at the Cavern.

Ian D. Hall