Goldfinger: the band with a taste for skunk

I'll do almost anything for a great band, but when I found myself moshing with twelve-year-olds on a Saturday afternoon, it kinda scared me. Still, it's exactly the way Goldfinger likes it.

"My main problem with playing here tonight is that it's not an all-ages show," says Charlie Paulson, guitarist for the band. I've joined Paulson on the tour bus after an early show at UBC. As he drinks his morning coffee, he becomes more coherent and continues. "Ultimately, kids are more important, and in my opinion they got fucked today because they got to see us suck."

Perhaps "suck" is a bit harsh, but Paulson knows the band can't play its best after a long night of travel and very little sleep. "We need to be awake," he says. "We like to perform, and when I'm just starting to feel the effects of my first coffee, it's not good."

It has turned out to be a nice day-lots of sunshine and plenty of people buzzing around the Student Union Building, where the bus is parked. Goldfinger has just played a high- energy mini-gig for a small group of young fans, and no matter how dissatisfied Paulson is, the California band was a big hit with the crowd. With frontman John Feldmann on guitar and vocals, Simon Williams on bass, "Dangerous" Darrin Pfeiffer behind the drums, and Paulson on guitar, the band reeled off hits and pounded out crowd favorites from their self-titled debut.

Throughout the show, it became pretty clear that Goldfinger is there for the fans.

"Our last three shows were just absolute fucking mayhem," says Paulson. "Basically, the way I see it, they're paying their eight dollars or whatever to come see us play, so they're the ones who deserve to have a good time."

With a freshly-shaved head and countless tattoos, Paulson resembles a hard-core Pantera fan. But for the most part, critics have classified Goldfinger as a ska/punk band-"skunk" if you know the lingo.

"As far as I'm concerned, we're just a fuckin' pop band," says Paulson. "People compare us to the Police a lot. I won't even say that we're anywhere near as fuckin' good as the Police, but they played ska music, early on they played some punk stuff. But people don't think of the Police as a ska band or a punk band. They just think of them as a band-a pop band-and I think that definitely fits what we do."

When Spin magazine wrote that the No Doubt/Goldfinger tour of the summer of '96 was the punk/ska tour of the year, a lot of eyebrows were raised. "Everybody has to put a fuckin' label on you," Paulson says. "Neither one of our bands claims to be punk or ska. To me, No Doubt is an amazing band, but if I had never heard of No Doubt, and I just went and saw them, I would have said 'Wow, I saw this amazing pop band tonight, and they did a ska song.'"

In just a few hours, Goldfinger will be back on stage as the headliners of a UBC Pit Pub triple bill, which includes the Skeletones and Reel Big Fish. But right now, Paulson isn't complaining about life on the road. Despite a difficult European experience, Paulson says that the band's Christmas break has injected some new life into the tour. "We've done this entire year without a break," he explains, "so I was really looking forward to [having one]. I wanted to see my friends, I wanted to go back to Hollywood, I wanted to hang out at my favorite tattoo shop, the whole feel.

"But after day three I was losing my mind. By 9:00 every night I just started buzzing and twitching because I was getting ready to play a show. So, after the Christmas break I've had a new lease on life on tour."

Besides, says Paulson, you've got to play live if you want to build a fan base, especially in a new town. "You can have your song on the radio, you can have people who've seen your video or whatever, but for a band like us its really about the live show," he explains. After playing for the first time in Columbus, for example, the band will have to make an extra effort to reach the fans that showed up at that first show. "We're gonna have to go back to that town and we're gonna have to earn those kids' respect, just like anybody else would. You can't underestimate that shit. People need to see you play live."

Of course, the UBC show was a great chance to see the band at their best. And after Paulson told me a bit about the Skeletones, I was more than eager to see the triple bill.

"We used to play at this club called the Troubador, and it would be Reel Big Fish, us, and then the Skeletones. So when we had the chance to headline we said 'Fuck it, let's just take our hometown show on the road,' so we asked these two bands to come out with us.

"It's still really weird for me to have the Skeletones opening for us. When we started out in L.A. they helped us out, they liked our band, and we would open for them all the time. They're just one of my favorite bands, and it's no bullshit when I say that it's an honour to play with them."

Unfortunately, I never got to see the Skeletones in action: a few of the band members were halted at the U.S. border and the show couldn't go on. Still, that didn't stop the rest of the bill from running smoothly.

I'd already heard Reel Big Fish's major-label debut, Turn the Radio Off, and I'd been impressed by a tight horn section and a catchy ska feel. "There couldn't be a better vibe," said Paulson on touring with the Fish. "The bass player from Reel Big Fish and I sat in the back the other day and figured out the entire Sabbath Bloody Sabbath record and we were just jamming it. He's never really listened to Sabbath, so when they lock into that really heavy riff in the song 'Sabbath Bloody Sabbath,' he just sat there with his jaw open and he's like 'This is the heaviest shit in the world.'"

The Fish turned out to be a treat live. Before their first song was over, they had the audience out shuffling and grooving on the dance floor. They became a crowd favorite instantly, and their entire set, featuring "Sell Out," "She Has a Girlfriend Now," "Everything Sucks," and an ingenious rendition of A-Ha's "Take On Me" was bouncy and fun.

Feldmann joined Reel Big Fish for their last tune, and all hell broke loose once the Goldfinger set began. Oblivious to normal performer/audience relationships, the band was happy to have the crowd on stage, and Feldmann wasn't too shy to surf the crowd or let a fan sing a song.

"If they want to come on the fuckin' stage," Paulson had said, "they paid for that right."

When one fan complained about being pushed in the mosh pit, Feldmann told her that he couldn't stand wailers.

The set included a whirlwind of songs from the CD, like "Here in Your Bedroom," "Miles Away," and "Mable," and a few featuring Scott Klopfentstein and Grant Barry from RBF. A cover of Duran Duran's "Rio" was better than an '80s flashback, and the odd skateboarding song was thrown in to keep the mosh pit full all night.

It seems that whether it's an all-ages show or a no-minors gig, Paulson and Goldfinger are happy to be playing. "It's just been so much fun," he says. "I'm basically having more fun on this tour than I've ever had on the road."

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