Press: Stereophonics @ WelshBands
Valley Boys (Q, April 1998)
Their bassist has a scary neck tattoo, their audience used to read newspapers while they played and they like Lynyrd Skynyrd...
Stereophonics
The Logo, Hamburg
February 4, 1998
"Will you look at this..." Stereophonics bassist and former coalman Richard Jones, he of the albino-blond hair and scary neck tattoo, proffers a crumpled handbill advertising an earlier show on the band's European tour. Scrawled on the back in deeply-ingrained characters are the words: Only 50 Minutes Performance Fuck Off!!
It seems that a member of Stereophonics' overseas fanbase, aggrieved by the brevity of their gig, collared Jones after the show and handed him the customised flyer, before scurrying off into the darkness.
"They're like that here sometimes," volunteers unrelated frontman Kelly Jones, frowning beneath caterpillar- sized eyebrows. "They take it all very seriously. At one show there were three blokes watching the sound engineer all night - never took their eyes off what he was doing."
Grumbles about the length of their set aside, the Welsh three-piece's continental dates have found them regularly filling 200 to 400-capacity venues. Their 1997 debut album, Word Gets Around, peaked at Number 6 in the UK, with the More Life In A Tramp's Vest and A Thousand Trees EPs also busying themselves on the charts. Now, buoyed by an earlier reconnaissance mission supporting Supergrass and some brisk European sales, it's time to start courting the foreign vote.
Countless nights playing covers in Welsh working men's clubs have given Stereophonics a certain stoicism. Like Manic Street Preachers, with whom they're predictably but not undeservedly compared, their small-town - in this case, Cwmaman -background has proved invaluable.
"So what if we've supported Paul Weller," offers Kelly Jones. "Now we're starting from scratch over here."
The 400-capacity Logo is a low-ceilinged sweatbox, whose walls are decorated with pictures of a Hamburg- era Beatles. The opening Looks Like Chaplin is a three-minute synopsis of everything good about Word Gets Around; shards of splintered guitar, granite-tough melodies and Kelly Jones's oddly melancholic voice. It's indie-ish rock with unnaturally strong choruses and more than a little personality. Namburg follows every song with a burst of applause, then a disconcerting silence as they wait politely for the next one to begin.
"They really listen here," observes the singer later. "Some nights we've had 40-year-old blokes filling the front row. Other nights it's a much younger crowd." The Logo audience is just as diverse; pockets of pogoing students alongside mid-thirties. During Traffic, the single with a chorus tailor-made for Strongbow-sozzled student beanos, members of both camps can be seen bellowing along word for word.
Despite the fact that there's only three of the buggers, Stereophonics do project, dispensing a breezily taut 60 minutes. Overall, though, it's the songs themselves rather than any on-stage flamboyance that carry them through.
Tonight it's Same Size Feet and More Life In A Tramp's Vest that run off with the honours; frontman Jones's uniformly sharp lyrics - a running soap opera of real-life disasters, sexual intrigue and small-town strangeness-overcoming any language barriers. They're also sneakily flash musicians, Kelly even pulling off several instances of guitar wizardry.
"Oh, we can play," declares ebullient drummer Stuart Cable. Those early days, when unimpressed Welshman would read newspapers with their feet up on stage while Stereophonics tried to do their thing in working men's clubs have hardened them into consummate young professionals.
"When you fuck up on stage in one of those clubs they soon let you know about it, so you don't do it again."
It may be their last night in Germany but the post-gig beers remain untouched. Only Cable, sweating like an ox and grinning furiously, has donned the party trousers, air-guitaring excitedly to Lynyrd Skynyrd's Sweet Home Alabama, having already lauded comedy German metallers the Scorpions. So it's America next, then. "We'll give it a go?" he nods between, ahem, solos.
Trudging back to the tour bus, the band are waylaid by three beaming female fans. Flyers are proffered for signing. This time, however, nobody tells Stereophonics to fuck off.
Mark Blake
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