Notes on Stereophonics, nostalgia and why you can't keep a good banger down

There’s this relatively core life memory I have of watching, I don’t know, probably VH1 or MTV2 or something. It was 1999 and watching music video channels is what you did. I was probably discovering music for myself around this time and, asides from buying NME from the newsagents on a Wednesday, this was the only way.

A video came on. It was three young Welsh blokes in jumpsuits, loading gold bars into the back of Mini Coopers, driving recklessly through plazas and, well, essentially, rocking out aback of a bus that dangled off a cliff – solid gold drum kit and all. I was 11 or 12 years old so hadn’t seen The Italian Job at this point.

I thought it was probably the coolest thing I’d ever seen up until that point. It was, of course, Stereophonics‘ promotional video for “Pick a Part That’s New”. That year’s December, my dad’s friend from work came round with a big booklet of CDs. I was allowed to go through and choose any three that I wanted. The first one I chose, without hesitation, was Performance and Cocktails by the Stereophonics. I didn’t know they were pirated at the time – it was the only way we could really afford music in my family. Sorry Kelly.

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I like this video a lot still. I mean, I’ve since grown up, seen The Italian Job and realised it for what it is. But it represents a simpler time for not only for music but… everything? Before the TikTokification of our days, the bitesize consumption of life, the immediacy with which everything can be accessed.

There’s actually a second promotional video for “Pick a Part That’s New”, made up of life footage from a massive ‘Phonics homecoming gig at Swansea’s Morfa Stadium in July 1999. It’s black and white with people happy, smiling, jumping up and down. Drinking. Loved ones in embrace. Welsh flags and bucket hats. Big trainers. adidas t-shirts. It’s hard to spot the differences between this scene and the Stereophonics show at London’s Finsbury Park, just shy of 26 years later. Drummer Stuart Cable sadly passed on a number of years ago and the band has grown in number. But when that same droney, Smashing Pumpkins-like riff in the key of A opens up for “Pick a Part That’s New”, it’s like being back there. Smiles. That sweet kiss of nostalgia. The loved ones in embrace. Welsh flags and bucket hats. The beer is in cans and it’s expensive, as I’m sure it felt (proportionally) in Morfa Stadium way back. The difference is the phones in the air.

Nostalgia in rock ‘n’ roll music is nothing new. Bloc Party are currently touring big open spaces and festivals playing a 20-year-old album in full. In Leeds the other week, Kaiser Chiefs, The Coral, We Are Scientists and Razorlight all played a massive outdoor gig performing each of their most-popular albums in full. And it’s hard not to talk about the brothers Gallagher. They went away, they came back, and on the night Stereophonics play Finsbury Park they’re, somewhat appropriately, 149 miles away in Cardiff for the first night of their reunion tour.

It would be unfair to dismiss Stereophonics as a comforting picnic blanket of nostalgia though. It’s just that’s what they mean to me. Earlier this year they had their ninth – ninth! – number one album with Make ‘Em Laugh, Make ‘Em Cry, Make ‘Em Wait. They only pay two songs from that album on this night though, among a set covering their rich history. The tour itself is called the Stadium Anthems tour. It may as well been called the Bangers tour. “Vegas Two Times”, “Have a Nice Day”. “Maybe Tomorrow” and “Local Boy in the Photograph”. “The Bartender and the Thief”! These silly pieces of music that mean everything to 45,000 people. And beyond, of course. It’s comforting that it’s still possible to be taken out of everything; to have the outside noise be turned down, just forget for a little bit, and remember times when you really, truly fell in love with music.

I’m not a musician. I tried. I probably wanted to be in the Stereophonics at one point. So I find it hard to write about the quality of live music. “Geronimo” is fine but realistically it’s not why anyone bought a ticket. “Yeah, the middle eight on ‘Step on My Old Size Nines’ sounds even better on ukulele as it does on record.” One may as well be tap-dancing about architecture, as they say. But do people come to read about music like that anyway? There’s about a four-and-a-half minute period during Stereophonics at Finsbury Park where it would have been nigh impossible to convince me that “Mr Writer” wasn’t the best song ever written. It’s not, which I guess is also kind of the point of the song, but for a short time it came close.

I look up the setlist online afterwards. I’d put “A Thousand Trees” up there as one of the finest songs released in 1997, probably somewhere after “Paranoid Android” and “Angels”, but definitely ahead of that year’s offerings from Oasis and The Verve. Underneath the track’s name on setlist.fm it says, in brackets, ‘not on printed setlist’. The concept of being able to sing and perform “A Thousand Trees” freely, on a whim, just for the fun of it, astounds me.

Stereophonics are on tour again in December for a winter arena tour. Tickets are available now.

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