Time: May 28th 2002

Place: Bristol Academy, Bristol, England

Event:  5-Day Radio-Promotional Tour for the new album

 

 

This is officially going down as the best gig so far in all of my ventures.  It had every element I could ever possibly wish for!

 

Firstly, all my favourite gigging buddies were there with me; Tom Mackie, Shell Loughlin, Aidan Birdsall, Ella Goupillon, Lisa and Shevy.  Secondly, it was the fact that the minute we arrived at the venue, so did the band.  So I FINALLY got to meet Kelly!!  The Holy Grail, people!!

 

We saw the tour bus pull up, and Terry Jones (Richard's brother, who's part of the crew) was stood in the doorway of the bus, so we stayed by the bus to see if anyone else got out.  Scott was the first, and he dashed inside, not expecting anyone to want to speak to him, I guess.  Then Richard and Stuart emerged.  We started to speak to Richard, get things signed, etc.  As we chatted to Richard, and as I was ogling Richard's legs in another greatly appreciated pair of tight jeans (phwoaarrr!) Kelly and Tony stepped out.  Tony dashed inside too, and Kelly hung around to speak to us.

 

I had birthday cards for the Welsh trio, as they had all got birthdays around the date of the gig.  Richard and Stuart thanked me, and then it was my chance to speak to Kelly.  I said "Kelly, Happy Birthday, I have a card for you" and passed it to him.  He looked straight at me, smiled, took the card and said "Oh thank you, that's the first one I've had!".  Yes! Result!  Shell said afterwards that she was physically shaking when she met Kelly, as this was her first time too, but I have to say I felt very calm. I just kept thinking "I've done it, met him and spoken to him this time! Yes!"  Shell had some drawings of the band.  She'd managed to get Richard and Stuart to autograph theirs back last year at Amsterdam, but she'd only just today got the chance to get her Kelly drawings signed.  Kelly had a look through her drawings, reviewing them and said they were good.  He signed the one he liked the most "To Shell, Kelly Jones x".  It's very special, and I can imagine that will be treasured for lifetimes to come.

 

We had a few photos taken with the boys, which you can now see in the Personal section.  I had a photo taken with Richard and Stuart, but Kelly was out of the picture (so I have a reason to meet him again)!  It was good to see Richard again though, and he gave me a big squeeze for the photo! Yay!

 

What's happened since is that Richard's been visiting the message board on the www.stereophonics.com site - look out for messages from "Rich Phonic" his messages appear in red, unlike everyone else's black type.  He visits occasionally just to answer questions and keep in touch.  He visited the day after the gig, and thanked us all for going, so I asked him if they all liked their birthday cards.  He said "Yeah thanks for the cards, really brightened up our shit tour bus!"  They were pretty grim looking buses, so I'm glad I have done my bit to cheer the boys up.

 

Anyway, that was the pre-gig activities, so onto the actual gig review:

 

Highlights were High As The Ceiling; Helga as an opener is just a classic already and got everyone jumping; Rainbows and Pots of Gold was incredible and really brought tears to my eyes, Kelly didn’t open his eyes throughout the whole song, I can see it's still a song he's using to get over past heartache. Also they did a completely different version of Climbing The Wall which I finally love!!! Hallelujah!! The album version is complete with trumpets, fireplace and wippets! Not my cuppa tea!  But this version was done acoustically, and very very delicately, he changed the key slightly, and it was just exactly how I think it SHOULD sound. Also, for that song, he explained the whole wanking thing… he said this song is all about hanging round the house with nothing to do, but to have a wank, “so yes, I’m a wanker!”, then as he sang those lyrics, we all cheered, and he was so amused he almost couldn’t sing! He was also pleased with how that song went, as they were unsure about how it would go down, but we gave it a great response. He also tried to explain Nothing Precious At All, and there was so much heckling, it took him a while of just telling us to shut up!! He said he was served in a café by a girl who was obviously on her first day and her boss was giving her hell, so he took pity on her.

 

All in all, the set was amazingly long, filled with classics, old and new. A low point was Getaway, which I’m sure you’ll appreciate isn’t a particularly dynamic song, and the low pitched singing didn’t really carry live, also they HAD to play bloody Handbags didn’t they?!!! Apart from that, it was a stunning set, the venue was small, hot and the crowd were fab, plenty of people knew the new songs, so there was a really positive response to it all, and Kelly obviously picked up on this and thanked us for letting them play so many new songs in one go. He also said “this is the venue where we first played Madame Helga live last year” – lots of us cheered because we were there – and he said there’s a lot of songs tonight that hadn’t been played live before, so he said “maybe we’ll make a habit of it!”.

 

All in all, all the elements I could wish for - friends around me to share the experience, a meet-and-greet with the band to rival radio competition prizes, and the longest, most enjoyable set onstage that I could possibly wish for.

 

Thanks YET AGAIN guys, for the best gig experience ever!

 

Set-list

 

Madame Helga

Vegas Two Times

Mr Writer

A Thousand Trees

Just Looking

Hurry Up And Wait

Jealousy

You Stole My Money Honey

High As The Ceiling

Traffic

The Bartender And The Thief

Handbags And Gladrags

Rainbows And Pots Of Gold

Climbing The Wall

Step On My Old Size Nines

More Life In A Tramp's Vest

Nothing Precious At All

Local Boy In The Photograph

~

I’m Alright

Maybe Tomorrow

Have A Nice Day

Since I Told You It's Over

Getaway

I Wouldn’t Believe Your Radio

Help Me (She's Out Of Her Mind