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As you all should know by now, I was at the Millennium Stadium the first time they played there, and it was actually my first Stereophonics concert.  This was 2 and a half years ago.  The second time I saw Stereophonics, in Birmingham, was the first time I saw Feeder live.  Although I devote most of this site to Stereophonics, I couldn't possibly decide which is my favourite band between the two - they are different musically, of course, but not in terms of what they mean to me.  So imagine my excitement at the prospect of a return to the Millennium Stadium to see both bands play but this time, to have all my gigging buddies come along with me, so that they could share in the magic of the Millennium Stadium experience!

And what an experience this was!  The people that I know that went included Shell, her sons Aidan and Luke, Mark, from Stereobase, Tom and Craig, Shevy, Bethany, Aimee and Chris Elkins.  I hope and trust that none were disappointed!  As per usual, I shall tell you of all that happened before and after the show, aswell as during, as I like to give you more of a diary than a pure gig review - it gives you that air of atmosphere and the things a fan gets up to in the pursuit of enjoyment and entertainment.

However, I'm feeling a little in awe of the prospect of this particular diary, because I'm not sure I can really describe to you the atmosphere of the day - I should go on one of those word power courses really, so I can learn more adjectives!!  Maybe I'll get the Thesaurus out!  The thing with Cardiff is that if something like this is going on, the people always get into a real party atmosphere and throw themselves headlong into having a good time.  Just picture a GOOD party, with lots of people getting rambunctious and merry, then multiply by 60 odd THOUSAND people, all under one roof, all who love the same band, and have come together in the band's home area.  Folks, it just doesn't get better than this.

We decided to go to the new Cardiff Hard Rock Cafe, as it's becoming a bit of a tradition with us - if the city we're going to have a Phonics gig in, has a Rock Cafe, we go there and have a meal - this was spawned by the time we went to the one in Amsterdam, only to find the band went there later, while we were queuing!! Only this place was SUPER busy (obviously) and they said they couldn't fit us in for another 45 minutes, so we decided to go, as we wanted to get in the queue. But as I was leaving, the door guy noticed my Feeder army jacket, asked if I was a Feeder fan (duh!) and said that the band would be going to this Cafe in about 45 minutes' time!!  So we went elsewhere to get some food, then came back in plenty of time, meeting up with Mark from Stereobase while we were there.

The thing I noticed about this particular Hard Rock Cafe was how much memorabilia they had got hold of, and for a new place, I was impressed.  The only other one this full of famous items was the Amsterdam one.  The Nottingham one only had a handful of bits on the wall, but Cardiff was covered in records, jackets, guitars, dresses, posters, all signed by the artists, and yes of course, there were Stereophonics and Feeder guitars there!!  The Feeder guitar even had Jon Lee's autograph on it.

So I'm not sure exactly why Feeder were coming here - a bit of PR I suppose, but it was brave of them, it was seriously busy.  So what the security in the Cafe did was close off the entrance, so that Grant and Taka got to walk down the corridor where the guitar was displayed, without interruption.  There was a quick interview and photo with a guy from the Wales on Sunday, and then we were allowed to spend a few minutes with them.  Shell, Aidan and Luke shook Grant's hand and had some things signed by him, so I let them do their thing and I waited my turn.  Next was a group photo, but Shell made sure I was in this one.  I'm usually behind the camera, but we all wanted to be in this one.  So I stood by Taka, and we all squeezed in while another girl from the crowd took the photo.  I then took the opportunity to get Taka to sign my ticket.  He has a very arty autograph, which looks like a Japanese symbol, with Taka written through the middle of it - I was kinda mesmerised watching him do it, so didn't say much to him, but thanked him as always, then turned to Grant who signed it aswell.  He was saying something along the lines of "This isn't our gig, it's for Stereophonics, we're just here as support" and all that sweet stuff, so Shell said "There'll be loads of Feeder fans there too".  Grant looked up at us with his big green eyes and a little smile, and said "Really?".  It's was such a delightfully innocent look on his face, I completely melted.  Anyway, we all said "yeah of course" and I carried on by saying "In fact, the first time I saw you live was the time you supported Stereophonics last time", he replied "Oh yeah, where was that?" and I replied "Birmingham, the Indoor Arena" and so he smiled and said "Oh yes, I remember... we went back there this year and headlined it!!!"  Rock on!!

Aidan had a badge on his jacket - it was his mum's prefect badge from school, but apparently Grant used to wear his too.  Grant noticed it, and said "Hey I used to have one of those, but I lost mine", so Shell said "Do you want this one?".  Grant was reluctant to take it, but Shell insisted, so he said "I'll wear it tonight then" and so he did - later on we saw it on a guitar strap on stage!  Grant offered to give Aidan one of his Feeder badges that he was wearing, but Aidan said he'd got that badge...  Aid... next time, accept the offer, okay - it was Grant Nicholas!!  I wanted that badge!!

While this was going on, the newspaper guy was still taking pictures and we suddenly realised we were totally monopolising Grant's time and there were loads of other people waiting, so we let him get on with it.  As we did, though, the newspaper guy took Luke aside and said that he might be using a photo of him in the newspaper, so he wanted to ask permission and take Luke's name.  We took details of the paper so that we knew what to look out for.  The paper was available at the train station the next morning with this photo.

Luke is having his jacket signed here, Shell is behind Luke, with the Christmas headband on, the face in the top left corner is Aidan, and the green army jacket in the bottom left corner is my shoulder.  So yes, as you can see, totally monopolising his time hehe, but it was all very polite and friendly, and Grant will give you as much of his time as he can possibly fit in, bless him, so I humbly thank him for being so courteous.  The funniest part of this story though is the fact that the newspaper guy secretly asked us what the name of 'that guy over there' was - of course he meant Grant!!  That's had me chuckling a-plenty, I can tell you.  The paper was rather scathing about Stereophonics though, saying that Stuart was 'unceremoniously ditched from the band'...  shall I leave that one with you?  I have my own opinion...

The hour wait between doors open and the first act seemed like the longest bit of the whole day - the screens weren't doing anything, just giving us the times that each act were expected to be on stage, so it was a case of just standing about.

The first act was Adam Masterson, who was surprisingly good - you know how you sort of half expect the first unheard-of, or barely heard-of, act to be a bit misplaced or rubbish? Well this guy wasn't - he looks a bit like Tim Burgess, has a deep gravely voice a bit like Chris Rea, but the music is good quality acoustic bluesy rock, with the odd harmonica solo thrown in - although that all sounds a bit odd, it really wasn't, and he did a good job!  Once Christmas is over, I think I shall be picking up his album, he impressed me so much.

Ocean Colour Scene were a class act!  Lots of anthemic songs to sing along to, or in my case, pretend to know the words to the songs you sort of know, but don't really, hehe!  They had a stand in bass player, Mani from Primal Scream, so when it came to "The Day We Caught The Train", they hadn't practiced it enough to play it fully, so the singer had to do an acoustic version by himself, but it meant we could all sing along and drown him out, which was immense fun!

Next up was Feeder, and this is where the crowd suddenly started to surge forward, even before the band came on.  Mark and Shell headed for a less crushed area, but Luke and I wanted to stick around.  The only down side of where we were was a couple that really didn't appear to be there for the music at all.  They were very drunk or high, or probably both, and all they did was push other people around and lean on people and get in the way.  They were both stocky people too, so it made people unhappy around them, having to push them off.  A mosh pit is one thing, as it's more about moving about being in one big group, dancing and bashing together, or in the younger generation of what a "mosh" is, it's all about jumping up and down in one big crowd, which looks amazing from the stage.  But this was just nasty and selfish, and at one point when I pushed this girl off me (and she fell across the crowd and stayed away for a while) I was thanked by people nearby.  This was my 8th Feeder crowd, and they're all crushes, but these people weren't there for the music, which is where the difference lies.

Anyway, aside from being distracted by them every now and again, the Feeder set was full of beans, Grant was on top form, working the crowd to get them to be noisier and getting us to jump with him in the heavy bits of songs.  I don't think I saw much of Taka, as I think he was behind tall people in my view, and admittedly I was ogling Grant rather a lot.  Their setlist was a good mix, they started out with Come Back Around, which always gets the crowd started well, there were gentler favourites - like High and Oxygen where you get to stand and take a breather and just have a good ole sing, then jumpier heavier tracks like Buck Rogers and Waiting For Changes to give us chance to get winded!  Marvellous fun!!  The do do do's at the start of Buck Rogers, though, were not sung by everybody, and Grant had to shame them into getting into it "I've just been playing to arenas with only 10,000 people in them and they were much louder than you" hehe, but they did come round to our way of thinking and joined in.  Once they did, it sounded excellent.

As seasoned a mosher as I am, I had decided once Feeder had finished to get out to a less crushed atmosphere - if I was to make it through another 2 and a half hours, I wouldn't do it in that crush, I was sure.  Now considering that Luke is just 12 years old, he managed to happily survive a Feeder crush that I was having problems with, but he also thought the same as me, and wanted to get free after Feeder.  But he said to me "I'm not just gonna try and get out of the crowd, I'm going out in style!" and asked two guys next to us to give him a lift up above the crowd.  Yes this lad crowd surfed out!!  The lads that gave him the lift up and friends around us, that saw him, all have an immense amount of respect for him and I do too - heck I doubt I even knew what crowd surfing was when I was that age!!

We both met back up with Shell (hurrah for mobile phones!!) and as Stereophonics were coming on stage, we had been to the bar and brought back drinks.  After guzzling madly and one song into the set later, I decided to show Shell just exactly how the Millennium Stadium really should be viewed, so we all went up the seating aisle a little bit, so we could see above the heads of the standing crowd.  In fact, I was just a few metres away from where Chris and I had sat, 2 and a half years ago!

Shell and Luke's jaws dropped to the floor as they looked across the stadium, to thousands upon thousands of heads, hands, bodies on shoulders, inflatable daffodils, Santa hats and bucket "Bartender" hats, for as far as the eye could see!  When you're up front on the barrier, you may get the attention of the band but you never really know what the band are seeing, and they see something really special at this venue.  When you watch the video of the Day At The Races, and the camera pans around the crowd, you get an idea of what it looks like, but you don't pick up the energy that you feel from a crowd like that.  You also don't get to really 'hear' the crowd as you do when you're there.  You need this amount of people to really get this effect, but if we stopped singing along ourselves for a minute, and just listened to the crowd, it would wash through you like a shiver, it was deafeningly beautiful!!

The first few songs of the set were from the new album, and though most know these, the biggest reception was yet to come.  They moved onto a couple of songs from Performance & Cocktails, Bartender to name a highlight, and suddenly the stadium itself seemed to be doing it's own little jig down the River Taff!!  There was even a steward near to us singing along to the songs, word for word - nice one mate!!  Of course, he kept his eye on the job throughout, but you could tell he was a real fan.

Well as we were away from the activities onstage a little, we probably didn't notice any of the little nuances that I normally talk about, save for a few things.  Kelly looked like he was wearing a skirt throughout the concert, but he was actually just wearing a welsh flag round his waist, tied round his back, like a sarong - he suited it though - ever thought of wearing a skirt Kelly?  Someone threw up a really nice black hat too - a Trilby hat like the type Jack White's been known to wear.  It looks good on him actually and he wore it for the song after it was thrown up to him, and again at the end of the show.

We were treated to a whole host of classics from Local Boy, Tramps Vest, Traffic (you should have heard that crowd sing!!) and Big Time Drinkers from WGA, to Hurry Up and Wait and I Wouldn't Believe Your Radio.  We had to sit through some of their covers like the dreaded Handbags and Gladrags (which we took the weight off our feet for!) and Don't Let Me Down (odd choice I thought).  Some of their slow songs can drag, and Handbags will never leave the setlist, sadly, due to the masses of pop fans who actually appreciate the song.  But this aside, the theme of this performance was that of a great sound system, word perfect performances and the only lower points were some of the song choices, like the two above, and Step On My Old Size Nines.  Personally, I'd have preferred Stopped To Fill My Car Up, Rooftop, perhaps a slowy like A Minute Longer.  However, I was still having an amazing time, and loved to hear the new album played out like they're already classics - Maybe Tomorrow, High As The Ceiling, Nothing Precious At All and the very sensual I Miss You Now (refer to my Newcastle diary to see what I mean there!).

However, the absolute ultimate highlight beyond all others for me was the first live airing, that I've heard, of Movie Star.  This will be their new single - they're aiming for a release date of February next year I think.  This song has a sound that is completely different to anything Stereophonics usually come up with, in that it is really bass heavy and funky.  I truly hope this is a successful song, because I'd like to hear more of it.

The close of the night was High As The Ceiling which always ends a show on a high.  When they were done, the girls joined Kelly at the front of the stage, and he looked very pleased with himself with these two beauties hanging off him.  They were then joined by the rest of the band, where they lined up in a row to take a bow - Steve Gorman received a particularly warm response when he came to the front.  As we were cheering away, Kelly was mouthing something to the front of the crowd, but we couldn't understand him, so he went to the microphone and asked "One more?" and the crowd erupted! We then fell about as they started up a fantastic rendition of Slade's Merry Christmas Everyone!  Kelly wore his hat again, and got us all singing along while the front of the crowd were showered with a giant cloud of glittery Christmas confetti!!  A true show-like ending to a really superb tour!

I had come full circle.  From Stereophonics' roots, following them all around the UK (and beyond!) to return back to Cardiff for their Christmas special.  I have now seen them play live 9 times, and I know this will not by any means be the end.  Just one night that will last me through the months of the quiet year I have planned ahead.  I will never tire of them, I will never stop getting high (as the ceiling) from the feeling of being in their presence and I will never stop babbling in my diaries!  Sorry!

~

Madame Helga
High As The Ceiling
Vegas Two Times
You Stole My Money Honey
Nothing Precious At All
Hurry Up And Wait
Bartender And The Thief
I Wouldn't Believe Your Radio
Just Looking
Local Boy In The Photograph
More Life In A Tramp's Vest
Movie Star
Handbags And Gladrags
Step On My Old Size Nines
Don't Let Me Down
Thousand Trees
Last Of The Big Time Drinkers
Pick A Part That's New
Traffic
Since I Told You It's Over
Have A Nice Day
Maybe Tomorrow
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Jealousy
Mr. Writer
I'm Alright
I Miss You Now
Help Me (She's Out Of Her Mind)
Merry Christmas Everyone - Slade cover