Orville Felates a Leek. (Word Gets Around - Stereophonics)

Member Name: Muffin_the_Mule

Product:	Word Gets Around - Stereophonics
Date:	17/03/02 (1200 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Makes good Music

Disadvantages: Bad for Buscuit lovers

Most people who have heard of The Stereophonics will know that they're Welsh.
For anyone who hasn't heard of them, these 3 blokes are in a "band" and they're "Welsh".

Not by choice, like most of the Welsh-cum-Kiwi Rugby team, who qualify as a welsh national by visiting an old person in Ysbyty Gwynedd or buying some tissues in a welsh petrol station once.
These three chums are truly welsh, and you can tell by their names too. Kelly Jones is the distinctively-enunciated one who sings and has nice eyebrows, Bassist Richard Jones is the one everyone confuses with Drummer Stuart Cable, until they notice how silly Stuart's hair is, and so they confuse him with the caterers son instead. He makes a nice fairy cake does Richard.

Signed to V2 Records, The Stereophonics, oddly named after a brand of Gramophone (remember those? Thought not - Unless you're reeaaaaaally old, in which case, form an orderly complaint queue, and play with your stamps.) Released their debut album in 1997, off the back of a UK tour supporting the now surprisingly defunct Skunk Anansie and their talentedly bald leader Skin.

I've got this debut CD y'know, and I've got it twice.
Twice because the second copy was one that I got a couple of Christmases ago and had to do my now fabled "surprised and grateful but not creeepy" smile and hug. and I'm going you all about it in that Track-by-Track fashion that appears to be so popular around here these days.

* A Thousand Trees
Ooh, sing-a-long song, but not whilst eating biscuits or cake, because you'll make a terrible mess. Stick to fruit and Pie - much more suitable for trilling your heart out slightly out of tune and behind time on this wonderfully upbeat opener. Oh but wait, whilst upbeat and jaunty in a makes-you-smile kind of way, the lyrics are much darker, as they are a quick account of a pedophile who lives in the area, and the go
ssip around the town.
The tag line is
"it only takes one tree to make a thousand matches, it only takes one match to burn a thousand trees"
Talented fire-lighter as well as talented musician, because it has oft-taken me two or three clicks of the clicker thing to light my gas stove, or am I missing the deftly hidden message?
After kiddy fiddling Trees, Kelly decided to sing about moustachioed Cinematic hero Chaplin's Doppelganger who happens to live in Wales (they always do don't they?), only the upbeat tempo, usurprisingly again, hides a sad tale of a homelss man, apparently well-dressed with ricketts and a cane, but the song doesn't mention that. If it was my song, I would have done.

Next up on the playlist,( unless you listen to a CD with the 'random' button pressed, in which case goto line 143 ) is a song which includes the suggestion
"bring back ladies with lipstick on their teeth"
amongst it's lyrics. I have to disagree, but then who am I to argue? The song is called "More Life In a Tramps Vest" and is easily the song that will make you chew your food faster if you chew in time to the music, or walk faster should you happen to accidentally try and walk in time to the music.
following on from Tramps underwear, comes My favourite, and one that most 'Phonics fans (i called them 'phonics and that makes me cool like the Fonz but younger and taller) Local Boy In the Photograph is a tribute to a young man found dead on a railway track when he was 23 years old, but like the other 11 songs on the LP, the meaning of the song only becomes apparent if you either have really good ears or can read a lyric sheet.
Although probably the most well known single from the album, Local Boy only managed to scrape to number 51 in the charts, one higher than orally-challenged-warbler Fat Rik's next release is my guess.

Traffic, not only the excuse for many late a
rrivals into the office, but also a slowly-strummed song on a Stereophonics album. There's a turn up. The singing version is an observation of people in a traffic jam, and broaches subjects as broad as a woman on her way to have an abortion, and priests. All within 4 minutes and 53 seconds.
Song six, dubbed "Not up to You" and we've reached half way through (this is line 143 for you randomly headed people). By now Mr Jones (who incidentally shares the same name and 13 pages of the East Manchester phone book) must have decided tha the raw rock style his previous 5 tracks had adopted would surely knacker him whilst on tour, so in my opinion, a half time break for the drummer, but sadly they make him play a harmonica too.

The brillianly monickered "Check my eyelids for holes" may well give hypochondriacs a new illness, but it also allows the band to sing about rude stuff like Oral-Pleasure in an adult circumstance that only adults should do and for you children reading this, i'm obviously not referring to Vanilla Ice cream, but instead Strawberries, and occasionally Chocolate ice cream if you have a thickly skinned tongue.
Furthermore I shall not go. Needless to say it's a short song.

Don't you just hate it when your mistress goes missing then turns up in a lake? If so, write a joyful song about it and put it on an album thats sold more than a million copies worlwide. That'll please the wife.
I have my doubts to whether or not this one is true, but you never know.

All the sadness in the meanings of the songs is enough to drive even a millionaire rock star to drink. And this St-David's day celebrator is no different. In "Last of the Big Drinkers" Kelly informs us that apparently he doesn't care that he lives for the weekend. It's something to be proud of. Good for him I say. Drinking always puts me into a reflective mood, and if I was a famous rockstar, I'd comp
are fame to living in a "goldfish bowl" too. What a good name for the tenth song he thought.
Track 10 is a self-pity rant about how people like to see others fall from Grace.
I here Grace is 30 feet tall and lives half-way up Snowdon, she's not Welsh, because she owns a Volvo, but she is unsteady, causing many famous tourists to tumble. Like Noel Edmonds.

There are few better ways to cheer up such an unhappy tumbling moment than to go to a wedding and laugh at your relatives, including grandpa who gets stuck in the portaloo after one too many. Yet another upbeat, indiefied tune that has been the mainstay of this album "Too Many Sandwiches" has hilarity filled Lyrics that Johnny Vegas would be proud of.

Finally, the album ends with the track from whence the title is borne. "Bill Davey's Daughter" is a final Tragi-comedy masterpiece about a girl who commits suicide.

I tried to find out who Bill Davey is, and it turns out he is a famous american Bodybuilder.
Or a reporter for the news of the world
Or an RAF pilot killed in 1981.
Or none of the above.

There is a noticable connection between Bruce Springsteen and Kelly Jones' material, by the fact that a lot of the happy Ambience of a song will mask the meanings of the lyrics - Like those giddy Americans who were duped into adopting the anthem "Born in the USA" as a patriotic rant, when in reality it was about the failures of the Vietnam War. Most of the Songs on Word Gets Around initially sound like jaunty, happy Kare-oke invitationals, yet in truth they're much much darker than their first impression suggests.
Just like Keith and Orville then.

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