Rocks In The Attic #153: Stereophonics - ‘Performance And Cocktails’ (1999)

I’m never been a huge fan of this band. I loved this album - and most of its singles - when it came out, but then fame and success seemed to do something to the band, and all of a sudden they started doing really lame stuff like singing Handbags And Gladrags on talk shows, sat moodily on stools.

In other words, they sold out. Their first album set themselves up as a rock band in the vein of early Manic Street Preachers; then this album, their second, pushed them over into the mainstream - mainly because of the five Top-20 singles that were pulled from the album. Unfortunately Performance And Cocktails follows the usual trend that record companies employ - stack all the singles on side one, and stick all the filler on the flip-side.

I don’t think they were even on my radar until I saw them performing Just Looking on TFI Friday. Not a bad song, I thought. I then caught their music video for The Bartender And The Thief, and I was impressed. That song in particular speaks to the rocker in me.

I’m always sceptical about music videos and the role they play in music these days, but the videos they made to promote this album are well worth a watch. The Bartender And The Thief pays homage to the Suzie Q / entertaining the troops scene of Apocalypse Now, Pick A Part That’s New parodies The Italian Job, I Wouldn’t Believe Your Radio does the same for Easy Rider and Hurry Up And Wait takes inspiration from M*A*S*H.

I regret not seeing the band in their prime, supporting Aerosmith in 1999 at Wembley (I went to my first Glastonbury festival instead). I did catch them in New Zealand a few years ago, at the Powerstation - a tiny venue compared to the sort of places they would play in the UK. They might not have played Handbags And Gladrags, and they might have been dressed in leather jackets, but they still played a few too many of their catchy, post-2000, pop singles for my liking.

Hit: Just Looking

Hidden Gem: She Takes Her Clothes Off

Rocks In The Attic #115: Whistler - ‘Whistler’ (1999)

Whistler are an acoustic trio, put together by ex-EMF guitarist Ian Dench.

I came across this band when they were supporting Wiiija labelmates Bis at a gig in Leeds. I then saw them a few nights later in Manchester, on the same tour and finally on the acoustic stage at Glastonbury that summer.

It’s definitely nice music - I don’t think anybody would disagree with that - but Kerry Shaw’s posh voice does grate on some tracks. Singing clearly and over-enunciating every word isn’t a great idea when you sound like you come from the privileged classes. The songwriting is very good on this album though, good enough in most cases to ignore Shaw’s vocals; and there’s a massive influence of Nick Cave on this LP, which is why I like it.

Hit: Don’t Jump In Front Of My Train

Hidden Gem: The End

Rocks In The Attic #51: Lenny Kravitz - ‘Mama Said’ (1991)

Record company executives must have been creaming in their pants when Lenny Kravitz came along. Here was somebody who looked and sounded like a cloning experiment between Jimi Hendrix and Stevie Wonder had gone exceedingly well, and an artist that could successfully cross racial boundaries, appealing to white and black audiences alike.

One of my greatest regrets at Glastonbury - and I have quite a few - is walking past Lenny Kravitz playing on the Pyramid Stage on the Sunday afternoon of my first time at the festival, and not really noticing. I had forgotten how much I loved his earlier stuff, because by that time he was very much in the pop buyer’s market with his cover of American Woman. I probably didn’t stop and listen as I had Sunday fatigue at Glastonbury - when you get tired of seeing so bands play that your eyes and ears stop registering. I wouldn’t mind if he was the sort of artist who tours - but he isn’t, and that might have been my only chance to see him. Fuck!

This album is his last record below the radar before its follow-up Are You Gonna Go My Way catapulted him into the mainstream. It has a very nice appearance by Slash on Always On The Run, the standout track on the album aside from the radio-friendly It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over.

Hit: It Ain’t Over ‘Til It’s Over

Hidden Gem: Stop Draggin’ Around

Rocks In The Attic #50: Aerosmith - ‘Rocks’ (1976)

Seeing as this is the 50^th entry in this particular blog, I thought I’d cover an album I really, really love - and one that lends its name to (half of) the blog’s title. Looking back, I regret not doing something similar for the silver posting at #25, which was taken by Lionel Richie’s Can’t Slow Down. Oh dear - perhaps subconsciously I like Lionel Richie solo albums more than I give myself credit for.

Rocks is Aerosmith’s fourth studio album and the creative peak of their classic 70s period. This is the album that was heard by a young Slash and turned him onto rock music, essentially giving birth to Guns ‘N Roses. Of this album, and its predecessor Toys In The Attic, I probably prefer the earlier album as it has a little more light on it. That’s not to say Rocks is a dark album - it’s just darker than Toys... and is very no-nonsense.

Credit also has to be given to the producer, Jack Douglas - now practically a sixth member of the band. The production specifically on the opening track Back In The Saddle is fantastic, building up to a release with sound effects perfectly complimenting the lyrics to conjure up a dusty saloon in the old west.

It’s all the rage these days for bands to play their classic albums in their entirety. I guess this maybe started with Pink Floyd playing Dark Side Of The Moon in its entirety on their Pulse tour. I read somewhere that back in 2009, Aerosmith played Rocks from start to finish as the centrepiece of their live show - after giving Toys... the same treatment went down well with the fans. Now normally I’d love to see the band play either of these albums in full, but I’m not really sure I want the 21^st century version of Aerosmith spoiling my love of these two great albums.

I used to love Blondie, but seeing them live at Glastonbury in 1999 really turned me off them, and it took me a very long time to start appreciating them again. I have an almost religious love for the Toys... and Rocks albums and I wouldn’t want that to be destroyed. Sometimes nostalgia should be left in its box.

Hit: Last Child

Hidden Gem: Combination

Rocks In The Attic #31: The Darkness - ‘Permission To Land’ (2003)

This album ticks all the right boxes. It’s got a naked lady on the cover. It has a Parental Advisory sticker. It’s on Atlantic Records - home of, amongst others, Led Zeppelin. The guitarist is a big fan of Thin Lizzy. It couldn’t get much better really.

Except the album isn’t actually that great. There’s some killer singles on there - Get Your Hands Off My Woman, Growing On Me,  I Believe In A Thing Called Love and Love Is Only A Feeling - but the rest of the album is just filler. Just like most average rock albums, the singles are good but they obviously didn’t spend as long on the other songs. In fact the second side of the album - the side without all the singles on it - is pretty forgetful.

I regret not seeing the band at Glastonbury. They were playing the Second Stage, just as they were breaking in the UK, and I remember my good friend Natalie saying I should go and watch them as I’d probably like them. I hadn’t heard about them by that point, but they really caught my attention when I finally heard about them. What’s not to like about a band playing classic rock riffs behind a screaming singer in a white lycra jumpsuit?

Hit: I Believe In A Thing Called Love

Hidden Gem: Friday Night

Rocks In The Attic #24: Doves - ‘Lost Souls’ (2000)

Another band I liked really early on - I have all their early singles on vinyl - before abandoning them to the Oasis fans. I’d been following their rise in Manchester, mainly on the coat-tails of Badly Drawn Boy, who they used to be a backing band for; and they got played relatively early by Jo Whiley on Radio 1. I can remember working at my desk in my room at University, when she played Sea Song for the first time on radio. I nearly hit the roof - I had bought the song on vinyl (this was way before the album came out) and I had loved it from the first time I heard it.

I then had the misfortune of missing them play a small bar in my hometown, Oldham, because I was playing with my own band a few streets away on the same night. I did get to catch them that summer at Glastonbury on the Second Stage - I think they were the first band I ever saw at the festival - on the ridiculously early Friday morning slot. This set was also the first of many missed meetings at Glastonbury, as my University housemate Kaj, who I was looking out to meet up with (in the days just before mobile phones) saw me watching them, but wasn’t sure enough that it was me to come over and tap me on the shoulder. We caught up the following day if I remember correctly.

The next time I saw Doves was a few years later. They were headlining the same stage on the Sunday night, touring their second album, and I walked through the field and caught them for 5 minutes, enough to see them dedicate a song to Marc-Vivien Foé - the Manchester City and Cameroon international who had recently died on the pitch (the band are big Man City fans); but by that point they had got a bit more famous and a lot of Oasis fans (ie. non-musos who only dabble in music) had started liking them as a faux-Oasis substitute band.

I did see Jimi from Doves once in Manchester, as pissed off as I was that we both couldn’t get into a bar that was holding a night celebrating Bill Hicks on the 10^th anniversary of his death. I’ve never seen a rock star so mad.

But I have fond memories of this, a great album.

Hit: Here It Comes

Hidden Gem: Sea Song

Rocks In The Attic #11: Coldplay - ‘Parchutes’ (2000)

Everybody seems to love Coldplay these days, or if you’re a muso you hate them. They’re constantly the butt of jokes on American sitcoms, and generally used disparagingly to indicate that somebody has really bad taste in music.


But in 2000, they were the next big thing and I distinctly remember buying the record as soon as it came out. I was already a big fan of Yellow, which was playing everywhere by that point, but I had also just seen them at Glastonbury and I had really liked the rest of the songs they played in their set. Later a friend would recount that we already seen them play - at a local band level - at The Roadhouse in Manchester, second or third on the bill, when they had been starting out. But I don’t remember that at all. I remember seeing our friend’s band - but not Coldplay.


The thing that strikes me most about this album is how it sounds like nothing else they did after. It’s so downbeat and melancholic - which I like. A lot of the songs on this record are what I would describe as beautiful, and that’s not something I usually look for in an album.


I’d still be a fan now if they had continued in that direction - but I think they traded in what melancholia they had for catchier tunes; and even though some of their later stuff is just as downbeat as the songs here, it doesn’t sound as authentic. Shame.


Hit: Yellow


Hidden Gem: We Never Change

Rocks In The Attic #6: Gomez - ‘Bring It On’ (1998)

We used to do a cover of Whippin’ Picadilly in a band I played in back in 1999 and 2000. It was a pretty bad cover as I think we only half-learnt it, and I remember it used to really hurt my fretting hand because of the constant barre chords used throughout the song.

I’d definitely heard of Gomez by this time because I remember the hype surrounding them when they won The Mercury Music Prize for this album, but I hadn’t bought anything by them. I seem to remember that, buoyed on by our lead singer, I went out and bought this album on vinyl.

Not long after, I saw Gomez play at the first Glastonbury I went to, back in 1999. They played on the Second Stage, just as the sun was setting and it was a real festival moment. I stuck with them enough to buy their second studio album, Liquid Skin (1999), and their third release, a collection of outtakes and b-sides called Abandoned Shopping Trolley Hotline (2000), but by this time I had lost interest.

Hit: Whippin’ Picadilly

Hidden Gem: Tijuana Lady