So it started with the immigration information bore

Continuing my trip back through the 2001 album charts.

27/05/01 : Just Enough Education To Perform - Stereophonics

So we move from one disappointing follow-up to another - this is another one I owned (eight for the year) that just made me think how decent its predecessor was. This is a noteworthy visit though because it puts them on seven visits which pulls them clear of the pack on six to bring them level with Prince and Iron Maiden. I can imagine Stereophonics and the Maiden having a fair old time together down the pub - not sure Prince would quite fit in though.

Hmmm - OK. This was alright actually, so I'm not sure why I didn't get into it back in the day. It's a little bit calmer than Performance And Cocktails, so maybe it's just that I'm old and boring now - but that can't be it, can it? Whatever the reason, I liked "Mr Writer", "Step On My Old Size Nines" and "Have A Nice Day" - all of which were singles, so maybe they grew on me. I also liked the other single which was "Handbags And Gladrags" but that's a bit of a cheat because it wasn't on the version I had, but got added to the re-release in '02 (and hence was on the streaming version). None of the rest of it was terrible so I think this counts as a bit of a surprise - whilst Air was expectedly disappointing, this counts as unexpectedly undisappointing!

We're at #10 in the charts this week on their seventh week of an impressive 73 week run with it spending its 1st, 2nd, 40th, 41st and 42nd weeks at #1 - it also managed another five runs between '02-'04 with a total 104 weeks in the chart. The top five this week were R.E.M. Shaggy, Dido and best-ofs from Eddy Grant and Bob Marley (a new entry) - interestingly, the Bob Marley one wasn't Legend (currently at #80, with 1224 weeks on the chart) but they somewhat misleadingly used the same cover picture. And the next highest new entry was a Bob Dylan best-of (#9) - the compilations are doing very well this year.

Wikipedia tells us this is their third album - and that's pretty much your lot, except for the fact that Wayne Rooney has the album name tattooed on his arm, but we might have to call in the trades description people there. To pad things out I checked out the entry for "Handbags And Gladrags" - I didn't know it was written by Mike d'Abo (of Manfred Mann fame) and was first recorded by Chris Farlowe in '67. The Rod Stewart version was recorded in '69 and has Mike on the piano - the other well known version was done by Big George and used as the theme tune to The Office. Back to the album, it was generally received well enough critically but The Observer really didn't like it - "musical excrement, scooped unhygienically from a poorly-maintained squat toilet in an area without adequate sanitation". Commercially, it did best here getting to #4 in the '01 year-end chart and still #24 in the '02 year-end chart - it also got to #1 in Ireland and was top thirty-ish in various other European countries.

discogs.com tells us this is out first fifty pence album for a bit but if you want the enhanced limited O-card edition (absolutely no idea what this is) then it's going to set you back £137.13. This was surprisingly enjoyable from a low starting expectation - I'm certainly not going to be searching it out again in a hurry but I've certainly met worse Stereophonics albums on my travels.

20/05/01 - Go on, guess if I liked it
03/06/01 - Expectedly disappointing