04/12/07 - Pull The Pin Tour - From wordgetsaround Perspective
10 years after hitting shelves with their debut Word Gets Around, Stereophonics arrived in Ireland with a huge back catalogue and a handful of hits to showcase to the Killarney crowd, a crowd to which the band had no played to before. This was infact, the bands only Irish date outside Dublin since their sell out headline slot at Slane Castle in 2002. That gig came at the height of their popularity and the band could have only wished for the same receiption as they recieved that day five years ago when they hit the stage in Killarney last week.

The venue less than twenty times smaller than Slane, wasn't even a sell out like that glorious day by the castle, and the difference couldn't have been summed up any better than four songs in when a thug in the audience not only threw but broke a drinking mug off of lead singer Kelly Jones' head.

"One more fucking mug comes up here and we're fucking walking, so sort if fucking out. We come along way to entertain you not have mugs thrown at my fucking head. You know what I'm fucking saying?" the bemussed singer told the crowd before kicking into My Friends, one of six songs from their new album Pull The Pin that was played that night. Most of audience were hearing the songs for the first time.

Conversations throughout the performance consisted of "When will they play Dakota so I can head home" and even as bad as "What at they called again?". With tickets priced from €45 to €50 it shows that the majority of the audience have no respect for money never mind for the band who were putting on a fine performance.

Early hits like Bartender & The Thief, A Thousand Trees & Pick A Part That's New kept the crowd amused momentarily but not neccessarily entertained. When Kelly sang Have A Nice Day as a part of his four-track solo fans were not sure as if this was a cover version as they had heard the song before but were none the wiser as to who sang it.

The few thousand in the attendance were an absolute embarassement to Irish crowds who were once known as the best and loudest crowds to perform to and it speaks volumes about the band to have stayed and played for nealry two hours after the mug incident.

The month long tour ended the following night in the RDS Hall in Dublin and I'm to say the previous nights actions were not neccessarily forgotten but put behind us from the opening chord of Bank Holiday Monday. The crowd were on their feet singing and even matching the band on sing-a-long singles such as Just Looking and I Wouldn't Believe Your Radio.

That night Ireland had something to prove to Stereophonics who gave us every reason with a full on rock show; songs like Superman, Pass The Buck, Vegas Two Times, Roll Up & Shine and Devil to name a few were belted out through the speakers and the crowd responded the way they should have the night before by giving the band the energy they gave us.

This time around, there was no mix-ups there was nobody confusing Adam with former drummer Stuart Cable, nobody asking which song was which. We enjoyed the performance and did our best to make sure Richard, Kelly, Javier, Adam & Tony did also.

Hopefully we redeemed ourselves and showed why you can't beat the Irish instead of giving them reasons to walk away.