Performance and Cocktails
Performance and Cocktails is the second studio album by Welsh rock band Stereophonics. It was released by V2 on 8 March 1999. The name of the album comes from lyrics in the album's first song, "Roll Up and Shine", just like the previous album's name, Word Gets Around came from lyrics in that album's final song.
Performance and Cocktails
8 March 1999
April 1995 – January 1999
- Courtyard, (Sutton Courtenay)
- Parkgate, (Catsfield)
- Real World, (Box)
- Rockfield, (Rockfield)
50:55
Steve Bush and Marshall Bird AKA: Bird & Bush
The album was a surprise commercial success for Stereophonics but it received mixed reviews.
Recording[edit]
The songs were variously recorded at Real World Studios in Bath, Parkgate in Sussex and Rockfield Studios in Monmouth.
Album cover[edit]
The cover photograph was taken by Scarlet Page in autumn 1998 at a football pitch under the Westway in London, and was inspired by an earlier Annie Leibovitz photograph of a couple kissing outside a prison. The British journalist Tony Barrell did extensive research in 2007 to find the female model in the foreground. In the Sunday Times on 11 November 2007, he revealed the previously unknown identity of the model as 27-year-old mother-of-two Lucy Joplin. In an interview with Barrell, Joplin explained that the "faraway look" in her eyes was the result of an evening consuming absinthe and opium, and that she was paid £75 in cash for the shoot.[10] The name of the then 23-year-old male model is Kipp Burns on loan from Mannique models, King's Road.
Legacy[edit]
With sales of over 2.5 million, Performance and Cocktails is the Stereophonics' second best-selling album (after Just Enough Education to Perform, which has sold over 3.5 million).[b][18][19] The record has been certified 5× Platinum in the UK and Platinum in Europe.[20] It has spent a total of 101 weeks in the UK top 100 charts.[21]
The album is seen as one of the best albums in 90s British rock history. At the Kerrang! awards in 1999, Performance and Cocktails won the "Best Album" award and Stereophonics further won "Best British Band" the same year.[22] On their "Albums of the Year" list, the record was placed at number five.[23] Listeners at Absolute Radio voted for their album of the decade and Performance and Cocktails ranked at number 27. On the radio's shortlist it was included as one of the albums that helped define the sound of the 90s along with Word Gets Around[24] At the Mercury Music Prize awards, the album was nominated for the 1999 prize but was only listed as a "Shortlisted nominee."[25] "Pick a Part That's New" was used in a BT advert for their unlimited broadband deal.[26]