Soon after sending out demo tapes to record companies, their manager John Brand was getting them to do in gigs around the UK. At one point, this guy name Wayne Coleman was organising a gig in Aberdare as part of the Splash tour with recently signed bands like Cantatonia and Super Furry Animals. Part of the deal was to make a compilation album featuring everyone involved with the tour, like unsigned bands, like The Tragic Love Company. Wayne was dealing with it and he finally said "Look, we've got to put the song on it, but the name's shit!" They hit back with "Fuck off! It's a fucking great name!" But they finally sat down and accepted the name wasn't exactly great.
They first changed their name to Applejacks after the sweets, but they realised there was another band called the Applejacks. They went through more than fifty names in the first week, including: The Mabel Cables (in honour of Stuart's mum), The Stillborn Lambs, all sorts of stupid names.
Kelly, Richard, and Stuart were confused and stressed but one Sunday afternoon Stuart was upstairs and came running down the stairs and said to his mum "Listen to this: Stereophonic."
"That's good" she said, "thats really good!" and she asked him where he had got it from. He explained that he was reading his Dad's radiogram. Stuart's dad, who died when he was at a young age had bought a stereophonic radiogram when they first came out. He used to put the big bands on it, it was like a mini mixing desk. It was his heart and soul. Thats where the name of the band came from. Stereophonic. He ran down to Kelly's house and he wasn't immediately won over. He thought it sounded like Stereo MCs or something so he said Monophonics which didn't really sound the same so they ended up saying Stereophonics was cool.
