(This is something I wrote somewhere else a while ago.)
I'm not very Welsh. If I was American I'd be a Welsh-American but that's not saying very much. My Mum's of Welsh stock but was brought up in London, I was born and brought up in Derby, but my Dad and his family are from Pontypridd. We used to go back every Easter to visit my Gran. So my associations of Ponty are all Easter Eggs and not using the front room because it was for special. But really, the only connection I get to any Welshness is the fact that I really, really love this album (and The Incredible Plan). Music wasn't a communal thing in our family, we didn't have much muscial taste in common, but this was something you could stick on the record player and everyone would sit, listen and laugh. I didn't understand much of it when I was 11 or 12 (probably my peak listening time) and I still don't to be honest. But a score of 9-3 always tugs at my attention a little. I still find myself thinking Duw, It's Hard when I've had a bad day, and I've never seen anyone look as happy as that bloke on the right hand side of the cover with the pipe.
I think a lot of the joy of it is the communal atmosphere. The jokes (and the songs) aren't that brilliant but there's so much common understanding and shared experience in the room that they sound incredibly funny and affecting. We would all go and see Max Boyce when he played in Derby and for all the cartoon Welshness, huge leeks and bad Lloyd-Webber parodies (Don't MOT my Cortina) there was a similarly rich community feeling. I suspect some actual Welsh people might feel Max isn't the sort of Welshness they'd like to hang on to, I don't know, but I like it.
Listening to it again the other day it sounds like it comes from a completely different world. A world of with a weird sort of casual racism (directed at the Japanese rugby team), a world of doctor's papers where pithead baths are a recent memory and Wales are triumphantly good at rugby.And it makes me realise I was never destined to be cool. This came out in the late 70s. When the rest of the class were listening to The Sex Pistols I was listening to this, the King's Singers and The Wombles.
