CRISS-CROSS RHYTHMS THAT EXPLODE WITH HAPPINESS:
How did they get there? It was an art thing, a fascination
with flying elephants & the fantasy cover art of Roger Dean.
I’d like to tell you it was listening to Peel, but it was
escaping little town reality in my bedroom adrift in land
of album art. Low-brow though I was eventually convinced to
believe it to be after five years of Art education knocked
the dream out’ve me, it started a divine connection with
the rhythms of Africa through the liberating music of
Osibisa. I couldn’t play that lead guitar stuff the rock
kids were into, I was too slow, my fingers too young, too
zoned out. But the looped grooves in this music from Africa
via London went straight into the bone & the zone between the
ears vibrated in such joyous tones that I didn’t have to move
a muscle as the synaptic connections were re-written in
preparation for the fingers to dance to a different drum –
When I eventually picked up a guitar the grooves just fell out
all on their own.
Later, in the 1980’s, still deal-less in our Cardiff bedsits,
we watched King Sunny Ade & his band play ‘Syncro System’ live
sending light to the world from Montreaux with Keith Harring
live painting little dancing men on the wall behind him.
Little dancing men gyrating in the gaps between the beats,
the none-notes, the silences that punched you in the face until
you grinned, till the hairs stood up on the back of our necks &
we couldn’t help but get up & dance
(only I didn’t -not yet, I was biding time).
We had no idea what those words he was singing meant, but the
rhythms in those voices were sublime, they were everything, better
than the hardest rock drumming (apart from John Bonham), there was
nothing to compare with how I felt & I letting the groove in to do
whatever it wanted with me.
(They’re still in there, bouncing around in the bone).
Somewhere in the late 90’s (or maybe the next century) Rick picked up
a San Francisco newspaper to discover the gallery across from our
hotel was hosting a Roger Dean exhibition! We had to go, we couldn’t
let down the school boys we used to be. Those boys who escaped
backwater bedrooms through the portals of his art work. Staring through
windows into worlds we wanted, no ‘needed’ to come true & convinced they
would if we believed hard enough, willing them to be real like our lives
depended on it (and they did!).
The gallery curator told us the exhibition was over, but because we’d
come such a long way he’d get the work back out especially for us
& anyway, they represented Roger & all his work was still in the back
room. It was too good to be true, a schoolboy fantasy of pure cream
cheese!
“What would you like to see?” he asked
“Have you got the flying Elephants?”
“Ahhh, sorry, we don’t, they went years ago. How about Uriah Heep’s
‘Demon’s & wizards’?”
Now I was no Uriah Heep fan, but that sleeve was iconic – we both let
out an enthusiastic
“Yes please!” (ginger beer all round)
To say I was underwhelmed by the thing in the flesh would be an
exaggeration, I was expecting perfection & there was none of the detail
I expected (foolishly). Of course, the painting was way larger than the
sleeve & was meant to be so it would look great looked when it was
reduced.
“Are those wings real!” we asked
“Yeah, he tried painting them but just couldn’t get it right, so he stuck
real insect wings on”
“Hmmm, well, well, well. Our rock mates back home are gonna love that!”
(K)
Karl Hyde 
It’s called…”Easy livin’…'”