SLEEPING WITH THE ANTS:
At the end of art collage I clung to student life long enough
to complete one last installation for the Arnolfini Gallery in
Bristol (there wouldn’t be another form me for ten years), I was
then persuaded to leave the rats-n-fleas on the banks of the Taff
& go live in inspiration-exile out in Penarth. Though the
flat on Riverside had a glorious view right into the open end of
the Arms Park (the holy-of-holy’s for Welsh rugby) & though it
provided us with the finest sound system known to man when, on
International Days, the home crowd would sing from their hearts &
reduce me to tears with their hymns* I knew it was time to move on,
try something different. I’d grown disillusioned with Fine Art,
there was no fight in me, my girlfriend pointed & I followed.
She had a good dependable job in the city, hated student squalor,
had family in Penarth & didn’t mind the commute. I, on the other
hand, had a first class honours degree in something I’d fallen out’ve
love with, was signing on, had no band & was directionless. All
I had was Punk, so Penarth was as good a place as any to find-or-loose
myself. I stepped off the shuttle from Cardiff Central & blinked
into the quiet gloom of treelined streets, aware of a strong sensation
of the light being turned down. No thrills, no cars, no wild dark dockland
club nights, no decay, no stench, no drunken student parties, no loud
music blaring from boarded windows. Imperceptibly I began to atrophy.
There were good things about Penarth of course, my girlfriend, her mom’s
kindness, her Dad’s tolerance & the Padget Rooms.
‘The Padge’ was
a legendary venue amongst ‘Man’ fans & Man was a legend amongst teenage
boys in the 5th form of Bewdley Secondary School in 1973.
“Man Live at the Padget” still rates as one of the all time albums I don’t
own. My girlfriend had been to loads of gigs at The Padge & that impressed
me, as did her reluctance to observe ‘traditional office dress’ when she
went to work in the city (I really admired that).
The flat we shared was a dingy three room cell at the back of number 17,
Victoria road, reached via a crooked little corridor under the stairs.
I kept ships carafes full of Sherry to drink myself numb when being an
Art-Exile got to me. Penarth at this time was like the land of the forgotten,
a place where bands went to disintegrate & recall what might have been.
South Wales was full of great musicians, people who deserved to be huge
– Willy Blackmore was one such musician. I don’t remember what
his day job was (decorator? Window cleaner?), it didn’t matter, his true gift
was in playing the guitar – a cherry red 335 – he made that lump of wood &
wire sing as sweet as the hymns in the Arms Park. His band’ Good Habit’ had been
signed to some major record deal up in London, they recorded an album I think,
but something went wrong (as it often does), the band came home & that was that.
The drummer, Paul would invite me into his Mom’s front room to listen to
Steely Dan albums, trying to convert me to ‘quality music’, but Punk had me,
that & the music of Robert Johnson & I wasn’t about to fall for any swanky hi-fi music.
*
(Listening to the hymns sung from the Arms Park was a tradition for me going back to
when I was small & though we had no connection with Rugby in our family international
days were always spent with my Granddad watching Grandstand on tele with commentary,
of course, by Eddy Waring. The Welsh home games always stood out for me as the singing
was like that of no other gathering of fans – it was hymnal, transcendent, not of this
world & even at that young age always moved me to tears.)
(K)
Karl Hyde 