DID YOU STEAL THAT BAND? (1):
The band back home (Talisman Wood) had disintegrated amongst
demijohns of wine, the band with Ross had died up in TonyPandy,
now I was left with a pile of live gear & no band –
I was Billy-no-mates. Back in the rat-n-flea flat I made a rare &
risky decision to spend my life savings on a brand new Sony
reel-to-reel tape recorder, inspired in part by the memory of
evenings with Budge’s old Phillips & the laughter it induced & a day
in a chair cupboard at high school poetry.It turned out to be the
first step in an era of ‘best moves’, a new period of life after Art.
I began where we’d left off in the chair cupboard, experimenting
with tape speeds, reversing the tape, learning how to make multi-track,
recordings without the constraint of having an end result in mind, just
enjoying the ‘process’. It was difficult to afford tapes on the £18 a
week the social paid out, but as long as I stuck to bread & tinned stew
it was possible.
With a batch of ‘odd sounding songs’ in my pocket I set about finding
an odd sounding band & ,not ever having had to to it before, didn’t have
a clue how it was done. I started asking around the few musicians I knew
& somewhere the name ‘Afie Thomas’ cropped up. He was a mature student
studying at the Welsh college of music & drama , an institution so far
outside the closed circle of the art world i had spent three years in
town & had no idea it was right under my nose – an exotic wonderland
opened up!
I liked Alfie instantly. I liked the light in his eyes, his smile, his
broad Carmarthenshire accent, his idiosyncratic dress sense & his van
(the van was the clincher).
(K)
Karl Hyde 
This is Japanese.
Watch below!!
Japanese Band.