DID YOU STEAL THAT BAND? (3):
Having been seduced by the Tubes performing ‘White Punks on Dope’
on the tele I was set on assembling a band which included keyboards
&, specifically, a synthesiser. Most of the local keyboard players
I knew who could afford such fabulously exotic instruments were either
already in gigging bands that could pay top whack or working at the
steel works & not likely to jeopardise good pay & a pension for a punt
on a bunch of college kids with ‘an idea’. It was all about the money,
I needed to find musicians that didn’t have any, so wouldn’t miss it
when it didn’t come.
The New Moon Club at the end of St Mary’s street was a hangout for
late night drinkers, dealers & musicians looking for a great band after
hours. The House band on weekends was an incredible three piece which
included the legendary ‘Tich‘ on guitar & vocals. This was a band to
make you drool, they made standards sound cool & had a sound that was
so ‘down’ in it’s execution that there was no need for a sound engineer.
They put everything ‘in the pocket’, made you believe you too could be
an axe god. Weekdays the house band was ‘Eager Beaver’, a covers band
that included own material, not as tight as the guys on the weekend,
but with an attitude born out of wanting to ‘make it’. Eager Beaver had
a number of things I coveted: A cool looking front man/guitarist with a
sharks tooth earring, a tour bus converted from an old charabanc &
‘a keyboard player’!
Garry Bond worked at the tax office & had aspirations. He lived in
Splott with his folks who welcomed us in to their home with customary
Welsh generosity, serving us with an endless supply of tea, biscuits
& smiles when we called round to discuss him jumping ship.
We had our keyboard player, Alf on bass, me on guitar & vocals & a place
to rehearse with a lad & his dressing gown chord included – we needed a
drummer. The best place to hear local bands who were trying to ‘make it’
was the Lions Den in the basement of the Railway pub opposite Cardiff
Station. A long flight of stairs to load heavy equipment down to a tiny
stage at the end of a long thin room that resembled old pictures of
Liverpool’s Cavern Club. Zipper were on the verge of being the band
‘most likely to’, so we bi-passed them. Their front man was mesmerising,
though he had a great voice & attitude – I was jealous. They would crop
up again to haunt & taunt me. The Spitfire Boys had a whole Velvets thing
going which exuded confidence & vision.Their frontman David Littler had
moved from London, starting in Manchester where he’d formed the original
Spitfire Boys with Budgie whom would go on to be a major force with
Siouxie & the Banshees. The Tigers of Pantang were out-n-out rrrrrrrock.
We could tell they were so into their thing that the stuff we were wanted
to do was beneath them. Then….there was The Soft Centres. They had a
great frontman, Stuart Kelling (built like a stick with skinny white jeans
& eyes). Stuart would go on to play a major roll in the future of electronic
dance music, but, for now, he had a drummer whose style & playing I liked
(sorry Stuart). We acquired Steve Erwin’s phone number & made the call –
he listened & shifted his allegiance – we had a band.
(K)
Karl Hyde 
Im on the edge of my seat waiting for a certain welshman to enter this story!
Thank you for sharing all this
🙂