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IN THANKS:

Bought the Manic’s new album from a real shop in thanks 
for a memorable night watching them play a club in 90’s Italy.
Slipped back stage after, talking Ice Hockey to Nicky, Guitar 
effects with James & after spent a longer happy dinner with Sean. 
Always a joy to meet, I admire them immensely.

(K)

DON’T FORGET IT’S RUBBISH DAY:

I’m thinking of a lyric, turning it in my head like a pebble
from a beach. I’m pulling it to pieces, got it up on the ramp 
in the garage, changing the tyres, taking it for a spin.
I’m pulling the Wheelie bins up the road, checked the chart 
to make sure I got it right. This week is recycling & Kitchen 
Waste just like I thought, relieved to know the memory is intact 
for another week. I feel like a grown-up, that chart is my litmus 
test, a check on advancing years though I need glasses to read it 
now. 
There’s a thick fog concealing the road this morning, invisible 
cars hiss without showing their faces. Luminous yellow flares  
cross the horizon, move fast towards stations, identities & 
destinations unknown. The carnivores have been busy in the night 
I scrape the remnants of their dinner off the road & slip it 
discretely into the hedgerow. I’m getting my feet wet in dew grass, 
it runs into my trainers, soaks my socks, reminds me I’m alive, 
that I have an opinion & that it’s ‘I like to keep my feet dry’.
It’s a jump start to the day, a way of confirming I’m still up 
for it & then, as if to reward that thought, bird song, more 
beautiful than yesterday, tiny pin pricks of sound hidden in a 
bush of fog.

(K) 

MISTY:

The sun is somewhere on the other side of fog, 
promising heat I believe it will deliver. Listening to
‘Metal Dance 2‘ on Strut to generate a little friction. 

(K)

THE SAINT & PAINT & LONDON BEER:

We received a message through the network that our old bass player
Alex Burak wanted us to come & record at Point Studios up in London. 
This was massive deal for us so, without hesitating we said,
 
“Yes!”, 

rented a van & piled down to Victoria. In those days Point was more of 
a rehearsal space, a room with brown carpet walls, a large wall of 
mirrors so you could watch yourself & with a small control room tagged 
on to one side incase you wanted to make an inexpensive demo. From the 
street you wouldn’t know it existed, situated as it was behind the 
offices of ‘Y Records’, down a long & hazardous corridor at the back of 
a posh wine merchants. ‘Y Records’ at that time was home to The Pop Group 
& Wayne County, a proper indie label, serious about the music it put out 
& though everyone there greeted us with smiles & was nothing but amiable 
towards us I found their commitment intimidating. Their office smelled of 
cardboard & vinyl, this was a whole other league up from anything we had 
in Cardiff.

In the room above the studio the obligatory squat pool table crooked a 
finger beneath a tepid sky light, a contemporary version of Van Gogh’s 
‘Potato Eaters’. A giant canvas hung on the back wall, paints & brushes 
littered the floor beneath it as this room was also a painting studio, 
a smell of oil paint & turpentine. The artist lived in a tiny cold back 
room, her bed made up on the floor (but not on a Door). It turned out 
she was related to the owner, friendly, beautiful, driven & unattainable, 
wary of musicians, making her all the more attractive to these naive 
&  wide-eyed boys, that tumbled into her world. 

There was a band booked in to rehearse downstairs so we rolled out our 
sleeping bags & went round to the pub we found in a real London mews, 
like Roger Moore in the Saint. High on adrenaline & London beer, we 
retuned to find them still rehearsing so settled into the control room 
to watch & learn. To our amazement the band turned out to be The Slits, 
we were all fans of their album ‘Cut’, John Peel had been championing them 
for a while & we loved their zagged style.  They were teaching their new 
young drummer how to play the way they wanted, towering over him, powerful, 
intimidating. He looked small & fragile, but when he played this fantastic 
‘backwards groove’ emerged, a groove that we would bring up on recording 
sessions well into the 80’s. This lad would go on to leave the Slits & make 
that groove legendary with Siouxsie and the Banshees, his name was Budgie.

(K)

“THERE’S NO DONUTS SO IT’LL HAVE TO BE CHEESECAKE”: 

Said the radio as I stepped into the shower laughing. 
A smell of coffee & pancakes floated up from the kitchen, 
a sure sign that this was going already a very different kind’ve 
start to the day. 

(K)

BUTE TOWN ’78:

Cardiff, Bute Street, the long road to the docks. In the future this 
place will be called a ‘marina’ & we’ll split our sides, remembering 
the drawn out nights we stumbled down here, after the pubs had closed, 
after we’d drifted into clubs in search of that thrill we were missing.
When everything was closed we’d head to the docks, a desolate landscape 
of backstreet desertion, even alleys were friendless, an occasional 
figure waiting beneath a streetlight, a car without headlights watching 
out of sight. If you were in the know or if you had a friend to drop 
the right name you could drink till sun-up behind doors in walls. 
Knock, a flap opens, a face squeezed into a square appears, eyes you 
up-&-down.

“What?”

“I’m a friend of…”

“Wait”

Slam! Muffled voices, music under water in another room.

“What did you say your name was?…Wait”

locks, keys, chains, bolts, a crack in the wall, a yellow light, 
a tortured bulb hangs from a naked flex squealing, 
“Help me!”  weakly – half man, half fly.
Pass beneath it down a dirty corridor to a back room/front room/kitchen, 
a stripped out space lined with sunken faces waiting for some action, 
hoping you’re ‘it’. 

“Two beers please mate”

A makeshift bar, beered-up water in dirty glasses served with hangdog 
distain at the back of the gloom. A drink so soul less you get sober 
from the darkness that hits the back of your throat. A floor with bare 
boards like the Punk House, feels like home, except for the threatening 
stares lining the walls – don’t go to the toilet alone tonight.

(K)

WHAT’S YOUR GROOVE?:

Chris Vatalaro drummed in the cupboard, laying down grooves 
to make a body move & get happy. Everybody laughing, smiling, 
good food & coffee, soul food & gentle rain like mist that 
kissed everyone who stepped out to breath the sweet clean air. 
Now the cupboard is bare, cars scattered in directions, 
train connections met, everyone left, carrying Chris’s energy 
home to destinations unknown, waving as they disappeared into 
the distance. All these memories, captured as patterns, lines 
on flickering screens & numbers, caricatures dancing in the cold 
light of another morning. Slow down, take time out to listen, 
quiet in the hollow, follow the beat, inspiration, no time to 
ponder if the Muse will be waiting, with open arms, smoking a 
cigarette beneath a street light down this road or that, or 
concealing her eyes beneath a different hat to meet another lover?

(K)

JOHN PEEL:

Without question my favourite music teacher & therefore the one
who had the greatest influence on me was John Peel. Listening 
to his late night radio shows on BBC Radio 1, hiding in bed , 
a tiny transistor radio under the covers hoping Mom & Dad wouldn’t 
hear, the thing turned down so low I had to press an ear against 
the speaker, no stereo, no bass, but still bliss. Every night his
show was a door flung open onto worlds I never knew existed, 
tuning in excited, knowing something new was about to happen, not 
knowing which direction it would come from. 
There were times in every one of his broadcasts when I loved what 
he played & many more nights when I thought it was noise & yet, 
most of that ‘noise’ became music I loved & changed how I thought
about music. 
Sweating under the sheets I imagined John in the basement of 
Broadcasting House, a tatty studio, an old mixing desk, low lights, 
a stack of records shiny at his side, like Wolfman Jack in American 
Graffiti, just getting off on sharing his love of music with a nation 
of teenagers hungry to hear anything new. I’d listened to Luxembourg, 
frustrated by the intermittent curve of the signal which would always 
fade out at the best bit. I’d got exited, hairs standing up on the back 
of my neck, listening to pirate broadcasts from channel light ships & 
even remember hearing that one get boarded & shut down by police, but 
those signals didn’t reach far enough inland for us to receive their 
messages of hope & groove & new stuff.
For years we’d had ‘The Light Program’ with it’s smattering of popular 
music, now we had Radio 1 which had enlisted some of the pirate DJs 
bringing with them a desperately needed knowledge of contemporary sounds. 
Amongst them was John Peel, who for many of us growing up as teenagers in 
cities & remote little towns & villages, desperate to hear something new 
& to find like minded tribes we could identify through our mutual love of 
a particular band, he was arguably the most contemporary radio DJ of 
them all.

(K)