WAITING FOR THE NEXT BUS:
Tra-la-la
(K)
Thursday 29th August
1
Author Archives: karlhyde
Wednesday 28th August
THE FULL STEAL:
We began rehearsing in the garden of an old rectory, where
mattresses were rammed into the windows of a village hall as
we tried to sound like a band. Pretty soon it was obvious
that the young lad with the tasseled strap was out of his
depth & I have to credit him with coming to the conclusion
on his own & handing himself in. One guitarist down, we
limped on for a week, then, having broken up the Soft Centres
by nicking their drummer I went back in on another raid
& stole their singer. Stuart joined us on guitar & vocals
adding extreme attitude, skinny jeans & pointy shoes.
And that’s the way we stayed, becoming ‘The’ band (for a while)
in Cardiff.
I painted a backdrop, we discussed & designed stage clothes,
called ourselves ‘The ScreenGemz’ (spot the Z) & set to work
playing bars & college halls all over town, growing an enthusiastic
audience who warmed to our locally promising generic power pop.
We found some one to call manager, gave him a hard time & when
Radio One broadcast for a week in the window of a Cardiff store
I spent all night designing the cover of a folder of press shots
with a cassette box of demos covered in pink Latex. The music was
a shadow of what the artwork work promised & a paler shadow of what
was already on the radio – no one played it, but they praised the
presentation.
Eventually we were contacted by Ex-Ross-band bass player Alex Burak
who had moved to London to work in a small rehearsal/recording studio
in Victoria called ‘Point’. He was one of the few musicians I knew who
had escaped Wales & made it across the river, long enough to claim
true residency in England. Alex needed to practise his engineering
skills & was offering us free time in a real studio. We were there
within the week, cutting two sides of a single, ‘Can’t Stand Cars’ &
‘Teenage Teenege’. The studio was basic & smelled, but was authentic
heaven, we slept in sleeping bags on the floor amongst our gear &
dreamed we were out there on the front line, doing it for real.
Surviving on chocolate, crisps & coffee, we were in London & on our way!
As ever, I spent time working the sleeve up into a minor masterpiece &
we pressed up a hundred copies paid for by our manager- we set about
selling them….we still have a few boxes lying around. I vaguely
remember hearing the A side on a radio somewhere & of scratching a
message on the pressing plate like I read all the legends did, everything
‘looked’ right for a band on the up, but the music….the music was
little more than try-hard pop, full of good intentions, but with no heart,
no identity, no risk.
We returned to Cardiff & carried on gigging, reaching our zenith
one summer playing on the roof of the Student Union building
with our stage set of broken TV’s & giant yellow American fridge
covered in Red spots that opened to disgorge party balloons. Like the
original roof top gig the police closed this one down, but not before a
young student on an electronic engineering course had become temporarily
smitten with the band. The young man’s name was Rick Smith.
(K)
Tuesday 27th August
THE ALMOST BUT DIDN’T QUITE:
Just prior to pulling together the band of stolen boys
I’d been so enamoured with the Robert Johnson Band’s
performance on the Whistle Test that I’d searched for the
hottest bass player in town. I was introduced to a guy
called Tafe who was fast & fretless but we didn’t hit it
off, however, one group that almost existed was with
Pino Palladino on bass, a lovely man, a gentleman with a rich
tone of voice & bass who played like a dream & with most easy
going nature that made him instantly likeable. Everybody knew he was
the best bass player in Cardiff, in Wales even & when I told my mates
they just laughed that I would have the nerve to ask someone as great
a Pino to form a band. We met & discussed him bringing in his mate
Kenny Driscal, former frontman of the band Lone Star who was also an
excellent guitarist, I already felt on the backfoot but said
“OK”.
Pino got an offer to join Jules Holland’s band before we could even
get in the studio. He came round one night, very apologetic for
letting me down. It was a mark of a true gent, something I never
forgot & as I wished him the very of luck I said that we would record
together one day – he smiled, nodded & went off to be one of the finest
bass players in the world.
The bass player who almost stayed was Jake Bowie, another art school boy.
He lived in a jungle of giant Cheese plants in the front room of a
terraced house where live & exotic birds flew about freely. He played
fretless like no other I’d ever heard or have heard since – fast, sweet,
pin point accurate with a deliberate tone. His brother David played bass
with the Mekons, Jake should’ve been playing with Weather Report but
instead listened to indie records amongst the chirping of his jungle
birds. We recorded my songs, they sounded great, different, vibrant,
but his heart wasn’t in it, so we agreed to part as friends though I had
a sense there was unfinished business between us.
(K)
Monday 26th August
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)
Sunday 25th August
DID YOU STEAL THAT BAND? (2):
I put an add in the local paper, but got no response.
Alf knew a lad at college who played guitar (he thought),
we paid him a visit. The guy was a little unprepared to
impress us with his skill & charm & when he’d fished his
guitar out from behind the sofa it was some cheap copy
of something that was meant to resemble something else
with a dressing gown chord (& tassels) for a strap. He did,
however know some people in the countryside who had an
entire village Hall in their garden where we could practise,
so he was in!
(K)
Saturday 24th August
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)
Friday 23rd August
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)
Thursday 22nd August
ART COLLEGE:
I thought I was such a star – & then I got to art school.
It was clear from day one that everybody knew more about
art than I did, what the hell had I been taught at school?!
Somehow I made up for all the education I never got until
the age of sixteen & crammed my way into midfield by the
time it came to apply for University. In the process of
getting a more rounded art education I’d also got myself
a proper girlfriend who’d decided to leave & study at
Cardiff Art College. I was besotted so followed.
The foundation college had advised me to apply to a graphics
course, but when we did the rounds of the best uni’s in the UK,
crammed into a VW Beetle, it had become starkly evident that all
the fun was to be had in the fine art department, so that’s where
I set my sights.
The girlfriend was stuck on Cardiff as her first choice
so I put that & neighbouring Newport as my second so as to
be close in the likelihood I’d get rejected by Cardiff.
Shock of shocks we both got in, God knows what they saw in me,
I must have made by the skin of the teeth & couldn’t believe my
continuing luck. I’d imagined I’d be a painter, they played music
all day, wore paint stained overalls & produced huge canvases
that smelled great. I was surprised when the college sent me
to an obscure annex called ‘the Space Workshop’ where I was
to become a part of a unique department called ‘The 3rd Area’.
To this day I still can’t believe my luck as I was given access
to four track tape machines, quadraphonic sound systems, theatre
lighting, video cameras, film cameras, microphones, performance
art, installation art & a suit-cased EMS Synthi to take home
whenever I wanted – suddenly I was back in my wardrobe at home
playing Legetti on a mono record deck with Dad’s red light flashing
& yet, here at Cardiff Art College, it was all day, every day & for
the next three years. I’d been welcomed into paradise!
(K)
Wednesday 21st August
THE REAL LAST FLIGHT OF THE CORSAIRS III:
The old VW van that had stood on the drive at the cottage
all the time we’d rehearsed there was eventually put back on
the road & loaded for the final show. The drummer was mad,
angry about something we never quite understood, not happy
that his precious van was hauling our gear & just wanting us
out of his life. There was a glimmer of social conscience
there so the gig we’d been booked to play at Tonypandy
British Legion Club went ahead, but not before an eventful
climb at snail speed over the hill at dusk with a sick VW
that just wanted to lie down one last time & die.
As we nursed the drummer to push on over the hill twenty
three wheeler disabled cars overtook us in formation – Ross
& me split our sides!
That night in the half time break of our final show, immortal
lines were recorded as one local asked for an explanation of all
them knobs on our mixing desk. To this day Ross & I still
fall about as we recall,
“What’s them slidy things then?”
“It’s a mixing desk, it’s like two channels – it’s Steeree-o”
(ok so you had to be there!)
The band had gone through a few personnel changes
(mostly bass players for some unknown reason) since it first rehearsed
at the cottage in the hills with the mattresses stuffed against the
windows. In it’s final incarnation it included new boy Alex Burack
on bass, a man who was to play a significant roll in the future of
electronic music.
But before that, there’s was the serious matter of Bingo.
(K)
Tuesday 20th August
THE LAST FLIGHT OF THE CORSAIRS II:
The end was soon in sight for the the band with Ross,
relationships within the group were increasingly fractious
maybe the smoke had changed or the literature grown darker,
but the drummer finally threw us out of his cottage
so we were forced to join the human race & pay for a rehearsal
room like all the rest. I remember one place in Cardiff that
was half derelict with only a dirt floor & one plug
socket hanging on wires that we ran all the amps off. The last
rehearsal room was a community centre up in the valleys.
A clean place, with toilets, electricity, windows & everything.
The only problem was it’s proximity the street & the gangs of
bored kids cruising it. One lot broke in & started threatening
to do us. For some reason I remembered something I’d read in
a Sociology book about recruiting your enemy to police your back
yard (it was nonsense but we were desperate). I stepped up to the
biggest, baddest looking of the lot, took him to one side & whispered,
“Do you wanna stay in here & watch us rehearse?”
“Yeah”
“All you have to do is chuck your mates out & you can stay.
you’ll be like our security”
“Alright then ta!”
So he chucked his mates out & we got our rehearsal, but
that night we begged a van of a bloke round the corner & hauled all
our gear out, knowing full well our new security would be back with
his mates to knick the lot. The hippy dream was over, the kettle
never sung again.
(K)
Karl Hyde 