Part 13. Krypton, The Stranglers and some vinyl

I cut my hair and briefly dyed it green. I think in response, partly to a perceived complacency on the part of much of the local hippie community, partly as a statement of solidarity with the upcoming new wave of rebellious youth. An anti-establishment statement. I picked up a second hand leather bomber jacket and occasionally would inadvertently scare people I had know for years when I turned up at parties/gatherings. I remember being chided by Plum, (so many of the girls I knew had adopted names from nature, or romantic poetry, I never gave it a thought), for not wearing the recognised uniform of the hippie revolution.

I didn’t really see much of Hillary, she didn’t like to go with me to gigs or rehearsals or take much interest in my musical exploits. As far as I’m aware she wasn’t at the flat above the shop much. I still came back and did most of the admin, worked behind the counter and talked to all the suppliers. She stayed through the winter of 76 I think, but I was busy now, we had separate lives .

Dick was an occasional visitor at Andrew’s and Val and Ian’s place. He was, that year, working as tour manager for The Stranglers and between us all we cooked up a plot to bring them down to Wales and shake up the local music scene a little. Phil, Wendy May and a few of my “younger” ( probably just 3 or 4 years in it to be honest ) friends were really behind it, between us we managed to get a date booked at Carmarthen Civic Hall, arrange local accommodation with friends and brought the whole show to town with Krypton Tunes as support.

Meanwhile on some of my London trips, staying with Brian and Linda, I would get updates on the emerging independent music scene, they lived just around the corner from the newly opened Rough Trade record store and Brian seemed to know just about everything and everybody on the live music pub circuit in West London, our old friend Paul was playing with Chilly Willy and the Red Hot Peppers, Kirsty was singing with the Drug Addix and Brian was about to release a record with my old buddy Chris Reeves ( The Dyaks ) on Bonapart records which was run by Steve Melhuish, the brother of an old school friends of mine .

Rough Trade was fascinating, run as a co-op, between friends and managed by Geoff Travis, it seemed to bring everything I understood about independent distribution and co-operative retailing. As well as enabling new young ‘revolutionaries’ to make vinyl and release it, it had a policy of distributing all innovative, new wave, punk and arthouse recordings from independent labels unable to find / want major distribution. Stiff Records, up the road, had launched with both the Damned and the Pink Fairies, it seemed like the sort of cross over I was living in Wales. It was time to make records.

That summer of 77, Hillary disappeared from the shop altogether, Tina’s Rik went back to London and Ase was working part time for the NHS and running her Waverly Stores clinic. John and I decided to start playing the London pub scene and would travel up and sleep on the floor at Nik Turner's London squat, off what used to be ‘frestonia’.  I’d travel back and forth staying with Brian and Linda or give Tina a lift up on her way to her parents, we stopped over at least once with Miriam.

The Stranglers gig was so much fun, Phil had done tickets and posters, Wendy May was working on press and word of mouth promo and on the day, during sound check, John mentioned to Hugh Cornwell that we often did a cover of one of the songs from the Rattus Norvegicus album, but obviously wouldn’t play it that night. He asked us to play it at the sound check, because they had never heard anybody cover one of their songs. We did “Hanging Around “just for the crew and headline band. The show had an audience of about 50 people, some new young punks who had travelled up from Swansea, a few of our local hippie friends and some young farmers.

 

Dick and Hugh stayed over at Val and Ian’s and Andy Dunkley ( the DJ) and Jet Black, stayed the night at the flat above the wholefood shop.

Mostly they all left for home the following day, Wendy came and had breakfast with Andy and I, but Dick moved into the caravan of a girl who had been staying down at the house where Andrew lived and wasn’t seen again for about two weeks.

The shop was running well and we’d had to adjust the pricing a bit to allow for wastage, overweighing etc. Buying organic direct from farmers was becoming standard policy. Grains and beans we sold enough of, we could source by the container load or share containers with other stores, or at least buy by the ton. The brown rice would have to be carefully washed and drained by the consumer as there were occasionally stones and chaff in the bags, once in a while the beans would arrive with weevils and have to be carefully sorted before bagging. I would get up early, deal with deliveries, open up and hand over to Tina and Phil. I’m sorry to say I can’t remember who else helped out, but we got by without being shut too often. I spent increasing daytimes up at Thomas’s studio, he had it working but had run out of money to do the final finishing off. We rehearsed there sometimes too. I got Paul to come down and produce a single for us which we finished in the autumn.

We had all our friends involved with getting it manufactured, Liz did all the Photo’s , Phil produced the cover artwork and Brian helped me find places to ‘production master’ and press it. The single arrived in November and Rough Trade glued the cover to their shop wall and I had a few copies on the counter at the wholefood shop.

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