Elijah Thomas: Boy Azooga, Zines & The Cardiff Music Scene

Elijah Thomas is a Welsh photographer hailing from the Rhondda Valleys. He has quickly established himself as a revered documentarian of working class culture, encapsulating the mood and spirt of the former mining communities of South Wales in his zines ‘Rhondda Valleys’ and ‘Saturdays Kids’. Not to mention his repsonsibility in documenting the highs and lows of the Cardiff music scene, becoming a local hero in the process. Whether you find him on tour with Boy Azooga, taking photos of your new favourite band or at the top of a mountain hunting down elusive OAP’s – the resulting images will leave you wishing you were there when it happened. We spoke to Elijah, for Yuck! Magazine Volume One...

Elijah Thomas met Davey Newington, the frontman of Boy Azooga, whilst he was on tour with Monico Blonde in 2017. It was a chance meeting as a result of the band’s drummer being absent that particular evening.

“Gavin Jenkins from Rainbow Maniac was playing drums for Monico Blonde but couldn’t play one of the dates so Davey stepped in,” Thomas explains.

“He’d just come off his first Azooga tour supporting Estrons the night before. He opened the van door, introduced himself and complimented me on my Brian Jonestown Massacre t-shirt and we’ve mates been ever since.”

The blossoming of that friendship resulted in Thomas spending half of last year travelling around the country, documenting their headline tour.

“It was just a really enjoyable experience; those guys are genuine fun to be around,” says Thomas. “I’d like to give you some Motley Crue-esque madness, but to be honest about 95% of the time with Davey and Azooga is spent quoting The Office and chatting complete nonsense.”

During the tour came the release of the single ‘Loner Boogie’ which was met with critical acclaim.

“It was good to be around that excitement. The shows and the crowds made for a beautiful time and it was good to see mates doing so well,” he says.

The arrival of some mystery guests at The Waiting Room in London before Azooga’s headline show is a memory that has stuck in the mind of Thomas.

“They [Boy Azooga] got asked to play a short set to ‘someone from the label’ in the afternoon and these two guys came into the venue. The boys played three songs and to cut a long story short, they were actually from the BBC’s ‘Later… with Jools Holland’ and a few weeks later the boys were on the telly.”

As Boy Azooga’s fame rocketed, Elijah started working on a project of his own. Using his connections with the band as inspiration, he set about creating a zine exploring the relationship between Azooga and their contemporaries, Buzzard Buzzard Buzzard. The zine was born out of an abundance of material he had collected over the years.

“It came from having so much work related to both bands and finally putting it to use, as opposed to the usual social media stuff. Plus, every time I’d be with Azooga we’d chat about Buzzard and vice versa so I thought it would be an interesting narrative to have both frontmen talking about the others band instead of just having photos to explore.”

The zine was a success and sold out at a recent Buzzard show in Cardiff, where the music scene is flourishing amidst a battle against culture vultures and landlords keen to cash in on city centre property prices. Thomas agrees that the close knit community of creatives and musicians in the city is keeping the flame lit.

“There’s a lot of respect for one another. Most of those bands in that part of the Cardiff scene know each other and hang out. Boy Azooga and Buzzard helped me out tremendously when I did my exhibition last year, along with Rainbow Maniac. They played, brought PA equipment, all for nothing. I’m eternally grateful for them for doing that. It meant a lot,” says Thomas.

But despite the camaraderie and will of the Cardiff music community to battle for it’s survival, venues like Gwdi Hw and Buffalo have closed down. The fight will continue for the venues on Womanby Street.

“At the end of the day if people wish to create art they will do so. The lack of venues won’t stop the passion a person feels for expressing themselves. What is important are the places themselves,” he says.

Thomas says the venues aren’t just places to go and watch your new favourite band but act more like creative hubs that give birth to a new wave of artists.

“They’re somewhere to learn about a different side of your craft as well as meet other folks in the same boat. I mean, you can’t image Ian Curtis learning to dance like that in his bedroom”.

It’s the very scene that’s at risk, that allowed Thomas to meet and work with his favourite musicians. He assures us that Bob Dylan hasn’t called him back yet but the best talent across the coolest indie labels in the country will suffice, for now.

“It’s been nice having to shoot for something that gets released through Heavenly Records or be given the chance to work on a sleeve for Rainbow Maniac. It’s good fun and you know you can go for a pint afterwards.”

As well as spending time with musicians, he also knocks about on football pitches and belts out songs from his misspent youth down the local. The subject of his seminal zine ‘Saturdays Kids’ took form from these memorable experiences. After seeing some photos on Facebook of his mates playing football and being amazed with the amount of people on the sidelines, he thought ‘I need some of this’.

“There was so many people really letting go and giving it some, as if they were watching Cardiff! Difference was, it was on a local pitch in the valleys,” Thomas says.

He took inspiration from Danny Lyons’ 1968 book ‘The Bikeriders’, in which he joined a motorcycle gang in an effort to create more honest photos, a process he coined ‘New Journalism’.

Armed with his 35mm camera, he went to check out the Prince of Wales pub football team in their next match. Any pre-match nerves were quashed by the can of lager thrust into his hands on arrival.

“The beauty of it was, the game was just a warm up for what happened afterwards. Back at the pub one of the boys, Dan Morris – a great singer, sang a few songs for the team because they’d won the cup” he explained.

Word soon spread that Thomas was a guitar player in a past life and he was called up to play a few songs and as a result was initiated into the group. It didn’t last though, the best things in life never do.

“It was the most fun I’d ever had on a project. It seemed like I didn’t have to put my hand in my pocket once to buy a drink. I’m also glad to have caught them at that time because the team no longer exists - the boys got banned from the pub and the players went onto different teams” he says.

His home surroundings afforded him continued inspiration as it became the focal point of his next that perfectly capture the personality of the South Wales Valleys, giving a humble nod to the people and places that fill it. The Zine is made up of shots that had been taken from days chatting to people and exploring the old Italian Bracchi Cafés, pubs, butchers and streets that make up the enigmatic community.

It also includes archival imagery that had laid dormant for some time. Elijah went to great lengths to find the right photo and spent quite a while tracking down a famous member of the Rhondda community, Trevor Ward. “Yeah, it was funny really, I’d seen a video of him on Wales Online, and I remember thinking what a remarkable character he was. Someone that encapsulated The Valleys in the loveliest way".