Musical History

or how I ended up with a recording studio

(Not a CV!)

School

I was at school during a golden period for Pop music; the Beatles were at the height of their song writing powers and every new song was bought to be played, analysed and learned by heart. With two friends I entered the school science competition trying to create “Electronic Music” by recording tones from an oscillator on to reel to reel tape & then splicing the tones together to make a tune. It wasn’t a great success. I used to get “Weird stuff” by John Cage and others from the record library and had my first taste of playing drums on a kit belonging to [bass player] Paul Carmichael’s brother.

In my fifth year the school mounted a big production of “West Side Story”. I was the tape operator. Everybody sang during warm ups and rehearsals. I found I could carry a tune and was now on good terms with the cool kids in year six.
I started performing and devising and by the time I left, had won the drama prize for writing that year’s play [The cast included a young Alex Jennings]

College

After three years working for the national health service as a lab technician, I gave up my science “career” and went back to college to do a Drama B.Ed. in Devon. I fell in with a bad crowd and we formed an acoustic / comedy band that gigged for three years and ended by supporting the likes of Suzy Quatro, Supercharge and other bands. As well as singing I started playing the congas, which led to work as a dance class accompanist. [I also started working as a lighting tech for a local touring dance company.] My course work included lighting and sound, and one of my first jobs was to create an “Exorcist” style speech for the Ghost in Hamlet. I stayed up all night in the little sound studio with a Vortexion mono tape machine and a splicing block and found that rummaging through a bin for a piece of mistakenly discarded tape is a mistake that you only want to make once!

Theatre

I left college and worked as a drama tech at another college for a year, then moved to Lancashire for a job with a T.I.E. company to get my Equity card. The company had actor / musicians and I got the drummer’s chair, practising in my lunch breaks. Next, I went to an Arts Centre in Bracknell where my job included supervising local kids working on the various music festivals. Headlining that year was Gil Evans, and I shook the hand that had shaken Miles’ hand!

I met John Cumming, who went on to run Serous Productions and Paul Sparrow, with whom I went on to work with for years with the Grand Union. Staff had free admission to gigs, so I heard lots of live jazz.

I then had a succession of jobs as a touring theatre tech responsible for lighting and sound, and gradually started to have more input into soundtracks, whether playing percussion in studio sessions with James Mackie and Jim Dvorjak for The Kosh, or concocting Civil War artillery barrages for one of Anne Jellicoe’s big community plays. I wrote to John Fowles, [who was historical advisor] and stupidly asked him what Civil War canons sounded like. He replied that he wasn’t that old, and perhaps I should ask the curator at the Tower of London!

Through the Dance Tales company, I met American percussionist John Keilhor whose astonishing one-man band opened new vistas of percussion madness.
I played in a Latin band with Charlie Hearnshaw and Dave Goodier and finally got around to recording three dance class accompaniment cassettes at Dave Harry’s Primrose Studios in Lancaster. Dave died tragically young, but I inherited his microphones, including an SM 57 and Sennheisers 441 and 442 which I still use today. Back in London, James Mackie got me work as a pit drummer in a couple of shows at The Queen’s Theatre Hornchurch, and I took conga lessons with Neville Murray and Hamish Orr to undo some of my self-taught bad habits.

The Grand Union Orchestra

I worked for several years full time and then part time as Lighting designer / tech for Tony Haynes. Part of the job was being paid to attend rehearsals and listen to an astonishing roster of musicians from around the world while planning the lighting. I even received a lighting fee for a radio broadcast on Radio Three! I listened and nicked everything I could from drummers and percussionists Dave Adams, Dave Barry, Brian Abrahams, Josefina Cupido, Carlos Fuentes, Sarah Laryea, Emmanuel Tagoe and Yusuf Ali Khan. For more information, visit https://www.grandunion.org.uk

The L.S.S

Carlos and his late brother Pato helped found the first Samba School in Britain:
G.R.E.S. Unidos De Londres; The London School of Samba. I had given up full time work to be a house husband and started attending their workshops. I quickly got hooked and joined the Bateria, where I stayed for Twenty-Five years, first under the direction of Dave Willetts, then Mestre Mags and Fred Taruka.

During my stay I became administrator, carnival production manager and sound recordist / producer. Twenty years of recording and editing Samba de Enredos followed, first on a Yamaha MD8, then a Carillon Audio PC and now my Power Mac.

Twenty years of recording and editing Sambas followed, and as my experience and equipment grew, I recorded albums by Singer songwriters Adam Jones and Janine Wells, Tabla player Yousuf Ali Khan, three albums by Dave & three albums of my own material, aided by musicians from the L.S.S. and the Grand Union Orchestra.

I digitised & re-mastered old gig cassettes for bands and studied music for media composition at Hackney College and Ensemble Performance at Goldsmiths College. When I switched to my Power Mac I sought Logic guidance from Peter Dudley, who has mastered most of my recent work. For more information visit https://www.londonschoolofsamba.co.uk