Michael Garrick - Farnborough Technical College 1965 (2022) Hi Res

Recorded live at Farnborough Technical College on 23rd October 1965. From the private collection of Roger Palmer. Previously unheard. Monophonic sound.

'I was an apprentice at RAE Farnborough from 1962-7 and discovered all the things I really wanted to do - music (I'd started playing bass), photography, archaeology - and one of the things that helped the music side were the weekly gigs that Michael organised at The Highwayman where I and a couple of other jazz lovers were regulars. I'd give a lot to be able to revisit those gigs - Michael's trio, trio plus guest (including Joe several times and sometimes with Shake, Ronnie Ross, Don Lamont, etc), Tubby, the early years of Rendell-Carr quintet (or not so early if Michael was on piano). The New Jazz Orchestra squeezed in a few times with some huge sounds and there were other treats, Dudley Moore trio, Johnny Scott quartet, and many I will have forgotten...

An offshoot of my music interest was that I and another apprentice, Derek Wickham, formed a 'music society' at the tech which enabled us to buy the Ferrograph that was used to record Michael's concert and rent records that we could play to members of the society. I did the jazz, Derek did classical - alternate weeks. Derek was also one of the Highwayman crowd and I guess that we hatched up the idea of the concert and asked Michael for a price.

I remember driving to Michael's house late in the morning and everyone was crowded into a room in his house rehearsing. Michael had agreed that we could record it - all from a single mic if I remember correctly... The hall would have been just that - a basic college hall in the 1960s with a stage and not much else. It certainly was not good enough for the annual review that we apprentices put on and used a 'theatre' known as the 'RAE Assembly Hall' (or 'rooms') which even had a couple of lights. I was in the wings on the same side as Coleridge (Goode) where I guess we had the tape recorder too... To an extent, these were musicians we knew slightly from the Highwayman, but I had the opportunity to chat a little with Coleridge...'