Prices School

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Prices School Fareham ‘Folk’ Concerts – 1969-75.

The 1960’s and into the 70’s was a time of great socio-cultural change – as you may have noticed at the time, or heard since.   Even Fareham was affected – including Prices Grammar School for Boys.   We were encouraged by the spirit of the times – and by certain seditious teachers in English, Drama and Art – to be creative.  Music was the prime medium. The Beatles, Dylan, Paul Simon, and so on, meant that there was both a new permission and a new demand to be creative.  In any case, it was obviously fabulous/groovy/far out to be able to play the guitar and sing – and there was also the chance that the girls we knew might think so too . . .

And so we learnt to play the guitar and to write songs if we possibly could.

Meanwhile, it was a well known fact that the Headmaster, Mr Eric Poyner, believed that the guitar was ‘the instrument of the devil’.

I can see his point.  As a staunchly upper-middle class member of the Church of England, and of an older generation brought up in very different times, he must have been horrified when faced first with rock and roll and then by the libertine antics of The Rolling Stones and the aggression of The Who.   Worst of all,  the hippies :  free love, drugs and long hair.  Even the Beatles had become provocative during the second half of the sixties.  They had grown their long hair even longer.

Meanwhile, as mentioned, a lot of us had learned to play the guitar.

And we had long hair of course.

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The origins of the Prices ‘Folk’ Concert tradition are difficult to pin down because for all those involved it was a very long time ago.   However, sometime in 1968 (probably) two sixth formers, Pat Gatland and Michael Knight – still with relatively short hair – managed to get permission to hold an evening Folk Concert.  Presumably they had the help of one or other of the younger teachers.  By that time, guitars and folk-style songs were even being heard in church ( Kumbaya, Shalom chevarim) – which must have helped.  Everything was acoustic of course and the songs were both traditional and modern – but folk.  There were even girl performers in the persons of Kathy Russell and a friend.    Other concerts followed in May 1969 and December 1969 – both of which I attended.  Among the performers, I recall Pat Gatland, Paul Hawes and Kathy Russell.  The material remained acoustic and folky – although it seems there may also have been a rendition of the song ‘Cocaine’. . .

The next event was in February 1970.  By this time Paul and Pat had moved on and the responsibility for keeping the ‘tradition’ going had been taken up by Chris Bard (Prices Head Boy, or soon to become so) assisted musically by Dave Cummins (Pricean) and Martin (Tink) Wood (former Pricean).

Here’s what happened:  in January 1970, Chris and Co began to hire (or possibly just occupy) the Funtley Village Hall on Saturday afternoons in order to create and rehearse for a forthcoming event at Prices which was to be called The Light Show.  In addition to serious rehearsal there was also general music, general hanging out and a pool table.  Chris was good enough to give me a game of pool and wiped me out in about 60 seconds.    When it came to the show itself, my important role was to assist on the lights. 

The Light Show introduced two key innovations.  One was to add poetry reading and comic sketches to the mix.  Chris led in both.  He wrote and performed obscure poetry and bizarre sketches involving, for example, woodpecker sound-effects and inappropriate French translations.  The second innovation was more fundamental.  Dave and Tink had obtained a P.A. system and an electric guitar.  Andy Vores, meanwhile, was the enthusiastic possessor of a drum kit.   Prices ‘folk’ concerts went electric –  and this was only five years after Dylan had done the very same thing.

Meanwhile, the Saturday afternoon gatherings continued after the show and culminated on April 25th 1970 in an ‘event’ billed as TWEADIFARG ( The West End and District Folk Arts Revival Group), more music and hanging-out as I recall.

Another Prices concert/show/review took place on 6th November 1970.  Dave, Tink and Andy played, but that’s all I can discover.  There  was then another Chris and Co event on the 10th and 11th  December 1970 called Something to Remember.  Music, poetry, sketches, surrealism.  Dave, Tink, Andy and John Cameron played as Gigolo.  I believe I may have done the lights again.


The acoustic tradition had also continued throughout these shows and one of the acoustic performers was Dick Hubbard, an English Teacher at Prices.  He sang traditional ballads such as  the beautiful ‘Geordie’ – while playing the guitar.  (It was also he who reported to us Mr Poyner’s opinion of the aforesaid instrument).

Another performer was Nick Manley.  He had become well known for a entertaining us with an anti-war song of the time and another involving Adam and Eve and a snake.  At one or other of the concerts he was forced by audience demand to sing them again.  Unfortunately, on this occasion, Mr Poyner happened to be listening at the back.  “ I was suspended” says Nick “for singing the Fish Cheer/Fixing to Die Rag[1] and The One Eyed Trouser Snake. I don’t know which song caused the most offence.”

Chris and Co moved on.   The next event – not until December 1971 – was back to the concert format.  We called it Reflections of Summer.  I say ‘we’ because now I was a sixth-former and organised the event together with Paul Gateshill and others.  Perhaps that’s why our band – Lonene – had two slots in the programme while everyone else only had one !  Despite having moved on, Dave and Tink also played – as Morningstar – so too did Dick Hubbard, Bob Gilbert (Head of Music), Nick Manley and Springwind – Nick Kahn, Mick Daysh and Dave Cledwyn.  They also supported Andy Vores who had by then become a singer-songwriter-pianist-composer.  In fact most of us were singer-songwriters – Nick Manley, Lonene, Morningstar, Springwind.  We were creating and delivering original songs and music – and our audience was kind enough to respond with enthusiasm.

Next came Gromboolia, in March 1972, organised by Nick Manley and poet Alan Hill.  The line-up was in part similar to the preceding concert but also included but also included many others, as can be seen from the programme :.

Note that Nick and Alan – who would then have been in the Upper Sixth Form – organised a concert after we – who must have been in the Lower Sixth – organised Reflections of Summer.  How the devil did we junior boys get away with it ?

Someone organised another concert in May 1973.  It could have been me and others.  I can’t remember.  However, Lonene performed again – Paul Gateshill, Tracey Coles, Dave Cledwyn and myself.  So too did Nick Kahn and Mick Daysh, but now with Jackie White (previously with Lonene); and the Andy Vores band, which incorporated folks promiscuously from other bands and elsewhere.  Kathy and Rosalind Russell also made a reappearance after long absence.  New performers included PINT (Paul McNeil, Ivor Bundell, Neil Pritchard and Tracey Coles) and Tarsus (Chris Nash, Mark Luckham and Andy Sandham ).

This concert was recorded.  I had a cassette recorder which I must have put in front of the PA speakers and pressed play and record.

I also recorded part of the last concert I attended – after I had left Prices – in July 1975.  This was, once again, of the highly promiscuous, now even further expanded, Andy Vores band – which included Ivor Bundell, Tracey Coles,  Mick Daysh, John Cameron, Kate Burleigh and Liz Kearns – who both sang and danced.  This recording is available now in digital format should you wish – for some reason – to hear it.

What happened to the tradition beyond 1975 I do not know.  Prices was beginning its transition from Grammar school to Sixth Form College and times were [a-]changing.  If anyone knows what happened next, please tell us.

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An important NOTE :  What I was unaware of at the time and has only recently come to light is that an event similar to those above took place one evening in 1969 – organised by a certain Spike Edney.   His account, Price’s: A Musical Underground will be available via the Old Pricean’s website in due course. 

 

Dramatis personae.

 Pat(rick) Gatland moved to Australia, where he continues to write and perform in a folky manner together with his daughter Meg and others.   Some of their music can be heard on YouTube https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbx-GIVzm6rANKKQdtJaQ7g

There seems to be a general consensus still that Dave Cummins was the most talented and creative guitarist of the time.  He also had a wonderful Swedish Hagstrom acoustic guitar with a built-in pick-up – unheard of in those days.  Early on he played with Martin (Min) Gateshill and was thereby an influence on Min’s younger brother Paul Gateshill.  Paul, in turn,  helped me learn how to play the guitar. That is, I had to strum chords for him for hours while he practised his magic-fingered lead.

Martin Wood – Tink – (Mar[tin K]enneth Wood) also played with Dave from early on.  I was always puzzled that he played a nylon-strung Spanish Guitar rather than steel, but he was a great guitarist anyway.  Both Tink and Dave were an inspiration and wrote some great songs together, and with Nick Manley too – see below.

Chris (No-holds) Bard was a general inspiration to us all – an impresario rather than a musical influence – although I’m told he played the saxophone.  He was a huge creative talent – founder of and contributor to the ‘Black Lion’, organiser of ‘folk’ concerts/shows/’reviews’ and other events, Head Boy at Prices – when he seemed to take over morning Assembly, leaving the Headmaster and staff diminished in his wake.Chris_Bard

Unfortunately, Chris, Tink and Dave are no longer with us.

You can find an obituary for Chris at http://www.societyofoldpriceans.co.uk/pupils.htm

I met Tink again when we travelled up to London on the train together in the early 2000s.  He was as delightful, gentle and kind a man as I had always remembered him.  Then timetables changed and we no longer coincided.  Next thing I heard, he had gone.  Tink’s wife Jane (n. Suter) had also been part of the creativity – the sketches in particular.  She is also gone.

Dave I never knew so well.  He took to writing music for computer games before his health gave out on him.

Lamentations for each of them, and for the loss to us of their great talents.

 

  Nick Manley emerged for me as a solo performer – as described above.  But he also played in Springwind and, writing songs together with Dave, Tink and others and forming the truly wonderful band Red Shift – https://soundcloud.com/theoriginalredshift   Nick has since had a long and prolific writing and performing career in various bands and solo – much of it in France. More recently he has been generous enough to play together with myself, Mick Daysh (see below) and Chris Nash (ditto) under the banner of The Old Boys Band.  Our oeuvre has included some Red Shift  classics.

Nick Kahn originally learnt to play classical guitar and this led him to write some beautiful instrumental pieces performed together with Mick Daysh and Jackie White on flutes.  He has since gone on to write and perform fine songs, often accompanied by his daughters Anna on bass and Eleanor on guitar, and still by Mick Daysh on flute.

  Andy Vores was a prolific composer/song-writer on piano.  Having first been a rock drummer, his piano-playing was often frenetic.  In fact he sometimes played faster than his fingers could follow.  The results were wonderful, and very different from the songs the rest of us wrote on guitars.  He was also a showman and liked to organise large numbers of musicians, singers and even dancers on stage to help perform his creative complexities.  He went on from Prices to study music composition and then moved to the US , where he became a successful modern-classical composer and Chair of Composition, Theory and Music History at the Boston Conservatory.  http://andyvores.com/andyvoresbio.html

  Mick/Michael Daysh fluted with most of the above.  It is always good to find someone who plays a real musical instrument – more colours on the palette. Mick still flutes, but nowadays he also writes songs and sings, with guitar or keyboard and a band.  Mick also plays with electro-acoustic classical guitarist Chris Nash.

  Chris Nash went on from Prices to take a music degree and to record instrumental music with Andy Sandham.  He has also performed regularly in folk, rock and jazz bands. He currently partakes of an instrumental guitar duet, ‘Nash and Thompson’, playing jazz, acoustic and classical pieces (https://soundcloud.com/search?q=nash%20and%20thompson

  Paul Gateshill has never stopped writing and performing – and playing some great lead guitar (owing to my strumming for him for hours you understand).  He has also recorded two solo Albums/CDs  (search Spotify, Amazon, YouTube) and been an essential contributor to the four Albums/CD’s produced by my brother Ivor and myself, Ivor and Kevan Bundell.  

 

 

We three also all recorded an actual LP in 1976 called Presence, which is now available as a CD :

Details of our various albums – and some of our songs to listen to – can be found at www.bundellbros.co.uk .  I particularly recommend you have a listen to ‘Mr Mitchell’s Angel’.

Paul Gateshill, Ivor and Kevan Bundell, Chris Nash, Michael Daysh, Nick Kahn and Nick Manley are now regular performers at Tanglefest – an annual Summer Garden Party and Concert event which happens at my place in Curdridge.  2020’s Tanglefest was cancelled, but we created a Youtube version instead.  We may have to do the same this year.  Please send me an e-mail if you’d like to know the link or to be invited for the future. All old friends/acquaintances/Priceans and everyone else are very welcome.

Another performer at Tanglefest has been Martin Gateshill  – mentioned above as a friend of Dave Cummins and brother of Paul.  Although he never played at one of Price’s Folk Conerts, he has interesting things to report of earlier days :

 The very 1st electric band to come out of Prices was in 65 or 6. It featured me on Drums and I regret I can’t recall the names of the others. It was the creation of the incredible English teacher of the time, Mr Johnson. I think that was how I crossed paths with Dave and Tink a little later. The three of us formed a Trio called The Ash in 65/6 doing mainly The Who covers. I have a very scratchy recording of a couple of songs. Tink was lead guitar and vocals, he played a dreadful old Egmond guitar which cut his fingers to shreds the action was so high. Dave had a ‘catalogue’ Bass guitar and learned to play it as we went.

Between 1964 when we got started and 1968 we had written over 50 – 60 songs between us and did very few covers of any genre. Dave was easily the best and most creative musician of our cohort, a great friend and fellow traveller.

At that time [mid 60s] Dave and I were a Duo called Tog. I had an old Hoyer 12 string and Dave had a Hagstrom which I rescued. Neither of us knew anything about guitars at that time other than some were harder to play than others. How did I rescue it ? One weekend we were at Wickham at the home of a friend of a friend by the name of Frank Rumble. Frank produced the Hagstrom which had a huge body and really nice slim neck. Sadly the neck was completely snapped off just below the nut. I said I thought I could repair that and Frank said we could have it. I took it away to see what could be done. It was a perfect break, no material missing at all and would glue back almost invisibly. I did that, clamped it up using my dads tools and materials, left it for 24 hours, did a little cosmetic work and found it to be good as new. I handed it to Dave and the rest as they say, is history 😉

Nick Manley has more to say about the history of Dave’s famous Hagstrom :

I notice that the Hagstrom guitar is mentioned quite a bit in your scribing. I know some more of the story.  Dave gifted the guitar to one Steve Denholm in the late 1970’s, in the Red Shift days. He, Steve and John Cameron worked at Polygraphic, a printing firm in Titchfield. The guitar was again in a bad way and Steve renovated it once more, stripping the varnish off and rendering to a blond finish, and resetting the neck. Once again a lovely instrument. Steve let me borrow it for a recording session when we were in Surrey Sound studios. After that we drifted apart but I ran into him again a few years back at Titchfield folk club. He was playing a Martin and is now a very good bluesy/jazzy player and I had to ask if he still had the guitar.  Sadly no. He had given it to a friend who was learning to play, but he has lost contact with him. He said he would try and I am still waiting………..

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PS  Comments, corrections and additions to the above most welcome – kbundell@yahoo.co.uk

 

[1] Country Joe and the Fish’s anti Vietnam War anthem which begins ‘Give us an F ! . . .’

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Alan Glynne-Howell ( ? – 1989) – an appreciation.

   

I first encountered the formidable Mr Glynne-Howell at the too tender age of eleven as he attempted to teach us Latin.  In my case at least, he failed utterly.  In my first year final exam I was awarded a mark of three percent – one for writing ‘amo, amas, amat’, the other two for spelling my name correctly.

  He was a generous man.

 Mr Glynne-Howell was otherwise known to us as ‘Genghis’.  On the one hand this displayed our profound schoolboy ignorance, on the other it was unarguably appropriate.  He would bear down upon us, dark of gown and of physiognomy, take us by the cheek between finger and thumb, and shake us like rabbits; he would steady our face with one hand and slap us with the other, admonishing us to ‘Take it like a man’.  He would then extract his handkerchief from his pocket and fastidiously wipe his hands of our contamination.  This was not at all what we were used to, but we were far too young, and intimidated, to protest.

 And yet there was also humour.  ‘Don’t bray like an ass’ he would say as a victim struggled to translate some incomprehensible passage.  Or more particularly, to myself :   ‘Bundell, you are like an ape staring into space – you see everything, and comprehend – nothing.’

 He was right of course.

 Later on he also taught us ‘A’ Level Religious Studies, by which time we were  a good bit older, and he less intimidating.  Nonetheless, it was only many years later – after I had left school, after I had lived in India for a while, and after I was married to an Indian – that I came to some kind of an understanding of where Alan was coming from.

 He was coming from a world which no longer existed.  India gained its independence from the British Empire in 1947.  The Raj was finished.  Like many others of Anglo-Indian descent Alan, and his wife Tessa, were face with a decision as to where to build their future.  He had done well in an India ruled by the English language and its culture.  He had obtained both Bachelor’s and Master’s Degrees in English, from the Universities of Bombay and Benares respectively, and won a William Shakespeare Cup along the way.  He had trained as a teacher and then taught at the prestigious Church schools of Bishops High in Pune and the Cathedral School in Bombay.  He had taught the sons of Rajas, as well as the sons of other important members of the Hindu, Christian and Muslim communities.  But the world in which he had been brought up, and in which he had competed, was quickly fading – and England had always been referred to as home.

 In 1962 the Glynne-Howells decided, like other members of their family, to move to the UK.   Alan first taught at an independent girl’s school in St Ives, Cambridgeshire.  One wonders what the girls made of him – and he of them.  Presumably he did not require them to ‘Take it like a man’.   In 1965 he joined Price’s Grammar School for Boys in Fareham, Hampshire.  It was a rather traditional establishment, with something of the English public school about it, and was led by a Headmaster, Mr E.A.B. Poyner, of firm Christian convictions.  These characteristics would no doubt have helped Alan feel at home.

 However, this was the nineteen sixties and England, like India, had also changed, and was changing still.  At Price’s Alan was largely put to teaching Latin, obligatory in the first year, but never a greatly popular choice thereafter, and Religious Studies – of which he was Head – but again a minority pursuit beyond the statutory one class a week.   Meanwhile he was denied the opportunity of teaching his beloved English Literature.  I believe this may have been at least partly owing to a perception that Alan’s approach to the subject was rather old fashioned.  And so it no doubt was.  Yet Alan’s old fashioned erudition and use of the English language were glorious, and I for one have never recovered from them.

At the same time, outside of school, Alan suffered on occasions the prejudice and name-calling that those ‘of a dusky hue’, as Alan put it, had to endure in a provincial town at a time when non-white faces were not at all common.  This must have been particularly unpleasant for a man of Alan’s background and sensibilities.

 Another thing I understood from living in India was that Alan’s assaults upon our eleven year old cheeks were not in fact acts of aggression but rather of affection.  In India grown-ups commonly pinch the cheeks of children or give them a gentle slap while admonishing them for some minor misdemeanour, or indeed for none at all.  And the children grin back at them.

 And yet, as I recall, Alan was always rather serious about it.  He was fearsome of aspect (as he would have put it), and, often, it hurt.

 In fact, he was conflicted.  We were his pupils and therefore dear to him.  But we were also an ignorant and rather ordinary bunch of boys, from very middle or working class backgrounds.

  And above all, we were unwashed.

 Alan’s fastidious wiping of his hands after every contact was not merely a performance.  It was also a comment upon and a criticism of our personal washing habits.  No doubt small boys everywhere are among the least fragrant members of society.  However, Alan was also possessed of a particularly sensitive nose.  In India his pupils would have routinely bathed every morning.  In England in the 1960’s, before the general arrival of domestic showers, a bath once a week was more the norm.  Of course we were also obliged to take showers at school after PE and Games, but it was amazing how quickly boys could rush in and out of the shower room, and then climb back into clothes which had probably already been worn for the best part of a week.

 At some point in 1967 or ’68 Alan fell ill and was away from work for a term or more.  When he returned we were all shocked to see that his formerly coal black hair had turned quite white.  Unfortunately his health was never of the best in his later years, especially after he retired in 1975.

 Shortly before he retired Price’s became a sixth form college and there were not only boys about but also girls.  This gave rise to new opportunities for Alan to express himself in his characteristic and inimitable style.  Tony Johnson, then Head of English, tells the following tale :

 “A phrase that passed into the folk memory of staff at Price’s
College was his. Rounding a corner on his way to the staff room, he
reported to us that he had just seen two students in “amorous
juxtaposition”. Even to this day you have only to mention that
phrase to bring laughter to old colleagues who have met for lunch.”

It was my brother Ivor – also a pupil of Alan’s – who first began to visit Alan at home, and then I joined him.  This was when we first met Tessa.  By this time Alan had clearly forgotten, or chose to ignore, my achievements in his Latin class.   His conversation was always riddled with sage – I assume – remarks, quotes, and aphorisms in Latin.  Sometimes he would translate, but often-times he would not.  Fortunately there was more than enough of the same in English to give me some chance of joining in the conversation.

 Later on my wife and I visited, usually for afternoon tea, sometimes with our children.  Alan and Tessa would also come to tea with us.  I remember an occasion we visited when both Alan and Tessa were, by then, less nimble than they had once been.  My wife, in very Indian fashion, soon took over the serving of the food and tea and Alan and Tessa were obliged to be waited upon, as befitted their age and status.  Alan was flustered and embarrassed at being looked after in such a way in his own house, but at the same time I felt he was also moved by the touch of his old home and culture.

 Alan passed away at the very end of December 1989.  His memorial service was conducted by another of his former Price’s pupils, Peter Hancock.   We continued to have Tessa round for tea until she passed away in 2013.  In any case Alan is still often mentioned and in our minds.   It was a very special experience –  in a variety of ways –  to have had Alan as a teacher.  Although I understood, if not quite nothing, only a limited amount of what he might have taught me, it was a gift to have known him.

 Kevan Bundell
(Price’s 1966 – 73)

Revised Version (so to speak) Feb. 2014

The original posting of this Appreciation can be found on the web site of the Society of Old Priceans at : http://www.societyofoldpriceans.co.uk/Alan_Glynne-Howell.htm

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A further appreciation of Allan Glynne-Howell, written in response to my Appreciation (which you should read first), by my fellow former Pricean and classmate, Michael Daysh.

 AGH was one of very few teachers for whom I had great respect. He was a pearl before a load of swines, and I wonder what made such a man want to teach us. Not that I am complaining, but you would have thought that he would have taught in a posh school, where his classical talents would have been appreciated.

 I do give him a thought occasionally, because he was influential and had my respect. I would just tell you a few things I recall:

 Blood red ink in his fountain pen, which he used to write in a masterful, flowing sort of a way. It was a bit like he was painting with his pen. His signature influenced mine, because he always put two dots under his name. Somehow the two dots conveyed authority. My dots have become a line, but with the same intention.

 I took to Latin myself, and failed O level only because the criminally incompetent *****  took over. He (A G-H) was a good Latin teacher, and it’s now part of my kids’ “take the piss out of father” routine to imitate me explaining the meaning of an English word by reference to the Latin derivation. It helped greatly with French and Spanish too. That is in fact Allan’s lasting legacy to me.

 He did teach English at some point. I definitely know he taught me (and therefore you, I assume) because I recall him managing to make Shakespeare quite interesting. Maybe he was just standing in.

 He was one of the few teachers who always wore his gown, and he would have looked better swaying through the cloisters of some ancient public school, rather than the smelly corridors of Price’s. It was part of his public persona, and added to his considerable gravitas. I now realise that the best teachers are great actors, but it works: We would never have mucked around with him like we did with ******, for example.

 The horrible day when somebody had written “Genghis” on the blackboard. He walked in and walked straight out again. I am sure that he took it as a racist insult, and I am sure that it was meant as such. ****** took the blame, but I don’t think it was him at all. I don’t know who it was. I do know that most of us were shocked both by the racism (although we did naively use abusive terminology, I must admit) and by AGH’s reaction. We just didn’t understand about any of that in our 99.9999% white middle class world.

His very Indian way of leaving a long gap before the end of a sentence. I’ll mimic it next time I ……….. see you. It is a good teaching technique. My lecturer at college did the same. It makes you think about how the sentence should …….. end.

 I am glad that others remember him fondly. I always say you only die when you’re forgotten, so he’s got a good few years left!

 Michael Daysh.

Feb 2011.