July 2026
I was probably nine years old when I joined the choir at Bingley Holy Trinity CofE church. This would be 1962. I have no idea why I joined, though I think my parents were going through a 'perhaps we should be church-goers' sort of phase in their lives. My dad became a sidesman and helped with the Church Lads Brigade. I'm not sure what my mum did, but I'm sure she was involved. She was certainly good at ironing 'ruffs' - the things that the choir boys had around their necks.
I suppose the choir was my first conscious introduction to music and I'm really grateful for what it gave me. I learned the basics of music and I was introduced to the likes of Tallis, Byrd, Purcell and Gibbons. I attended a couple of Church of England RSCM choir courses and sang in some great cathedrals. I couldn't read music really, but I knew about crotchets and minims and I knew what a clef is.
My career as a chorister lasted 3 or 4 years.
In the mid to late 60s electric organs became quite popular. My Auntie Joan and Uncle Jack had a Farfisa Organ in their boarding house in Morecambe. Farfisa was the distinctive organ sound of Pink Floyd at that time. We got a Selmer, possibly at my request - a 2 manual organ with an octave of bass pedals. I went to Thornaby for lessons, but it really wasn't what I wanted - I wanted to sound like Steve Winwood or Richard Wright. They were teaching me how to play in a Working Men's Club or pub. They had me playing 'I do like to be beside the seaside'. I think I had 6 lessons over a period of 6 weeks. I did learn about chords and chord inversions though. Some of it did stick.
In 1969 I was 16 years old and I loved rock/pop/progressive music. Some of it, anyway. What I thought of as 'the good stuff'. We lived in Middlesbrough at the time. With friends I would regularly go to Newcastle City Hall, Redcar Jazz Club, Billingham Forum, Thornaby Pavillion etc. to see the up and coming acts of the time - Pink Floyd, Traffic, The Nice, Jethro Tull, The Strawbs, Yes, King Crimson, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Incredible String Band etc. I remember that I had a small reel to reel tape recorder that I used to record radio programmes on - a highlight recording being Traffic playing live on Radio 1. The tape recorder and tapes were unfortunately lost many years ago.
Throughout this period, my magazine of choice was Beat Instrumental. Saturday mornings often involved a walk into town (Middlesbrough) and included a visit to Alan Fearnley's record shop on Linthorpe Road. I was a happy chap.
I think it was about this time that I acquired a guitar and started trying to play it. The first hurdle was trying to tune it - I didn't have a 'good ear', I suppose. And pitch pipes weren't easy. However, I persisted and started to learn some basic chords. By the time I was 19 or 20 I was making some progress and it was probably about that time that I bought my Yamaha FG200 from Harker and Haworth in Morecambe. Unfortunately, I wasn't very good at working out the chords for the songs I liked. However, a side benefit of this was that I started writing my own songs that were (in my opinion) a bit like the songs that I really wanted to play.
I was about 21 when I started playing and writing songs with Bob Clark. Bob was a tall American chap who had done Arabic with Martin. He was about 10 years older than me and lived in Micklethwaite, Bingley with his wife, Sue. Bob and his Martin D28 guitar. He played well - and he could sing harmonies and clever stuff like that. I still didn't have a 'good ear', so harmonies were a struggle for me. Over a few years we wrote a few nice songs and recorded them on his 4 track reel to reel tape recorder. Somewhere there is a green cassette with those songs. At some point during this period, Bob set me up to play at some event at Leeds University. I was terrified, but nevertheless I played a set of my own songs to a large room full of students. Fortunately, a touch of class was added to my performance by Michele accompanying me on the violin. And I was only one of the acts amongst a few others.
Playing with Bob stopped when I got married in 1977 and we moved to Lancaster.
In Lancaster Michele and I played with Tony Riden. At the time, Tony worked at Heysham High School with Michele. He was a very good guitarist and wrote some lovely songs. A 'highlight' of this period was performing on Lancaster Moor Hospital radio. Lancaster Moor was the local psychiatric hospital. What the patients made of it, we'll never know. We also played at the Folk Club at Yorkshire House pub in Lancaster. Because Tony was a much better guitarist than me, I bought an Eko acoustic bass and proceeded to be not very good on that as well.
Also during this period (1977-1984) Michele and I began playing and singing with our great friend, Alan Armstrong. Alan was a colleague at St Cuthbert Mayne High School in Preston. Over the years we had a good time, wrote some very silly songs and held a number of 'Folk Nights' for the school students. These proved very popular.
I think that by then I knew that I would never be a proper amateur musician. I never had the staying power and I wasn't naturally gifted - at music, anyway. I didn't like the limelight either. However, I did like picking up the guitar, I liked playing with others and I did like writing songs. I even enjoyed a plonk on the piano and I can sing in tune (once I get the right starting note). At various times over the past fifty years or so I've thought that I should really knuckle down and learn properly. But it never happened. However, my guitar playing may have its limitations, but I know what my limitations are and I can generally do what I want to do.
In the mid 1990s I started writing and playing with Richard Varey, a great songwriter and guitar player. For me, Richard proved inspiring. We played well together and that made me feel like I could actually play the guitar. For the next 25 years or so Richard and I met on Thursday evenings. We drank, wrote, played and drank. And we had a great time.
At some point in the 1990s I bought a Yamaha MD4 from Promenade Music in Morecambe - a 4 track minidisc recorder - and I started recording. For the first time I was able to multi-track and produce something acceptable. Shortly after that recording on a PC became possible. Phil Boocock built me a fast PC and I bought Cubase. Evenings were spent in the attic alone with my guitar, PC and Cubase - we were very happy together too.
Recordings of our songs (John Allen & Richard Varey), as well as my songs, can be found on Soundcloud.com and Audio.com. A free account has a limited amount of storage and comes with advertising. I have a number of free accounts and use 3 of them for our songs. The best way of playing the song recordings is probably to use the playlists embedded in this website - I think this may avoid the advertising.
The Playlist
This is the original Soundcloud account that I used. At the time I had a website 'www.recordiola.com' - hence soundcloud.com/recordiola. The recordings are of variable quality and were made from the mid 1990's to 2025. I do like LoFi.
The original soundcloud site has 42 songs (mp3s) and is here: soundcloud.com/recordiola
The original soundcloud playlist i.e. 'The Playlist' is here: The Playlist
Remasters Playlist
Many of the songs on 'The Playlist' had only been saved in MP3 format, so I recently attempted to remaster all of the songs. I loaded the best audio format of the songs that I had into Logic Pro and then 'mastered' them. This was done with the help of the Logic Pro Mastering Assistant, together with a few tweaks of my own. The 'Remasters Playlist' has most of the resulting tracks.
Remastered tracks from the original playlist on Soundcloud: soundcloud.com/jalodrome
Remasters playlist: Jalodrome Remasters Playlist
Jalodrome Music
From 2026 onwards, new recordings will be kept on the Jalodrome Music Soundcloud account.
Jalodrome Music is on Soundcloud here: soundcloud.com/jalodrome-music
Jalodrome Music Playlist is here: Jalodrome Music Playlist
Audio.com
I've also put the recordings on Audio.com
Jalodrome on Audio.com is here: audio.com/jalodrome
Jalodrome Playlist (or Collection) on Audio.com is here: Jalodrome Collection on Audio.com
