I have certainly enjoyed writing this story, not only for the memories it has revived, but also for the vast amount which I have learned about Web design and programming. I have pulled all the information together into what I hope is an enjoyable and informative multimedia experience (a what?).
If you click on any of the photographs, you will see a larger version, and if you want a print-quality copy, let me know and I'll sent you one. If you click on any of the underlined song titles, you'll be able to download them and listen to them. If you need any help with this, then visit my Frequently Asked Questions () page.
In true Rock Family Tree style, I have done one of my own, which you can see by clicking here.
Don't expect CD quality from the early recordings, in fact far from it. Think of them more as historical documents, like old black and white photographs. Anyway, my story starts in Armagh, back in the 1960s.
I still have the tape recorder and some of the recordings, but the machine no longer works, so until I fix it or get another one, I can't play them. As far as I know, it is the only existing recording of my Dad playing the violin, so I hope to gain access to it sometime and present it here.
My own first public performance was fairly embarassing affair. Harry Irwin and I had been playing guitars together for a while, though never in public. We were invited to be the support act to Bernie McWilliam's group, The Maff (as in: Get the Maff, best spoken in a broad Armagh accent!). We roped in big Tommy Galbraith to play drums and off we went. In retrospect, we were completely unprepared and unaware of the discipline needed to perform live in front of an audience. The only song I remember playing is The Move's appropriately titled Night of Fear. The fact that we had never used proper electric guitars or amplification before didn't help. This proved to be a salutary lesson in the benefits of practice and rehearsal. I swore never to let that happen again, and I didn't.
Next came The Roadrunners, consisting of Harry Irwin, Bernie Keay and me, playing acoustic guitars and singing in close harmony (yes, really). Our one-and-only public outing was at a school concert in the Convent. We performed Where have all the flowers gone (Pete Seeger), All I really wanna do (Dylan, via The Byrds) and Universal Soldier (Buffy St Marie, via Donovan). The audience sang along and the adrenalin rush of performing live had begun for me. I did the singing on Universal Soldier, and how I ever remembered all those verses, I don't know. I've never been good at learning words; Indeed, at school, having to learn poems by heart and then recite them was something I really hated. It certainly destroyed any possibility of getting any pleasure from the poetry itself. No photographs or recordings of the Roadrunners survive. In those days, tapes simply got re-recorded over and over again, and we'd always be able to do a better recording tomorrow, wouldn't we(?).
By the mid/late 60s I had discovered the blues, courtesy of John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, whose ethereal sound was a complete contrast to the prevailing pop sounds.
The rest of my friends and the nation soon caught up, what with the emergence of Led Zeppelin, etc., and the whole progressive/underground scene.
In this photograph you can see Michael Doyle, Bernie Keay and me proudly showing off some of our favourite albums of the time.
Here's another one of us in artistic pose. Note the side-lighting, a style borrowed from the cover of the With the Beatles album.
Eventually I acquired an electric guitar from that wonderful Aladdin's cave, Smithfield Market, in Belfast. It had as much chrome as a 1950s Cadillac, more pickups and controls than you would ever want, and it weighed a ton!
It's the one I'm playing in this shot, which was actually taken backstage at a Freedom From Hunger concert in Armagh Technical School by a local journalist. Yes, we actually featured in the Armagh Observer! At this stage we consisted of Harry Irwin (bass), Bernie Keay (drums), Mick Cullen (vocals) and me (guitar).
I'm not sure where we got the name Prester John from for the group. I suppose it just sounded good. (According to www.encyclopedia.com he was a legendary Christian priest and king who ruled over a vast, wealthy empire in either Asia or Africa in the 12th century. I'm sure we didn't know that back in 1968, but it's amazing what you can find out with the click of a mouse these days.) The name actually started out as Prester John and the Deep Sea Blues, but that was a bit too long and a bit corny, so it soon got shortened.
Money and hence equipment were always in short supply, so we had a drum-kit borrowed from Johnny Shaw, a guitar amplifier borrowed from Michael Doyle's brother-in-law, Barry, and a home-made bass amplifier and speaker cabinet. Home-made it might have been, but it had the best psychedelic speaker cover you ever saw, painted by budding artist Michael Conway, and here it is (or should I say "Its here!").
The first Prester John recording I have included is , our only original composition, which was recorded in the "studio," namely my Dad's garage. If you listen carefully at the end you'll hear Harry Mcavinchey saying "very good!" The garage was a popular gathering place on a Friday night before we all headed up the town for the evening. This is a photograph of many of us who used to hang about together then.
Prester John wasn't just a garage band, though. Occasionally we got all the gear out into the garden for open-air rehearsals. The neighbours were very tolerant and never seemed to complain. I don't remember how many real public performances we actually did, but not that many. They were invariably school and/or Freedom From Hunger concerts, and having the front row full of our friends always helped the atmosphere. You can hear them in the next recording, . The drum-kit started falling apart during this number, and Liam Digby was crawling around trying to fix it as we played. Listen out for Michael Doyle shouting "Get off the stage, Digger!"
Next is our interpretation of Fleetwood Mac's , followed by The Cream's . It must have taken Micky Cullen's voice a week to recover after this recording! Also noticable on this track is Bernie Keay's excellent drumming, a talent which he seemed to acquire from nowhere. The final Prester John recording is a live version of the Beatles' , again with enthusiastic contributions from the audience (chief cheerleader Michael Doyle).
Soon, however, it was time for me to leave Armagh and head for the big city lights of Belfast, and Queen's University. For a while I was too busy studying (oh yes?) and enjoying student life to get involved in playing any live music. My diary does have some entries for late 1969 concerning a nameless group consisting of me on guitar, Micky Cullen on vocals, Paul Kerr on bass, and his brother Desy Kerr on drums. I have visions of rehearsing in some church hall or other in Abbey Street, with Paul Kerr and me playing extended Cream-style improvisations, which must have been quite tedious, but seemed to go down well enough. I think we played live at a Christmas concert at the Youth Club.
The Kerr brothers, in particular Paul, will feature again in this story, but meanwhile, let's get off down the motorway to Belfast.