Rarities of the National Balkan Ensemble (a.k.a. TEB) and the Third Ear Band in the Web!

A bootleg TEB compilation is now available in the Web through a very interesting blog titled “Time Has Told Me” (from a Nick Drake’s song). It proposes:

- three tracks recorded by the National Balkan Ensemble, a band Sweeney and Minns formed just before TEB in 1968 to record some tracks for English television probably with Ron Geesin (last year I have recalled it in my Web site http://www.lucaferrari.net and soon I will post here an English translation of it…);

- two tracks by Third Ear Band taken from a “Top Gear” (the famous BBC radio programme conducted by John Peel) performance on July 27^th, 1969 (strangely it’s  been lost a third track – “Ghetto Raga” - recorded that day…);

- one TEB track taken from the well-known live in the studio “Beat Club” German TV programme (the unrealized “Hyde Park Raga”), circulating on the Web as a video;

- three TEB tracks from “Sound of ‘70” radio programme conducted by John Peel on January 17^th, 1971 (for a detailed description see my post about “The Dragon Wakes” projected record…).

Here is the track-list:
1. "Cosmic Trip"
2. "Jason's Trip"
3. "Devil Weed"
4. "Hyde Park Raga"
5. "Druid"
6. "Hyde Park Raga"
7. "Water"
8. "Eternity in D"
9. "Druid (One)"

The good quality of the sound, expecially for the radio recordings, make this download a real must for any TEB fan. It’s a real shame that EMI (and BBC) never had the idea to produce an official compilation of all the radio recordings (with the apparently lost “Top Gear” radio session on January 25^th, 1972, produced by John Muir, where a ‘strange’ TEB line-up with Denim Bridges, Simon House, Michael Merchant and Peter Pavli recorded just two tracks – “Air” and “I The Key” from “Magus”…).

[Note: because in 2012 the original links was expired, I've uploaded the tracks on the Archive in the free download tracks section: so go back at the home page and scroll on the right culumn]

no©2009 Luca Ferrari

updated on January 4th, 2013