After the attempt with my old book to make a complete list of TEB concerts and other events in a day-by-day chronology, I try here again it updating the list with some new sources. It is obvious that all these dates are just that documented. These informations have to be related to the line-ups chronology issued in another page of this archive (read at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2010/01/third-ear-band-visual-line-ups_28.html).
Any contribution will be very appreciated.
[Note that this is the part one of two related to the period 1966-1971. The second part (from 1972 to 2019) is available at the page http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2010/07/teb-day-by-day-chronology-1972-2011.html
1966
June
18th - The Royal Albert Hall (London)“A New Moon of Carnival of Poetry in the Round”
Considered the birth of English underground, this exhibition involved the most active, alternative poets of that period – Pete Brown, Michael Horowitz, Bob Cobbing among the others and musicians as like Cornelius Cardew and John Renbourn (note that this 'celebration' was a sort of sequel of the very first poetry meeting organized the year before, in August 1965 (at the Royal Albert Hall), with Ginsberg, Corso, Horowitz, Mitchell, Fainlight and others, documented by film maker Pete Whitehead in "Wholly Communion" short film (watch it on YouTube at http://www.ubu.com/film/whitehead_wholly.html).
During this new celebration of the moon, among these “who wish to preserve their freedom by remaining nameless” (as said in the promotional leaflet) also the Giant Sun Trolley (a trio of "musical animation" put together by Dave Tomlin, on guitar, violin, sax and vocals, with Glen Sweeney on percussion and Roger Bunn on bass...).
Sweeney, coming from experiences in skiffle and jazz bands (as THE ANACONDAS - read at https://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2023/10/the-anacondas-skiffle-group-stone-age.html - and Sounds Nova), besides some unsuccessful R&B groups, during 1966 had mostly strolled from a place to another with the only main to sparing himself the trouble of working.
Road manager Steve Pank remembered in 2004: "Glen, then a jazz drummer, had an idea for a free jazz group with a light show and poetry, and he visualised that this could produce a commercially successful record. He advertised in the "Melody Maker" for musicians and among those whose applied were Dick Daden, an ex army trombone player who had worked commercially in circus bands, a tenor saxophone player of Russian descent called Jan Diakov, and a trumpet player whose name was Steve Pank.
Sounds Nova rehearsed upstairs in a public house in Barons Court, called the Barons Arms, later called the Nashville. Glen’s partner Carolyn read poems by the Beat poets, and a primitive lighting system flashed for effect. This band still existed in 1966 when a newspaper called the "International Times" appeared, describing itself as an underground newspaper".
Carolyn Looker remembered in April 2012 that period: "Both Glen and I was working at Liberty's in Regent Street. Glen was doing modern furniture display. He had his drumkit in the storeroom where he would hide and practice his drumming (!) which at the time was modern jazz...".
Sweeney, coming from experiences in skiffle and jazz bands (as THE ANACONDAS - read at https://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2023/10/the-anacondas-skiffle-group-stone-age.html - and Sounds Nova), besides some unsuccessful R&B groups, during 1966 had mostly strolled from a place to another with the only main to sparing himself the trouble of working.
Road manager Steve Pank remembered in 2004: "Glen, then a jazz drummer, had an idea for a free jazz group with a light show and poetry, and he visualised that this could produce a commercially successful record. He advertised in the "Melody Maker" for musicians and among those whose applied were Dick Daden, an ex army trombone player who had worked commercially in circus bands, a tenor saxophone player of Russian descent called Jan Diakov, and a trumpet player whose name was Steve Pank.
Sounds Nova rehearsed upstairs in a public house in Barons Court, called the Barons Arms, later called the Nashville. Glen’s partner Carolyn read poems by the Beat poets, and a primitive lighting system flashed for effect. This band still existed in 1966 when a newspaper called the "International Times" appeared, describing itself as an underground newspaper".
Carolyn Looker remembered in April 2012 that period: "Both Glen and I was working at Liberty's in Regent Street. Glen was doing modern furniture display. He had his drumkit in the storeroom where he would hide and practice his drumming (!) which at the time was modern jazz...".
December
23th - UFO Club (London)
"UFO presents Night Tripper"
Opening of the UFO Club, the place of the English underground.
Giant Sun Trolley with The Pink Floyd.
Sweeney: "A guy I met a long time before, a guy called Dave Tomlin, who used to play sax and was known as an ace guy - he'd taken a lot of drugs and dropped out. I found a note in my door saying "Meet me at the club at 12.00 o'clock". At the time I just had a basic bass drum, snare - so I took a chance, call a cab and went down there - and this was the opening of the UFO Club".
Steve Pank (2004): "(...) Around this time, Glen met Dave Tomlin, a new wave [free jazz] player who played tenor and soprano saxophone and flute. Dave was well respected on the jazz scene and had led jazz groups including such people as Jack Bruce of the Cream and John Hiseman, later of Coliseum. He had also played on a tour supporting Ornette Coleman".
After some experiences in old-time jazz band (as Bob Willis and his Storyville Jazzmen), during the Fifties (some tracks recorded in 1959 - read here at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2012/06/ive-left-my-heart-in-new-orleans-dawn.html), Dave Tomlin had played and recorded during 1965 with the Mike Taylor Quartet (a record for EMI titled "Pendulum" released in 1966 - read an article in this archive at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2012/07/dave-tomlins-pendulum-real-cameo-in-his.html), making some concerts (among them, infact, that as supporter of Ornette Coleman at the Croydon's Fairfield Hall on August 29th, 1965).
Opening of the UFO Club, the place of the English underground.
Giant Sun Trolley with The Pink Floyd.
Sweeney: "A guy I met a long time before, a guy called Dave Tomlin, who used to play sax and was known as an ace guy - he'd taken a lot of drugs and dropped out. I found a note in my door saying "Meet me at the club at 12.00 o'clock". At the time I just had a basic bass drum, snare - so I took a chance, call a cab and went down there - and this was the opening of the UFO Club".
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| The UFO Club |
After some experiences in old-time jazz band (as Bob Willis and his Storyville Jazzmen), during the Fifties (some tracks recorded in 1959 - read here at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2012/06/ive-left-my-heart-in-new-orleans-dawn.html), Dave Tomlin had played and recorded during 1965 with the Mike Taylor Quartet (a record for EMI titled "Pendulum" released in 1966 - read an article in this archive at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2012/07/dave-tomlins-pendulum-real-cameo-in-his.html), making some concerts (among them, infact, that as supporter of Ornette Coleman at the Croydon's Fairfield Hall on August 29th, 1965).
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| Membership card for UFO and London Free School members. |
The UFO Club was John Hopkins' dream turned into reality. "Hoppy" to friends and Joe Boyd, who thanks to the management skills of Jim Haynes (who had founded months before the first Penguin Bookshop in Edimburgh and was managing the Traverse Theatre as well) succeeded on opening in order to get a financial support to IT, International Times, that will be quite soon the cult weekly magazine of the English youth.
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| John Hopkins in 1967. |
"What we do now?", asked that night an anxious Sweeney to the friend. "So I waited", he remembered. "I was getting really paranoid. There were hundreds of people down there. It was all happening. There was me, a bass player called Roger Bunn, who was another lunatic, and Dave: we marched out in the middle of the room amidst hundreds people and started playing!".
Sweeeny was surprised by the way Tomlin was playing, made mostly repetitions and conformed himself quickly. "I thought: 'This is the gig I'm looking for. I can handle this!'".
That night Sweeney and Tomlin played two or three hours and got a week hire for every thursday night which would lasted until the closing of the club, the year after...
About the beginning of The Giant Sun Trolley, road manager Steve Pank remembered in 2004: "Hoppy asked Dave Tomlin to play there. Dave asked Glen to accompany him and the free jazz duo they formed was called The Giant Sun Trolley. UFO was a mixed media event with light shows, film clips, poets and bands. It was also a launching platform for bands such as the Pink Floyd and the Soft Machine".
Remembering the meeting with Dave Tomlin in another interview, Sweeney said: "Soon after this, I met Dave Tomlin, a multi-instrumentalist who, it seemed to me, had become a kind of musical guru. And he turned me on to an aspect of music that I had long been searching for. He was the first guy I had ever met who used his music to influence people, to turn them on, or freak them out. When I used to play with Dave's group, the Sun Trolley, at UFO club, just two or three of us would take on up to two thousand people, with no amplifiers or anything - and Dave could get them all with him and do incredible things to their heads. I had never seen music used that way before." ("Gandalf's Garden" number 4, 1969, interviewed by Muz Murray).
Roger Bunn (1942-2005) reminded in a video of 2004 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOgzb6Ym84Q) the early days at the UFO Club, talking about the GST as "my band": "We used to arrive here at 9 o'clock in the evening, watch the Floyd, watch the bands, and then at 4 o'clock we used to come on and play three pieces of avantgarde jazz... I played just one note on bass and we continued for a couple of hours and sometimes... Until about six o'clock in the morning we strolled out of here, through out our instruments into the... and had back to some acid fields environment at Ladbroke Grove or Portobello Road...".
An original ad published by International Times (I.T.), the magazine of the English undergound
About the beginning of The Giant Sun Trolley, road manager Steve Pank remembered in 2004: "Hoppy asked Dave Tomlin to play there. Dave asked Glen to accompany him and the free jazz duo they formed was called The Giant Sun Trolley. UFO was a mixed media event with light shows, film clips, poets and bands. It was also a launching platform for bands such as the Pink Floyd and the Soft Machine".
Roger Bunn (1942-2005) reminded in a video of 2004 (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOgzb6Ym84Q) the early days at the UFO Club, talking about the GST as "my band": "We used to arrive here at 9 o'clock in the evening, watch the Floyd, watch the bands, and then at 4 o'clock we used to come on and play three pieces of avantgarde jazz... I played just one note on bass and we continued for a couple of hours and sometimes... Until about six o'clock in the morning we strolled out of here, through out our instruments into the... and had back to some acid fields environment at Ladbroke Grove or Portobello Road...".
1967
January
13th - UFO Club (London)
The Giant Sun Trolley with the Pink Floyd
At the UFO the Giant Sun Trolley used to play at dawn. One of the piece composed by Tomlin in that period was titled "Eternity in D" (read the lyrics at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2009/12/eternity-in-d-ii.html) and it was thought in a way to let the musicians play the same note as long as they could, or until the club was empty, at least. And it was not too difficult, said ironically Sweeney: "Go on about 4 am and the idea - which I think was in Hoppy's mind - was that we would clear the club, you see! Once we went on at 3 am and we played two notes until 7 am. It was absolutely mind blowing. You see, these cats would wake up and hear these two notes going and then would go back to sleep and then wake up and these two notes would still be blowing".
On "IT" n. 6 (January 1967), this evening was launched as an "Ultra International Times Event", "utilising The Gian Sun Trolley with Dave Tomlin improvising to Government Propaganda"...
20th - UFO Club (London)
A replica of the January 13th event.
February
On "IT" n. 6 (January 1967), this evening was launched as an "Ultra International Times Event", "utilising The Gian Sun Trolley with Dave Tomlin improvising to Government Propaganda"...
20th - UFO Club (London)
A replica of the January 13th event.
February
Giant Sun Trolley with the Soft Machine
March
11th – Whitehall (London)
“The Death Transfiguration of IT”
?th – ICA-Institute of Contemporary Arts (London)
"Destruction in Art Symposium"
At this jazz players jam session, in a 'supergroup' with Mal Dean (trumpet), Rab Spall (violin), Evan Parker and George Khan (sax), Kevin Ayers (bass), John Stevens, Laurie Allan and Robert Wyatt (drums), took part also Tomlin on sax and Sweeney on drums.
Evan Parker remembered: "I never forget the moment when Glen Sweeney, during the concert said to me: 'Jazz is dead and we are the gravediggers". It was the only time when I played with four drummers. It was funny, a very funny evening".
April
7th - UFO Club (London)
Giant Sun Trolley with the Soft Machine
April
Giant Sun Trolley with the Soft Machine
13th – UFO Club (London)
29th – Alexandra Palace (London)
“14th Hour Technicolor Dream”
One of the last concert of Giant Sun Trolley, during the most important event of the English (and European) underground. It has been written so much on this great gig, where the best groups of the English scene was involved (Pink Floyd, Soft Machine, Arthur Brown...), in order to talk over it again. A special issue on the event was published by IT on 28/04/1967 (vol. 1 issue 12) and it is available at http://www.internationaltimes.it/archive/index.php?year=1967&volume=IT-Volume-1&issue=12
Also a DVD about it (title: "A Technicolor Dream") has been edited in 2008 (by Eagle Visions), with an interview with Dave Tomlin.
The nostalgia which always goes with the memory of the event is shaken by a laconic Sweeney that said in 1990: "We didn't do much. We just got stoned and moodied about".
A curiosity on the event is that the Giant Sun Trolley was involved also some hours before the beginning to sell tickets in the street. "IT" reported it some days before:
The nostalgia which always goes with the memory of the event is shaken by a laconic Sweeney that said in 1990: "We didn't do much. We just got stoned and moodied about".
A curiosity on the event is that the Giant Sun Trolley was involved also some hours before the beginning to sell tickets in the street. "IT" reported it some days before:
"Note for all Insomniacs
Forget to get your Dream ticket? Be cool. Be at Earl’s Court Station at 7.30 on Saturday. The Sun Trolley and Tony Scott’s will to unfold envelop you wit music and movement and tickets. At eight, the scene will go underground to Piccadilly. Be there. Join in the swirl. Then to Kings Cross at 8.30 and at 9.00 – it’s early bedtime and Dream away to the Palace".
Forget to get your Dream ticket? Be cool. Be at Earl’s Court Station at 7.30 on Saturday. The Sun Trolley and Tony Scott’s will to unfold envelop you wit music and movement and tickets. At eight, the scene will go underground to Piccadilly. Be there. Join in the swirl. Then to Kings Cross at 8.30 and at 9.00 – it’s early bedtime and Dream away to the Palace".
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The official original poster. |
May
2nd - Kensington Gardens (London)
Another Giant Sun Trolley guerrilla event. “A Drummer and a Horn player blow to a crowd of sixty to a hundred people for around an hour, until they are stopped by an old Park Fuzz”, reported "IT".
A transcription of the tape recording is available on the magazine (“Noh Playing in the Park”, vol. 1 issue 13 May 19th 1967 page. 7) at http://www.internationaltimes.it/archive/index.php?year=1967&volume=IT-Volume-1&issue=13&item=IT_1967-05-19_B-IT-Volume-1_Iss-13_007
Also a recollection of this event has been written by Tomlin in his book "Tales from the Embassy" - read it at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2010/03/first-part-of-excerpts-from-tale-from.html
Talking with jazz journalist Duncan Heining ("Jazzwise" magazine, Dec. 2007-Jan.2008) the same Tomlin remembered: “After playing with Mike [jazz piano player Mike Taylor], I would play anything. It got very wild. I’d do all sort of things. It didn’t matter what I played so long as I didn’t stop. I’d just make noises and sounds – Albert Ayler, it was moving into that. We used to do guerrilla music things. Like we’d go to Kensington Gardens. There’s a bandstand there and we’d have the instruments in bags, so no-one could see and we’d get them out and see how long we could play before the police or park wardens would turn up. It was a happening which meant you couldn’t tell anyone. It had to be spontaneous...”.
A similar guerrilla event happened in Oxford when Tomlin was arrested by police:
“In Oxford one time, I was arrested and put in a cell and eventually John ‘Hoppy’ Hopkins came along. He was the editor of International Times and said “We’re going to do an article about this”. The sergeant at the desk his name was Hilter and Hoppy said to him: “We can do it two ways. Either we can say the Oxford Constabulary were very helpful and treated everybody very nicely. We don’t want to mention Gestapo do we and not only that if we mention names typographical errors occur very easily…”. So they let me out. Walking back, I thought, shit why am I getting involved with the police? Why do they hate me so much? And I realised it wasn’t me, It was my fucking saxophone because there’s not a more bolshie instrument on the planet. So, I decided to take up the violin instead”. ("Jazzwise" magazine, Dec. 2007-Jan. 2008 interviewed by Duncan Heining)
12th – UFO Club (London)
Giant Sun Trolley with Procol Harum and Graham Bond
13th - "Evening Standard" article about Dave Tomlin with a quotation of the Giant Sun Trolley
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| The original flyer (cortesy of Glen Sweeney Estate). |
The invitation typed in coloured tissue-paper said: "The Giant Sun Trolley will devise music at speakers corner on sunday may 14, '67 from 3 o' clock til arrival of opposition then a procession through Hyde Park".
Hidden behind the gate of the Speaker's Corner, Sweeney and Tomlin waited for the policemen playing their music.
"In Hyde Park music was banned, so The Sun Trolley captured the small bandstand and played until the park police arrived", remembered Sweeney. "Then the fun would begin. One policeman would be sent to find the keys to the bandstand gate while the others demanded we stop playing. "No music in the park" they would shout. "What about the birds?" we would say. Eventually to our delight the local newspaper read "Police ban birdsong in the park". We felt we had won a victory".
19th – UFO Club (London) Giant Sun Trolley with Tomorrow, Arthur Brown etc.
26th – UFO Club (London) "Heroic return of Dave Tomlin & The Giant Sun Trolley" ("IT" announcement) with The People Show and The Move.
June
2nd - UFO Club (London)
Hydrogen Jukebox with Pink Floyd, Mantra, Carol Mann and Giant Sun Trolley
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| A rare photo of The Hydrogen Jukebox on stage (photo courtesy Glen Sweeney). |
Giant Sun Trolley with Procol Harum and The Smoke
A classic I.T. page with the UFO ad announcing concerts of Hydrogen Jukebox and Giant Sun Trolley
16th - UFO Club (London)
Giant Sun Trolley with Soft Machine and Arthur Brown - "All night trip"
On "IT" issue 15 vol. 1 (March 16th 1967) an article on Dave Tomlin - with a photo by David Redom - about a process (read at http://www.internationaltimes.it/archive/index.php?year=1967&volume=IT-Volume-1&issue=15&item=IT_1967-06-16_B-IT-Volume-1_Iss-15_002).
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Hugh Nolan, writing about the scene at UFO Club, quotes the Hydrogen Jukebox...
"New Departures"
The Giant Sun Trolley with, among the others, Davy Graham, Pete Brown and Cornelius Cardew.
A funny memory of Carolyn Looker about a GST concert (April 2012): "[There was] A dog howling to Dave's sax. Total 15 minutes of silence from the two, then a spaced out kid tried to bang on Glen's drum. Glen hit him with D stick - said it was Zen - kid remained far from that".
The memories about the howling dog bring Tomlin at the origins of Giant Sun Trolley:
“The first gig was at the Marquee. I had a lady playing Bach cantatas and this African, Bongo Louie, playing bongos. I played soprano saxophone and I’d met this dog that used to come down the Free School and I used to practise on him and he would sit in front of me and howl. It was so musical and beautiful, and I had the dog up on the stage and I was playing and the dog was howling and the Bach cantatas and Bongo Louie was bongoning. That was my first gig with the Sun Trolley. We never knew what we were going to do till we got up there. Some nights I’d play just one note the whole gig. Next week I’d play two notes and wow. Two notes after you’d just been playing one!”.
(from "Jazzwise" magazine, Dec. 2007-Jan. 2008, interviewed by Duncan Heining)
August
The Hydrogen Jukebox with Family and Eric Burdon & the New Animals "till dawn"...
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| The original "IT" page with the UFO ad (July 2nd, 1967). |
The Hydrogen Jukebox in “Jazz of Tomorrow”.
Sweeney (1991): "I was playing down at the UFO Club with this little group [the Giant Sun Trolley], when a friend of mine, a saxophonist called Barry Edgar Pilcher, came over and asked me if I could replace their drummer who hadn't turned up. So, I said OK and I did their set on drums with the group and they liked me, offering me a regular drumchair. I wasn't that king, because the group was playing free-jazz, but I said OK, if you would change your name, because basically they was just called somebody's band. So we had a meeting and they was agreed with my proposal".
Sweeney had taken the name of the group (formed by Pilcher on sax, Clive Kingsley on guitar, Dick Dadem on trombone) from the famous beat poetry collection written by Allen Ginsberg who, being invited, it seems he attended to one of their gigs...
?th – The Roundhouse (London)
Hydrogen Jukebox in concert. It's the gig that will make them famous, at least for one night, with a quotation on "News of the World".
Sweeney (1990): "I have read on a guy called John Cage, and he was using kind of very strange happenings, so I came up with this idea of put in a contact mike on a big pair of scissors, when you make cut emotions you produced a kind of rhythmic sound, you see, I could then use that (this rhythm) for the group, because the group was playing a sort of free-jazz, and I wanted to make more visual. So I've got a girl and cut her closers off at the same time. This of course was received very well at UFO, and we had offers bookings all over the places, because of the publicity".
"They gained notoriety at the event", remembered Steve Pank in 2004, "by accompanying a girl called Nita having a paper dress cut off her with scissors, this was reported with a photograph in the "News of the World"".
For some gigs Sweeney is between the Giant Sun Trolley and the Hydrogen Jukebox, until the latter break, after aknowledging the unsuccessful project.
Sweeney (1991): "Basically was the publicity finished the band, because the publicity wrote in the papers, and they wanted to hear rock'n'roll and we would play free-jazz. So the band really just faded away...".
Around this period also Giant Sun Trolley split, when Dave Tomlin decided to leave London for a trip, and Sweeney had the idea of the Third Ear Band...
Sweeney explained this in an 1969 interview with "Gandalf's Garden" magazine's Muz Murray: "(...) So when he split from London to take up gypsy caravanning on the Mark Palmer scene, the Third Ear seemed a logical extension of what Dave had been doing. But I had a hard time finding people who had any idea of this particular area of music, and I had to find ways to turn even musicians on to thinking that way. And then eventually, when we did form the acoustic group, we had all the gear stolen. In a way it was fortunate, because we started to get it together at great speed from then on".
The Hydrogen Jukebox, even if played few concerts in their very short life, was a familiar group at the Happening 44 club for some weeks (where The Social Deviants was the house band). A little piece titled "Four 4 Four" on I.T. issue 15 (June 16th, 1967) confirms it...
15th – All Saint's Hall (London)
TEB with Fleetwood Mac and Quintessence
Maybe the very first TEB gig...
"The Third Ear and the People Band. In the late 60s, All Saints high church services were also given by David Bowie – during his mime phase, the Crazy World of Arthur Brown – doing ‘Fire’, the Edgar Broughton Band – doing ‘Out Demons Out’, the Third Ear Band with Tina’s Light Theatre, and the People Band. The Carnival founder Rhaune Laslett recalled an All Saints happening involving Jeff Nuttall of the People Band, ‘motorbikes and very scantily dressed girls riding pillion, throwing jam covered newspapers and other paint dripping missiles at the audience".
(Tom Vague at http://www.portobellofilmfestival.com/talkpics/talk-babylon7.html).
22th - Burton Constable Hall (Hull)
22th - Burton Constable Hall (Hull)
TEB with Pretty Things and Chicken Shack
24th - Arts Lab (Leicester)
with The Deviants, Bridget St. John "and maybe The Third Ear Band"
September
20th – Queen Elizabeth Hall (London)
"Crabs & the Crescent Moon"
TEB with Bridget St. John and John Peel
21th – Happening 44 (London)
"Crabs & the Crescent Moon"
TEB with Bridget St. John and John Peel
“Environmental Evening”
The Happening 44, founded by Jack Bracelin, was a twice-weekly late-night rock club located in a strip joint at 44 Gerrard Street, Soho.
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| A typical psychedelic poster produced for Happening 44. |
24th – Middle Earth (London)
“High Tea with”
TEB with Graham Bond Organisation and Shemiaihs Woorlitza
"Every sunday night sounds as like... Third Ear Band"
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| Original handmade poster for a programmed concert at the All Saints Hall (London) in 1967 (?) (from Sweeney personal collection). |
October
13th – Middle Earth (London)
From 10.30 pm to Dawn, TEB (on the poster as The Third Ear) with Soft Machine, Persephone-Goddess of Dance, Jode Hexogram, Jeff Dexter and Utradelic Alchemists
From 10.30 pm to Dawn, TEB (on the poster as The Third Ear) with Soft Machine, Persephone-Goddess of Dance, Jode Hexogram, Jeff Dexter and Utradelic Alchemists
4th – Middle Earth (London)
Announced as The Third Year (!), with The Knack.
Benefit concert with TEB & Edgar Broughton Band
30th – Middle Earth (London)
Concert with TEB and Soft Machine
1968
January
12th – Arts Lab (London)
"We wandered into the Arts Lab late one day and Jim Haynes said "Are you going to play?". So we played and he said "Why don't you work here regularly?" and he put us on three nights at week. At the time we didn't have any idea of what we were doing but we got in there and played and that's when it happened" (Sweeney 1969).
Haynes, one of the interpreter of the underground culture of those years, had the idea to open a multisciplinary place to promote theatre, music, literary events. The Arts Laboratory in Drury Lane (Covent Garden), opened on July 1967, will be a in place in Europe 1967-1969 (read at http://www.jim-haynes.com/life/theatre.htm), the place where David Bowie will start "walking shyly" (Haynes, 1984).
"The Arts Lab was a product of its time", told Haynes to Luca Ferrari in 2010. "I was young and full of creative energy and believed that I could do anything. I wanted to make a mixed-media centre that would be full of life. And I succeeded! London was the capital of the world in the mid-60s. I don't remember how I met anyone in the 60s; they just all came to the Arts Lab and I suddenly knew everyone. I loved their concerts. They were magic. Often only candle light. We closed the Lab because I ran out of money and the landlord wanted his property back...".
A short memory from Carolyn Looker (April 2012): "Jim Haynes loved TEB, said they gave him orgasms. They play Arts Lab on a regular basis. A room painted black, incense burning and audience on floor cushions".
The Arts Lab in 2015.
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| On this original "IT" page (September 31th, 1967), one of ther first Arts Lab's ad: note the clear plea to the artists: "we don't want a band artists/gallery scene"! |
Even if there's no traces of it, in the same period TEB played regurarly also at Les Cousins, a folk club in Greek Street, Soho (read at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Cousins_%28music_club%29).
Glen Sweeney (to Nigel Cross, "Unhinged", Spring 1990): "We knew a guy, a guitarist called Davey Graham, who used to work down Les Cousins, really brilliant guitarist. I'd known him for a long time. We used to sit and eat daffodils together! He told us to get down to Cousins and he booked us a gig. We went down there. Davey was there. They gave us a free coca cola, which didn't help at all and Davey finished his set. He announced us as The Third Ear Band - Carolyn had thought it up. At the time we only had about one number, we weren't sure about. We all decide to play our arses off. We went through this one number which must've lasted about 20 minutes, stood up for the applause and went to dismount at the side of the stage. The guy came up and said, "Davey told me it's an all nighter!". He then gave us another coke and we want back on and played this number over and over again, which is where the idea of "Alchemy" came from...". |
| Arts Lab original poster designed by Glen Sweeney (courtesy Steve Pank). |
About the TEB's music in this period, a quotation of electric guitarist Clive Kingsley on Facebook (20-10-2010) can help us to have a clearer idea: "The 'groove' in the original TEB was conceived as being the equivalent of the Tanpura or sitar 'drone and sympathetic' strings. 'We' tried to achieve it via a cellist. Prior to that of course in Western music John Cage and some jazz musicians experimented with the idea. I quite like the way many musicians have since taken up the basic idea up in one way or another... rather than always blindly following the Western rules of harmonic progression".
(read at http://sl-si.facebook.com/posted.php?id=156660855584&share_id=150945508277102&comments=1)
February
16th - Ladbroke Hotel (London)
"Electric Raga"
21th - Ladbroke Hotel (London)
"Electric Raga"
23th - Ladbroke Hotel (London)
"Electric Raga"
28th - Ladbroke Hotel (London)
"Electric Raga"
March
22th - Guildhall (Southampton)
"Blues on Ice!"
TEB with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and the Bernie's Music Machine
31th - Middle Earth (London)
"Blues on Ice!"
TEB with John Mayall's Bluesbreakers and the Bernie's Music Machine
31th - Middle Earth (London)
"Albion Awakening"
TEB with, among the others, Fairport Convention, Pete Brown Poetry Band, Dave Tomlin
TEB with, among the others, Fairport Convention, Pete Brown Poetry Band, Dave Tomlin
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| The b/w poster designed by David Loxley (from S. Pank archive). |
April
19th - I.T. vol. 1 issue 29
In an article titled "UFO is dead - long live UFO!" written by Barry Miles a quotation of Giant Sun Trolley and Dave Tomlin.
29th - Odin's Monday Club (London)
TEB with Spike Hawkins and K.I.W.C.
The St. Pancras levitation: just a urban legend?
29th - Odin's Monday Club (London)
TEB with Spike Hawkins and K.I.W.C.
"The club was originally organised by manager of K.I.W.C. because there was no clubs suitable for his group's sound, but it developed into something bigger after talks with 3rd Ear Band and Tribe of the Sacred Mushroom. The idea is to provide a small 'family-type' club, specialising in eastern music, poetry and 'experiments'... matras, chants, audience partecipations. 'We're trying to change the concept of AUDIENCE and PERFORMERS. We want one group ALL partecipating, ALL enjoying each other'. Club is, at the present, very short of money (performers play free so far) but hoping to build up followers and funds" (from "IT" issue 31, May 17th, 1968).
Approximately about the first months of the year, there was the event of St. Pancras railway station levitation. It had to be propitiated the 'levitation' of the station to be moved elsewhere as it was considered a very ugly piece of architecture: of course, TEB supplied the right music for this event, and the enthusiastic DJ John Peel was there too. Among the dailies that took the news, the established "Evening Standard", in a short article titled "Hippies and the moon can't budge St. Pancras", wrote: "One hundred and fifty hippies chanted to the fool moon outside St. Pancras railway station last night - in a bid to levitate the railway buildings over the Thames to Bermondsey. Three bemused police officers looked on as the hippies prayed to the accompainment of violins, flute and bells. (...) But St. Pancras Victoria Gothic red bricks stayed put. (...) Why did they choose St. Pancras for the three-mile levitation attempt? A youn girl explained: "Because it's so ugly". And why send it to Bermondsey?. "Because Bermondsey hasn't a railway station". The police did not try to intervene. An officer said: "I don't blame them for wanting to remove it. St. Pancras isn't a pretty building".
Asking Dave Tomlin (2010) to confirm the TEB presence to it, in a first time he said: "Never heard of the St. Pancras thing but I will ask around". And sometimes later: "Glen was a bit of a magician. He could make matchsticks disappear by staring at them. I think he got together with some other magicians and tried to make St Pancras Station disappear. The story is that they succeeded but only for three seconds. After that they tried to make America disappear but so far no luck...".
A tale confirmed by Carolyn Looker (April 2012): "Us and John Peel sat outside ohming... Hard work but it lifted a few inches (we were on acid)...".
May
Albion Magazine - vol. 1, May 1968
Directed by Steve Pank, at that time promoter and driver of the TEB, on the first issue the magazine published probably the first TEB promo ad designed by Glen Sweeney. Later the logo, modified, would be been included as a sticker in the first album (read at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2009/12/very-rare-third-ear-band-sticker-from.htm).
Directed by Steve Pank, at that time promoter and driver of the TEB, on the first issue the magazine published probably the first TEB promo ad designed by Glen Sweeney. Later the logo, modified, would be been included as a sticker in the first album (read at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2009/12/very-rare-third-ear-band-sticker-from.htm).
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| Front cover designed by the famous Hapshash & the Coloured Coat. |
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"Albion" magazine back cover designed by David Loxley (courtesy of Steve Pank).
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| The original "Alchemy" sticker designed by Sweeney. |
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A poem written by Dave Tomlin on the same issue. |
19th - Middle Earth (London)
"Magical Sunday Benefit concert" ("Gandalf's Garden" benefit concert) TEB with TRex, David Bowie, John Peel and others
Muz Murray, editor of "Gandalf's Garden" (interviewed by Luca Ferrari on September 2012): "We had a good rapport with the group also. They came and played freely at our Magical Sunday Benefit Concert at Middle Earth in Covent Garden, London, in order to help us to bring out the second issue of "Gandalf’s Garden", together with other up-and-coming unknowns like Marc Bolan and David Bowie. I used to live in Pembroke Villas next to Ladbroke Grove, so Notting Hill Gate and Portobello Road and market was my scene".
Gardeners meditating at the GG Centre with Glen Sweeney (with hat) on far right (©Gandalf's Garden)
“Celebration for Albion”
TEB with Tyrannosaurus Rex, Haps Hash & the Coloured Coat, King Ida’s Watch Chain and The Invisible Union.
TEB with Tyrannosaurus Rex, Haps Hash & the Coloured Coat, King Ida’s Watch Chain and The Invisible Union.
June
4th – The Crypt (London)
TEB with Dharma Sounds of Subterranea
9th – Middle Earth (London)
“The Tribe of the Sacred Mushroom”
TEB with the Tribe and King Ida’s Watch Chain
11th – The Crypt (London)
"Cosmolatry" by the Mandala, Minstrel Dave Tomlim, Slimon's Sound Poetry 21th – Avebury (Wiltshire)
July
3rd – The Cript (London)
TEB with Pete Brown & The Battered Ornaments and Ron Geesin
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An original poster of The Crypt (from Steve Pank collection).
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August
23th - "International Times" Vol. 1 n. 38
Glen Sweeney writes a letter to "IT", published on page 18 ("Dear IT"): "Dear IT, please, please no more of Mr. Durgnat's articles on what is happening inside his head, three pages on OZ, and now two pages on IT. Is it our fault that these confused critics and D.J.'s can't stop thinking and dig the life? The scene needs less negative criticism, more positive alternatives.
Glen Sweeney, Third Ear Band [a sound has no legs to stand on]".
On "IT" issue 37 Raymond Durgnat had criticized strongly the anti-Vietnam Trafalgar Square aid festival as a way to high society to take "a deserving cause as a pretext for its smartest clothes and congratulates itself on its high-mindedness"..."Cosmic raga"
24th - Safari Tent (London)
"Cosmic raga"
"On Westbourne Park Road, the Third Ear Band performed ‘cosmic ragas’ every Thursday at the Safari Tent Caribbean store at number 207 (which also hosted the early 60s Jazz club). Down Lancaster Road, in the Methodist church hall, there was ‘music, poetry, theatre every Wednesday’ at the Crypt folk club, featuring Jeff Nuttall’s experimental jazz group, the People Band and the Third Ear Band" (Tom Vague at http://www.portobellofilmfestival.com/talkpics/talk-babylon7.html).
During this period TEB electric instruments was stolen after a concert. Sources and memories are different. According Sweeney, the instruments was stolen after a concert at the UFO Club (interview with "IT" in 1969) or at the Middle Earth (1990, "Unhinged" magazine). For the Paul Minns' diary, the event was “The Tribe of the Sacred Mushroom” concert at Middle Earth of June 9th, 1968, while Clive Kingsley is sure that the place was "a small club (basement type) in Notting Hill Gate" [maybe The Crypt? There was a gig on July 3rd...]. "We were due to play another gig within the then next day or day after that. That next booking may have been for either of the clubs mentioned. Glen suggested I leave my guitar and amp in the van along with some of the other intruments to save carrying back to my bedsit... the one and only time I ever left my guitar anywhere. The next day Glen told me the guitar, amp and also his drums and the cello had been stolen..." (from an interview with Luca Ferrari, January 2010 - read at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2010/01/electric-raga-guitarist-interview-with_09.html). Carolyn Looker confirmed it in April 2012 (interview by Luca Ferrari): " "Instruments were left in van overnight, gone in the morning. Never found out who took them. Of course they weren't insured!".
September
12th - Safari Tent (London)
"Cosmic raga"
19th - Safari Tent (London)
"Cosmic raga"
20th - Queen Elizabeth Hall (London)
"Soundzzz"
TEB with Bridget St. John and Sam Hutt
21th - Arts Lab (London)
26th - All Saint's Church Hall (London)
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| This pretty b/w poster was designed by David Loxley (courtesy of Steve Pank). |
3rd - Safari Tent (London)
4th - All Saint's Hall (Powis Gardens, London)
"Four dimentional happening"
TEB with Jade Hexagram, Tina's Environment, poets, revelations
4th - Arts Lab (London)
TEB with Ron Geesin and The People Band
10th - Safari Tent (London)
11th - Arts Lab (London)
17th - Safari Tent (London)4th - All Saint's Hall (Powis Gardens, London)
"Four dimentional happening"
TEB with Jade Hexagram, Tina's Environment, poets, revelations
4th - Arts Lab (London)
TEB with Ron Geesin and The People Band
10th - Safari Tent (London)
11th - Arts Lab (London)
19th - Arts Lab (London)
19th - College of Arts (Croydon)
"Concert of poetry and new music"
Among the others, also the Egar Barry Pilcher Kinetic Ensemble
20th – Country Club (London)
"Time Out/Free Bank Benefit"
TEB with, among the others, David Bowie.
21th - Arts Lab (London)
"Cosmic raga"
24th - Safari Tent (London)
25th - Arts Lab (London)
26th - Arts Lab (London)
31th - Safari Tent (London)
25th - Arts Lab (London)
26th - Arts Lab (London)
31th - Safari Tent (London)
November
1st-14th – "International Times" Vol. 1 n. 43
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The article with a photo of TEB in that days (L-R): Minns, Cartland, Sweeney and Coff.
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Third Ear Band is named for the first time by “International Times”. Different opinions about the origins of the band's name: "The name probably came from that though Carolyn thought it up", explained Sweeney (1990). "We had this groupie, the only groupie we ever had. He used to follow up us around everywhere. I think he was French! He had this spectacle case with an ear in it and he reckoned it was Van Gogh's ear! During that period, everyone used to refer to it as "Pierre's third ear"! So when it came to naming the band we became the Third Ear Band".
Paul Minns (1996) gave, on the contrary, a more rational interpretation of it: "I thought Third Ear came from a science fiction book. Glen was very paranoid about the copyright and I always was suspicious of the origin of the name".
On June 2010 Carolyn Looker has told a definitive word about it - read at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2010/07/origins-and-meanings-of-third-ear-band.html
1st – Arts Lab (London)
2nd – Arts Lab (London)
3rd – Arts Lab (London)
6th – Arts Lab (London)
7th – Safari Tent (London)
7th – All Saint’s Hall (London)
"Has the UFO invasion begun - Albion lives"
TEB with Barclays James Harvest
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| This b/w poster was designed by Dave Loxley (from S. Pank personal collection). |
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| Blackhill Enterprises card. |
8th – Arts Lab (London)
9th – Arts Lab (London)
14th – Safari Tent (London)
15th – Arts Lab (London)
16th – Arts Lab (London)
20th – Arts Lab (London)
21th – Safari Tent (London)
22th – Arts Lab (London)
23th – Arts Lab (London)
27th – Arts Lab (London)
28th – All Saint’s Hall (London)
TEB with Pete Drummond, Davy Graham, Jade Hexagram, Simon Stable.
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| The wonderful b/w poster was designed by David Loxley (courtesy of Steve Pank). |
29th – Fishmongers Arms (London)
TEB with Gun
29th – Arts Lab (London)
30th – Arts Lab (London)
30th – Van Dikes (Playmouth)
TEB with Pegasus
December
5th - Safari Tent (London)
6th - Arts Lab (London)
7th - Arts Lab (London)
8th - Civic Hall (Guilford)
TEB with Fairport Convention, Roy Harper, Bridget St. John, Barclay James Harvest, Tim Hollier and John Peel
"I was co-promoter of the event (with help from Blackhill) and afterwards TEB came back to the cottage I shared with friends and stayed the night, dossing on the floor. Glen endeared himself to one and all in the morning by accosting a passing milkman and then making us all much-needed coffees. Ah, memories!" (Graham Clarke to Ghettoraga Archive, October 4th, 2019)
11th - Arts Lab (London) 12th - Safari Tent (London)
13th - Arts Lab (London)
14th – The Roundhouse (London)
“Middle Earth presents at The Roundhouse".
Introduced by John Peel, a festival with TEB (note the fake name!), Principal Edward’s Magic Theatre, Uriel, Pandit Trika (sitar master) and Radha Krishna Temple
15th - All Saint's Hall (London)
"Brave New Departures Revisited"
TEB with, among the others, Alexis Korner and Cornelius Cardew
Promoter & "IT" journalist Michael Horowitz wrote about the event on "IT" n. 49 (January 1969): "On 15 December I presented what was supposed to be a benefit show said new issue, as well as xmas party, at All Saint's Hall - (...) - an all-day event that might well have graced & packed out the Roundhouse, Albert Hall, Colisseum or Kremlin or Kensington or Peking palaces or Holliwood Bowl or even Mecca or Jerusalem's wailing wall with rhythm, harmony, colour and delight (and something like it maybe will - in the spring? That winter's come's for sure): a full and happy house lit up to sounds from the 3rd Ear Band and Dave Tomlin, Neil Oram, Peter Lemer, Al Kovacs and Cardew, (...) to fellow poets Brown, Pattern, Carlyle Reedy, (...) - in a rapport with the audience it's not embarrassing to call magical".
18th – Royal Albert Hall (London)
"A Hippy Gathering: An Alchemical Wedding"
Third Ear Band with John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Steam Hammer, Christopher Lodge and Rip Torn
Organized by Jim Haynes, as a benefit concert for the Arts Lab, the event saw the performance of Lennon and Ono crouched in a sack in the middle of the room with TEB (Glen Sweeney and Carolyn Looker) roding white bikes around them...
"I went down to the gig", remembered Sweeney in 1990 ("Unhinged" magazine, interview by Nigel Cross), "Torn and Lodge were on stage - I'm pretty sure they had a good recorder going there. Jim Haynes said that they were doing an album for themselves and asked if we wanted to play on it. So we played and I think it's mentioned in Jim's book "Thanks for coming!" - whether those people used the recordings I've no idea. There's a video cassette of our gig at the Albert Hall...".
(on left: A 500 limited edition photo folder produced and sold to celebrate the event.)
(on left: A 500 limited edition photo folder produced and sold to celebrate the event.)
From the Web site http://www.beatlesbible.com/: "The event was held by the Arts Lab, which attempted to challenge audiences, to encourage them to become active participants rather than passive consumers.
The couple's 30-minute conceptual performance was titled Alchemical Wedding. The bag was, they explained, to ensure "total communication" with the audience. The following year the concept was reintroduced by the pair as Bagism, an attempt to satirize prejudice and stereotyping.
Lennon and Ono sat on the side of the stage as other poets and musicians performed at the event. When their time came, they entered the bag, remaining there while a man played a flute.
Lennon and Ono initially sat cross-legged inside the bag. They moved only twice during the performance, to lie closer to the floor.
During the performance a protestor ran to the stage, holding a banner about the British government's involvement in the Nigerian civil war. "Do you care, John Lennon? Do you care?" the protestor shouted at the couple". 19th - Safari Tent (London)
21th - Arts Lab (London)
21th – Mothers Club (Birmingham)
TEB with Edgar Broughton Band
26th - Safari Tent (London)
27th – Van Dikes (Plymouth)
TEB with Clouds
29th -12th January – IT vol. 1 n. 45 (page 16)
On his weekly "IT" survey, John Peel wrote probably for the first time about the TEB: "Recently there was a concert in Guilford in aid for a projected Arts Lab there at which I heard the Third Ear Band for the first time. Most of you probably heard them already but if you have not then try to do so soon...".
1969
January
1st – BBC Studios (London)
“Night Ride” radio session: TEB played "The Grove", "Stones Circle", "Egyptian Book of the Dead", "Pierrot". First radio interview ever conducted with John Peel.
1st - Arts Lab (London)
2nd - All Saint’s Hall (London)
TEB with Edgar Broughton Band
A typical page of I.T. with ads involving the Third Ear Band this month
4th - Arts Lab (London)
10th - Arts Lab (London)
10th - Safari Tent (London)
"Cosmic raga"
11th - Arts Lab (London)
11th - LSE (London)
TEB with Savoy Brown
14th - School Of Art (Winchester)
16th - Safari Tent (London)
"Cosmic raga"
17th - Arts Lab (London)
18th - Arts Lab (London)
23th – Country Club (London)
TEB played with Edgar Broughtons Blues Band
4th - Safari Tent (London)
"Cosmic raga"
8th - Arts Lab (London)10th - Arts Lab (London)
10th - Safari Tent (London)
"Cosmic raga"
11th - Arts Lab (London)
11th - LSE (London)
TEB with Savoy Brown
14th - School Of Art (Winchester)
16th - Safari Tent (London)
"Cosmic raga"
17th - Arts Lab (London)
18th - Arts Lab (London)
23th – Country Club (London)
TEB played with Edgar Broughtons Blues Band
24th – E.M.I. Studios (London)
TEB first recording session: the band recorded two tracks, "Unity" and "Raga n. 1". Unrealised for years, they were published in 2019 by Esoteric Records on a 2CDs remastered and expanded edition of "Alchemy".
27th – Harris College (Preston)
February
1st - Magic Village (Manchester)
5th - Rambling Jam's Blues Club (Bishop's Stortford)
6th – Country Club (London)
TEB with Edgar Broughton Band
7th – Railway Tavern (London)
14th – Manchester College
17th – Old Granary (Bristol)19th – Mothers Club (Birmingham)
TEB with Edgar Broughton Band
20th – Country Club (London)
TEB with Edgar Broughton Band
23th – The Roundhouse (London)
“Middle Earth at Roundhouse” - "LSE Benefit Concert"
TEB with The Who, Cat Stevens, Pete Brown & Battered Ornaments (rescheduled from February 9th)
Simon Stable ("IT" n. 52, 14-03-1969): "Congratulations, Don Stickland, for a very good show at the Roundhouse, a couple of Saturdays ago. Really excellent performances from Principle E's Magic T, Third Ear Band, Mick Hart and Bridget St. John, Circus...".
24th – The Dome (Brighton)
"A Benefit for the Combination"
TEB with Pink Floyd and Pretty Things
TEB with Pink Floyd and Pretty Things
28th – "IT" vol. 1 issue 51
First Blackhill ad for "IT" for the Third Ear Band (as "Alchemic TEB").
March
5th – Mothers Club (Birmingham)
TEB with Edgar Broughton Band
6th – Country Club (London)
6th – Country Club (London)
TEB with Edgar Broughton Band
7th – Asgard Club (Stratford)
13th – All Saint's Hall (London)
TEB with Jody Grind
14th - I.T. vol. 1 n. 52 page 13 In a brief article titled "Sound Scene Squashed", Steve Pank talks about the problems to promote concerts at the All Saint's Hall...
14th - I.T. vol. 1 n. 52 page 13 In a brief article titled "Sound Scene Squashed", Steve Pank talks about the problems to promote concerts at the All Saint's Hall...
21th - Loughton College
"Joint, Combination, Third Ear Band, Structure poems, stroboplays etc....".
"Joint, Combination, Third Ear Band, Structure poems, stroboplays etc....".
27th - Arts Lab (London)
28th-10th April - I.T. n. 53 (page 16) announced TEB first record
"The alchemically-musical people, The Third Ear Band, whose affiliations with the Druids are even psysically real, are visiting Edimburgh and Glasgow on April 16 and 17. The Scottish sect of the Druids are casting a spell over them to protect their bodies from any angry Picts. Their album will be released on the Harvest label on May, 'ALCHEMY', is a musical must (?). They are playing a concert at the Purcell Room on April 21, nice!".
Quite strangely no reviews about it will be published on the magazine...
April ? - Glastonbury Tor
Concert for the Druids
2nd – Pavilion Ballrooms (Bournemouth)
(Originally scheduled on March 2nd)
TEB with The Who and The Embers
10th - Arts Lab (London)
11th - I.T. vol. 1 n. 54 pag. 13
Purcell Room concert ad (see April 21th, 1969)
The page of I.T. with the ad of the Purcell Room concert.
In the same issue (page 16) a plea for the concert: "Last minute message from Blackhill Enterprise (the well-known entertainment agency) is that, competing with Janis Joplin on April 21, The Third Ear Band will be appearing at the Purcell Room. Support them!".
17th – Arts Lab (Glasgow)
TEB with Pete Brown & the Battered Ornaments
21th – Purcell Room (London)
“Alchemy”
IT ad published in April 1969.
24th - Country Club (London)
"Arts Lab Benefit"
25th – Lancaster University (Lancaster)
TEB with Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation and Adrian Mitchell
25th - I.T. vol. 1 n. 55 (page 28)
"Gandalf's Garden" n. 4 ad with TEB quotation: in this issue Muz Murray interviews Glen Sweeney (read at http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~pardos/GGThird.html).
An exclusive interview of Luca Ferrari with Muz Murray, editor of Gandalf's Garden, here
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| The original cover of "Gandalf's Garden" n. 4 (May 1969). |
"Light and Sound Concert"
TEB with The Pink Floyd and East od Eden
27th – The Roundhouse (London)
“Dwarf benefit”
TEB with, among the others, Christopher Logue, High Tide, Adrian Mitchell
29th - Hatherton Hall (Walsall)
"Whisky Villa"
TEB in concert
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| Original flier on sale on Ebay. |
During this period TEB recorded some demo tracks:
"... we'd got this demo tape which had Ben Cartland on it - the original line-up with two violins, oboe and drums - it featured those first numbers we did at the first gigs. I can't remember what they sound like now. Geesin sold the tape to Essex Music for this library of sound effects - they must've been used on radio or TV because we got some money for them!" (Glen Sweeney to Nigel Cross, Spring 1990).
Three tracks was published as National Balkan Ensemble (probably for copyrights' problems...) later, one remains unrealised ("Raga in D" - read and download at the page of this Archive http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2010/10/5-teb-fans-cant-be-wrong-at-last-heres.html).
Carolyn Looker: "I find The National Balkan Ensemble a totally mystery. All I can think is whoever got hold of these tracks put the name to them. Before recording "Alchemy", Glen, Paul, Richard and Ben did some recordings for Ron Geesin who was going to try to sell the music for background for TV! I don't think anything came from it but maybe these are the tracks anyway, it was done in a small studio on the cheap. I vaguely remember Christopher Logue the poet being there too. Ben's leaving the band was totally his idea, he was very young - about 17! - and didn't want to commit... I think he went off with his girlfriend travelling..." (from a letter to Luca Ferrari - December 2nd, 2005).
An examination at the page: http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2009/12/national-balkan-ensemble-aka-third-ear_11.html.  |
| The front cover of that very rare album. |
?th -"Alchemy" realised by EMI-Harvest
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| Original EMI promo advert from the Al Stewart-TEB tour programme (January 1970). |
The album got flattering reviews. Melody Maker: "Strange, hypnotic, Indian influenced sounds played on tabla, violin and cello. John Peel guests on jews harp, and "alchemy" is the right word". Even Melody Maker on next July 24th: "The three-eared men are a Godsend for lovers of mysticism, Stonehenge and the cosmic force lines. This album could become an essential part of any amateur Sourcer's kit (...). Their music is absorbing, almost hypnotic. One cannot doubt the musical ability of Richard Coff (...), Paul Minns and Mel Davis. Their leader and percussionist is Glen Sweeney and guest artists include John Peel on Jews harp and Dave Tomlin on violin. Their work is 90 per cent improvisation (...). It's a demanding mixture of Eastern and European influences".
Despite the scarce promotion, the record sold quite well. Sweeney (1988): "The record sold well, but many of EMI's businessmen dislike the cover, so the distribution was very bad".
Read some notes about origins and meanings of the "Alchemy" cover at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2009/12/origins-and-meanings-of-alchemy-cover.html and an essay on the record by Luca Ferrari at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2012/02/alchemy-esoteric-record-for-initiates.html
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TEB after Ben Cartland's split: Minns, Sweeney and Coff posing at the Rendall Cemetery (photo: Ray Stevenson).
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Talking about the new record with Muz Murray ("Gandalf's Gardens" magazine issue 4, 1969), Sweeney explained: "The basic Eastern sound had always been there, and now it had the opportunity to develop in the right way. If you go into it really deeply, playing Eastern-style music entails a completely different way of thinking. Western music is sort of 'put together in pieces', whereas the Eastern style seems to be more 'organic'. And as you play, you soon discover that it is not even coming from you, and that your job as a musician is just to get yourself out of the way. This is the state we have got into now, where everyone realises themselves as a channel - and the music just comes.
"We are beginning to move into some strange musical areas, doing a piece we call Druid. Once or twice when we've played this thing, we've gone into a weird sort of experience we call a 'Time-shift'. Nobody really knows what it is. The whole Druid piece is repetitive and extremely hypnotic and yet you have some of the instruments doing far out things so that a fantastic tension is built up. It's like alchemy. The alchemical emphasis is on the endless repetition of experiments, doing the same thing over and over again, and waiting for some sort of X-factor to appear. This is more or less what we do when we play. And our X-factor is this time-shift thing.
"It happened once at the London Arts Lab, and as we played, it seemed as if time had slowed dawn and we had drifted into a completely different dimension. And when we finished, nobody moved at all. They were kind of stuck there. So I felt that perhaps it had happened to them too. So that's the thing we are trying to get into. Although it can be quite a strain during public performance, like living on the edge of a cliff, since nobody knows what might happen. To be on stage and feel it happening can be quite frightening. You go out of yourself, and when you come to, you discover yourself on stage with hundreds of people staring at you. You get this split-second thought: 'Have I been playing? Have I ruined the whole thing?' In a way, it's very similar to meditation and mantra chanting, which is why I feel what we are doing has a very religious depth.
"I'm just hoping we come across on record. We've just cut our first disc called ALCHEMY, with Richard, who plays violin and viola, Paul on oboe, myself on hand drums and Mel on cello (that makes the deep magical drone), and if we can make it with records and the Straight Scene, playing all over the country, we want to do a lot of free scenes in the summer, playing at power centres like Glastonbury Tor or Silbury Hill, Avebury Ring, or Merlin's rock-tomb which is supposed to be near Manchester. Flying saucers appear to travel between these places on definite routes, and anything could happen where the 'energy lines' cross.
"There is also a point where Eastern and Western mysticism meets and I hope we have captured this on record. We cut the whole L.P. in only six hours - and every one a first take, although we had a bit of a hassle trying to get it made the way we wanted it. They wanted to put in echo and phrasing and all sorts of commercial rubbish, but we held firm to what we felt it should be.
"There are no lyrics on any of the tracks. I've always felt that music should be pure. If you have lyrics, you are preaching in a way. Somehow words are a block to communication. It's almost impossible for me to explain exactly how I feel about this, that's why I'm a musician. The only way to really understand what I mean, is to firstly listen to a pop group and then listen to us, and then I hope you will know what we're trying to say."
About the possibly cultural TEB sources, Dave Tomlin stated on January 2012: "In the mid sixties there were many different influences. One was the legend of King Arthur's Court. Another was Aliens - flying-saucers - messeges from the stars. Also Blake's Jerusalem - Ley-Lines - Ramana Mharishi. And the mysterious arts of Alchemy. There was an Alchemical saying of the time: 'When the sound of the music changes the walls of the city shake.' which the 3rd Ear used at one time. Glen was very much drawn to the Alchemical myth. In fact a few years before he died he kept an ex-WWII torpedo-boat on a north London canal. It's name was 'ALCHEMY' he and Carolyn used to roar around the canals in it and everyone had to get out of the way; they were the terror of the waterways. I sometimes visited them on the boat and when Glen died she took the compass from the boat and gave it to me. (This compass came from Glen Sweeney's boat Alchemy) I then passed it on to a friend...".
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| A wonderful EMI-Harvest promo ad for "Alchemy". |
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| Blackhill Enterprises ad for "Alchemy". |
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| Blackhill Enterprises ad for "Alchemy" on "Zigzag" n. 4. |
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| TEB: Minns, Sweeney and Coff posing at the Rendall Cemetery (photo: Ray Stevenson/Rex). |
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| (photo: Ray Stevenson/Rex). |
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| A rare cassette made in USA |
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| Glen Sweeney's music manifesto using for "Alchemy" cover. |
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| The EMI Harvest press release distributed in Holland for "Alchemy" |
1st - St. John's College Ents Comm
TEB with Dada
TEB with Dada
18th – Parliament Hill Fields (London)
TEB with Procol Harum, Yes, Blossom Toes, John Fahey, Soft Machine (A report at http://www.ukrockfestivals.com/camden-Festival-5-18-69.html)
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TEB on stage at Camden Fringe Festival (L-R: Coff, Sweeney, Minns, Buckmaster) (photo: REPFOTO)
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"The last Parliament Hill Fields concert was a fiasco – people got cold and wet (which couldn’t helped) and were further harassed by mobs of short-haired Arsenal supporters intent in their own peculiar brand of fun. It was a tragedy not only for the organizers but for the whole scene. Everything was incredibly tense, and the Fields, which on a sunny day are so calm and beautiful, were claustrophobic. It was as if a battle was about to take place, and the crowd, sullen like soldiers, were about to charge into some crazy gore-filled nightmare…” (a reader named Sam from "IT" n. 58, June 13th, 1969).
"Annabelle's Workshop"
?th - "Gandalf's Garden" issue n. 5
Titled "Alchemy and Time Travel", written by GG editor Muz Murray, is probably the very first review of "Alchemy"...
26th - The Dome (Brighton)
TEB with John Fahey and Pentangle Concert presented by Blackhill Enterprises. Poster designed by Derek Thomas.
30th - The Roundhouse (London)
Harvest Records showcase introduced its acts to the English public. TEB with Forest, Pete Brown & the Battered Ornaments, Edgar Broughton Band, Mike Chapman
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| TEB on stage at the Roundhouse (L-R: Buckmaster, Coff, Sweeney and Minns). Photo: REPFOTO |
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| The band just out the Roundhouse: (L-R) Minns, Buckmaster, Sweeney, Coff. |
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| Psychedelic effects on the stage... (Photo: REPFOTO). |
Magazine ad by Blackhill.
June
4th – Mothers Club (Birmingham)
E.M.I. Records in conjunction with Blackhill Enterprises launch Harvest artists.
TEB with Edgar Broughton Band, Michael Chapman, Pete Brown & the Battered
"Blind Faith Concert"
TEB with Blind Faith, Donovan, Richie Havens, Edgar Broughton Band
First free concert organized by Blackhill Enterprises. In front of 100-150.000 people The Third Ear Band opened the concert playing before Blind Faith. As all the events later managed by the agency in Hyde Park, the TEB created "a beautiful atmosphere of peace and love", remembered in 1996 Carolyn Looker. "However thre was a lot of pressure on them at these events as they had the reputation of making the sunshine! And you know what Englishmen weather is like!".
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| Paul Minns tuning his oboe during the announcement (photo by Mick Gold/Redferns). |
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| TEB on stage at the Hyde Park free concert (photo by Mick Gold/Redferns). |
Apparently no TEB shoots of the concert exist, but at the beginning of "Blind Faith - London Hyde Park 1969" DVD (Sanctuary Records 2006) in the backstage Glen Sweeney appears with a sharp expression of disgust... (http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2010/07/whos-that-man-on-left-side-of-backstage.html).
Johnny Black from "Mojo" magazine ("Born under a bad sign"): "June 7, 1969 was a scorcher. By the time Blind Faith got to Hyde Park the crowd was 100,000 strong. Jagger and Faithfull were backstage, as were Donovan and Mick Fleetwood, along with former Traffic members Jim Capaldi and Chris Wood. “Stigwood stood out like a sore thumb at the gig,” recalls Andrew King, whose Blackhill Enterprises promoted the event. “For a start, he was the only man there in a suit, a very stylish dark blue job it was. What rather spoiled the image was that the shoulders were absolutely covered in dandruff.”
"The inevitable Third Ear Band took the stage at 2.3Opm for their woozy brew of sitars, tablas, strings and oboes, followed by The Edgar Broughton Band (also obligatory at outdoor events in 1969). There was a brief foretaste of Woodstock from Richie Lavens, an unannounced spot by Donovan, inaudible to the majority of the crowd but well-received by the throng at the front, then, with the heady sweet aroma of dope wafting on pale blue clouds from the audience, Blind Faith took the stage at 5pm. Kids clambered on car roofs and shinned up trees for a better look as the opening chords of Buddy Holly’s Well All Right blasted out" (http://www.gingerbaker.com/bands/blind-faith.htm).
A lucky witness of that day remembers: "I was there!! Travelled overnight on a bright blue 1940's double decker bus from Bolton... about 50 of us on board! Hit London 8am...all bowler hats flagging us down thinking we were London Transport (Bright blue and you could smell the dope and patchouli from about half a mile away :D Fell asleep during 3rd Ear Band... woke up and had a walk, saw Donovan 'busking' under a tree... (thought he was a really good impersonator at first, till we got close and saw it was really him!)" (Alec Martin from http://www.gingerbaker.com/bands/blind-faith.htm).
The rare short video excerpt (just 1:29) here below from the concert was published on YouTube on January 2012:
11th – Cambridge
“Cambridge Midsummer Pop Festival”
Here are some pictures taken from the video:
11th – Cambridge
TEB with, among the others, David Bowie, Audience, Strawbs
Read a note about the event at http://www.movingtone.com/news/news-david-bowie-midsummer-common
18th - Mothers (Birmingham)
20th – University of East Anglia (Norwich)
TEB with Bridget St. John.
25th – Railway Hotel (Bishop’s Stortford)
30th – The Ritz (Bournemouth)
TEB with The Room
TEB with Bridget St. John.
25th – Railway Hotel (Bishop’s Stortford)
30th – The Ritz (Bournemouth)
TEB with The Room
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| Dutch EMI-Harvest press release circulating in the middle of 1969. |
July
TEB with Rolling Stones, Family, Roy Harper, Battered Ornaments Later remembered as the Brian Jones Memorial Concert, these was probably the most successful concert among the ones organized by Blackhill Enterprises for people come (between 250.000 and 500.000 audience!). TEB opened the concert, followed by King Crimson, Screw and Alexis Korner. Ray Connolly, from the measured pages of "Financial Time" (July 7th, 1969), will cut short the happening writing: "Of the four tour groups to appear, none was particularly outstanding", and defined the TEB's music "a strange Oriental cacophony, surely designed to lull the audience to sleep". A tasty anedocte by manager Andrew King (1996): "On the morning of the concert, Paul Buckmaster phoned me to ask if he should wear a suit and tie! These shows were hard for Third Ear Band, but they just about survived...".
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TEB (L-R: Sweeney, Buckmaster, Coff and Minns) on stage
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About the event, filmed by Leslie Woodhead (it's been edited a video/DVD titled "Stones in the Park" just with shoots of the Rolling Stones...), interesting pages at http://www.ukrockfestivals.com/stones-in-the-park.html
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| An impressive photo of the audience in the park that day. |
After the concert, on an article published by "IT" issue 59, "Sarah" wrote some strong polemical observations about the event.
On a two-pages special of one week later (issue 60 - August 8th, 1969), "IT" proposed a confrontation between different thesis with a letter from Blackhill Enterprises' manager Peter Jenner. Read the article here below:
Chris Welch writes a very good article on the band.
13th – The Roundhouse (London)
"Implosion!”
TEB with Quintessence, Gypsy, Pink Cheeks
18th – Marquee Club (London)
TEB with Camel
22th - The Boat (Nottingham)
24th - Penthouse (Scarborough)
25th – Bay Hotel (Sunderland)
26th - Magic Village (Manchester)
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Original I.T. n. 60 (July 18th, 1969) with TEB concert ad.
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“Top Gear” radio show: the band played "Hyde Park Raga", "Druid", "Ghetto Raga". The recording was published by Esoteric Recordings in 2019 on the 2CDs remestered and expanded edition of "Alchemy".
30th – Mothers Club (Birmingham)
Around this period cellist Ursula Smith joined the group after Paul Buckmaster leaving.
Ursula Smith: "I left the Royal Academy in 1966 and did a year teaching. I didn’t enjoy the teaching much and left at the end of the year. I then took a job as a cleaner in a pub. At the time I joined a folk duo with singer songwriter guitarist Mike Deagan. We did some bookings in a folk club called Les Cousins in Soho (London) and it was there that we met folk singer Bridget St John. She was a friend of the DJ and broadcaster John Peel and one day she asked us if we would do a free concert for the remand prisoners in Holloway Prison. On the day we arranged to meet with the other performers John Peel's flat. John wasn’t there at the time but that was where I first met with the Third Ear Band. The only person I recognised was the cellist Paul Buckmaster who I knew from the Royal Academy, as we had had the same professor.
I remember we were playing to an audience of about 90 mostly young girls in a courtyard. Around the yard were tall concrete walls with small cell windows in them , at the end of each number all these hands came out of the cell windows and waved.
One girl spoke to me in the interval and told me that she had been in the Arts Lab near Covent Garden, and she was on an acid trip, when the police came in and the the Arts Lab was raided. She was arrested and now she was on remand in Holloway. It came as a complete surprise to me at the end of the concert when Glen came up to me and asked me to join the Third Ear Band and I accepted. I learned later that the reason I was asked was that there had been several gigs that Paul Buckmaster was not able to do".
I remember we were playing to an audience of about 90 mostly young girls in a courtyard. Around the yard were tall concrete walls with small cell windows in them , at the end of each number all these hands came out of the cell windows and waved.
One girl spoke to me in the interval and told me that she had been in the Arts Lab near Covent Garden, and she was on an acid trip, when the police came in and the the Arts Lab was raided. She was arrested and now she was on remand in Holloway. It came as a complete surprise to me at the end of the concert when Glen came up to me and asked me to join the Third Ear Band and I accepted. I learned later that the reason I was asked was that there had been several gigs that Paul Buckmaster was not able to do".
(from a 2011 interview with Luca Ferrari published at in this archive at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2011/07/life-takes-so-much-time-interview-with.html)
August
TEB with Quintessence, Skin Alley "and possibly the Fleetwood Mac!" (I.T. ad)
20th – Mothers (Birmingham)
22-24th – Arts Centre (Hull)
“Humberside Pop Festival”
TEB with, among the others, The Nice, The Kinks, Edgar Broughton Band, Pretty Things
22-24th – Arts Centre (Hull)
“Humberside Pop Festival”
TEB with, among the others, The Nice, The Kinks, Edgar Broughton Band, Pretty Things
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| Original promo ad published on I.T. n. 62 (August 15-21th, 1969). |
24th - Arts Lab (Leicester)
Jody Grind, Deviants, Bridget St. John "and maybe" The Third Ear Band
29th - "IT" n. 63 extended TEB interview
31th - Woodside Bay (Isle of Wight)
“Isle of Wight Festival of Music”
TEB with, among the others, Bob Dylan, The Band, Tom Paxton (read a report at http://www.ukrockfestivals.com/iow1969.html)
TEB with, among the others, Bob Dylan, The Band, Tom Paxton (read a report at http://www.ukrockfestivals.com/iow1969.html)
Sweeney (1989) remembered the atmosphere as not very good: "We went on to the Isle of Wight but we met bad vibes. The Bob Dylan appearance was full of hassles and Bob had not fully recovered from his motorbike crash".
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| TEB (L-R: Coff, Sweeney, Smith, Minns) at Isle of Wight (photo: Barry Plummer/REPFOTO). |
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| TEB (L-R: Coff, Sweeney, Smith, Minns) at Isle of Wight (photo: Barry Plummer/REPFOTO). |
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| TEB (L-R: Coff, Sweeney, Smith, Minns) at Isle of Wight (photo: Barry Plummer/REPFOTO). |
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| TEB (L-R: Coff, Sweeney, Smith, Minns) at Isle of Wight (photo: Barry Plummer/REPFOTO). |
(from a 2011 interview with Luca Ferrari published at in this archive at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2011/07/life-takes-so-much-time-interview-with.html)
English photographer Barry Plummer took some photos of the band on stage. His memories on an brief 2011 interview with Luca Ferrari at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2011/08/brief-interview-with-barry-plummer.html
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"Like the Liverpool Scene, veterans of the UFO. Their free-form improvisations, using tablas, cello, violin and oboe in weird configurations, later graced Polanski's Macbeth. Very much of their time, as the programme note indicates...
"The music is the music of the Druids, released from the unconscious by the alchemical process, orgasmic in its otherness, religious in its oneness communicating beauty and magic via abstract sounds whilst playing without ego enables the musicians to reach a trance-like stage, a "high" in which the music produces itself. Each piece is as alike or unalike as blades of grass or clouds"."
(from Brian Hinton, "Nights in white satin. An Illustrated History of the Isle of Wight Pop Festivals", 1990)
[Read an extensive recollection of the Festival at http://reocities.com/sunsetstrip/hotel/8117/Wight02.html]
(photo by Ray Stevenson/Rex)
(photo by Ray Stevenson/Rex)
31th - Town Hall (Rugby )
"The Rag Ball"
TEB with Edgar Broughton Band and The Deviants
After the prestigious appearance at the Isle of Wight festival, in the evening of the 31th TEB played a gig in Rugby. On a report published in "IT" n. 65 (September 26th), Mick Donovan wrote: "(...) Started with a local band who didn't impress and weren't very original. Then the Third Ear band and the first signs of audience hang-ups. They played quite well and a surprising number of people seemed into the music, but the majority laughed, or stayed in the bar...".
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| A pretty portrait of Richard Coff on stage (photo by Barry Plummer). |
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| TEB on stage at Isle of Wight Festival (L-R: Coff, Sweeney, Smith, Minns) at Isle of Wight (photo: Derek Halsall). |
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| A sequence of Glen Sweeney's portraits on the stage at Isle of Wight (Photo by Barry Plummer/REPFOTO). |
31th - Town Hall (
TEB with Edgar Broughton Band and The Deviants
After the prestigious appearance at the Isle of Wight festival, in the evening of the 31th TEB played a gig in Rugby. On a report published in "IT" n. 65 (September 26th), Mick Donovan wrote: "(...) Started with a local band who didn't impress and weren't very original. Then the Third Ear band and the first signs of audience hang-ups. They played quite well and a surprising number of people seemed into the music, but the majority laughed, or stayed in the bar...".
September
10th - Mothers Club (Birmingham)
12th - E.M.I. Studios (London)
A recording sessions where the band recorded three tracks: "The Sea", "Druid" and "Hyde Park Raga". Unreleased for years, they were included on 2CDs remastered and expanded edition of "Alchemy" by Esoteric Recordings in 2019.
13th - Rainsbrook (Rugby )
A recording sessions where the band recorded three tracks: "The Sea", "Druid" and "Hyde Park Raga". Unreleased for years, they were included on 2CDs remastered and expanded edition of "Alchemy" by Esoteric Recordings in 2019.
13th - Rainsbrook (
"The Sam Cutler Stage Show"
TEB with Pink Floyd, Edgar Broughton Band, The Nice, King Crimson, Taste, Free
TEB with Pink Floyd, Edgar Broughton Band, The Nice, King Crimson, Taste, Free
14th - TEB photographer Ray Stevenson was injured in a car crash
19th - Friars Auditorium - Borough Assembly Hall, Market Square (Aylesbury)
TEB with Graham Bond Initiation (advertised but didn't show up) Read at http://www.aylesburyfriars.co.uk/thirdearband69.html
Introducing on the flyer concert as the "incredible" Third Ear Band, Sweeney & C. played two sets to replace Graham Bond that didn't show up. At the end, a local newspaper reported: "About 350 people did stay to hear the Third Ear Band and their contemplative Indian music invoked a mood of serenity that befitted the situation. Principle instruments used by the four-men group were cello, clarinet [sic!], violin and bongos [!], and their fusion created a sound most faithful to Indian music that I have heard".
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| The concert flyer |
20th – Queen Elizabeth Hall (London)
"The Crab & the Crescent Moon"
TEB with Bridget St. John, John Peel and Sam Hut.
The title of the concert was taken "from a dream that Glen had had" (Steve Pank, 2004).
TEB with Fleetwood Mac, Family, East of Eden, Edgar Broughton Band
26th-9th October - I.T. vol. 1 n. 65 page 20
Dave Arbus (leader of the East of Eden) writes a polemical (and clever) letter about the "underground", answering to some self-indulgent statements of Robert Fripp.
In the letter reproduced here below also a quotation of the Third Ear Band as an expression of middle class youth culture (!).
28th – Redcar Coatham Hotel
TEB with Eclection
? – "Beat Instrumental" #? article
From this period, every Sunday night, TEB played as house band at The Boat Club in Nottingham...
October
TEB with Van der Graaf Generator.
TEB with The Room
7 th – 100 Club (London)
10th – Salford University (Salford)
"A Night of Family Entertainment with"
TEB with Family, Killing Floor, The Entire Sioux Nation.
"A Night of Family Entertainment with"
TEB with Family, Killing Floor, The Entire Sioux Nation.
15th – Mothers Club (Birmingham)
16th - Royal Philharmonic Hall (Liverpool)
TEB with Family and Bridget St. John
18th – London School of Economics (London)
Third Ear Band with Blossom Toes and Eclection
20th – Star Hotel (Croydon)
16th - Royal Philharmonic Hall (Liverpool)
TEB with Family and Bridget St. John
Third Ear Band with Blossom Toes and Eclection
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| The beautiful poster designed by Ged Rumak and printed by The Word. |
November
Paul Minns to "Jakie" magazine that wrote about the concert on November 29th (issue 308): "We play magic. We want to turn on the world and make everyone happy. When we came in Scotland, we were told there was a bad drinking scene, and that our long hair would cause trouble. So far, we've not had any worries. In fact, I think Edinburgh is the most beautiful city I've seen". Interesting to know that, years later, Paul would have decided to live in Scotland...
14th – Manchester Arts Centre (Manchester)
"Benefit Concert"
TEB with, among the others, Edgar Broughton Band
TEB with, among the others, Edgar Broughton Band
TEB with Fairport Convention
TEB with Magna Charta
Smith (2011): "The band was on tour around the country. We played gigs in Scotland, in Wales, in Manchester - in a club called the Magic Village run by Roger Eagle - and some in a club in Birmingham called Mothers which was rumoured to be run by gangsters...".
28th – Nag’s Head (High Wycombe)
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| TEB 1970: Sweeney, Minns, Coff and Smith (photo by Blackhill Enterprises). |
December
14th – The Houldsworth Hall (London)TEB with John Peel, Bridget St, John, Beau, Mike Hart
Karl Dallas in Melody Maker on December 20th: "Third Ear Band have an organic sound. And the response they got from their Dutch and Belgian tour seems to indicate that it trascends national frontiers in a way that only music that has grown that way naturally can. (...) In Holland I saw them working under the thoughest possible conditions, and the thing that struck me was the way their music communicated. Not at a cerebral level, but somewhere deeper. Imagine a great aircraft hanger of a hall, usually the venue about the size of the Roundhouse. Surrounded it with freezing fog and put about two or three hundred young Dutch teenagers inside, where the temperature is slightly above the cold outside. Kick off the concert with an announcement that the main attraction cen't get there, follow that with a couple of mediocre but noisy native rock bands, one with a singer who's a camp plastic Jagger. Than Third Ear Band takes over. Richard Coff's violin and Paul Minns' oboe start a dialogue that develops slowly as they explore the possibility of a simple melodic phrase. Ursula's cello lays a gruff foundation and then the drum starts. (...) I had seen the Third Ear work the same alchemy the same afternoon in Amsterdam's Paradiso. Again, the place was cold, and the main attraction (the same British group) had blown the gig. Here, in the centre of Amsterdam's hip scene, the Third Ear are still not well known, and the local freaks have the blase unconcern of people who stand at the centre of things. Again, from this unauspicious material, Third Ear made enthusiasm blossom. It didn't come from head, from any impressive pyrothecnics or intellectualised concepts. It grew from the heart. Organically".
Ursula Smith, remembering the period of touring with the Band: "We did some broadcasts mostly for John Peel, sometimes with an audience and sometimes just as recording sessions. The album "Earth Air Fire and Water" was recorded in Abbey Road Studios.
Abroad we did the Paradiso in Amsterdam, where most of the audience were lying on the floor, and we did several festivals in a giant sports stadiums in Germany".
(from a 2011 interview with Luca Ferrari published at in this archive at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2011/07/life-takes-so-much-time-interview-with.html)
18th - I.T. vol. 1 issue 70 page 3
A poem by Dave Tomlin published:
"Sonnet If that is that Then What is this? If this is that Then What is what The word is Is Did I mean me When I said that? Do I mean me When I say this? Is I me? Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, etc.".
18th - I.T. vol. 1 issue 70 page 3
A poem by Dave Tomlin published:
"Sonnet If that is that Then What is this? If this is that Then What is what The word is Is Did I mean me When I said that? Do I mean me When I say this? Is I me? Yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, etc.".
22th – At The Eight Till Late (Nottingham)
This was the first promotional tour of Third Ear Band (supporting the famous Al Stewart) organized by Blackhill Enterprises with the cooperation of Harvest Record, EMI underground label founded by Malcolm Jones in June 1969. The set introduced was based on these tracks: "Hyde Park raga", "Druid 11", "Cosmic Raga", "The Sea" and "The Labyrinth".
For the tour Blackhill invented the ambigous slogan "Art form or con?" to launch the sound of the group...
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| The tour programme cover. |
However he accepted the title and during the concert we shared with him at the Queen Elizabeth Hall he gave a short speech about how Nostradamus had predicted the assassination of the Kennedy brothers. He then sang a song about Nostradamus. Later when he toured America his tour was called ‘The year of the Cat’".
(from a 2011 interview with Luca Ferrari published at in this archive at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2011/07/life-takes-so-much-time-interview-with.html)
William Mann on the concert: "All four pieces on Saturday (and all eight on the record) were slow in pulse, full of drones and repeated figurations, usually a florid oboe cantilation on the top. Their music is earnest yet carefree, sublimely unconscious of passing time, simple in vocabulary, skilful in ensemble (the violinist's intonation was sometimes suspect), but superficial, almost empty to one who listens attentively. (...) I would call it Un-Pop: English, Scottish and Irish folk dance has taught them something, Indian classical music a little but not enough about phraseology and variety of mood. Some may be consoled, some uplifted, by what they play; I respect the intention but not the result".
The same journalist few lines below praised Al Stewart's dull performance...
Just opposite was the opinion of Anthony Thorncroft who wrote on the serious "Finacial Times" (January 5th) more than enthusiastic lines on the band performance: "The secret is to close the eyes, let the head nod gently in time with Glen Sweeney's hand drum, and enjoy a quiet trance. There is no real harm in falling asleep, for the Third Ear Band sells dreams".
6th – E.M.I. Studios (London)
The band recorded some tracks for a new album. "Earth" (take 4) emerged from the vaults years later and was published by Esoteric Recording in 2018 on a 3CDs remastered and expanded edition of "Third Ear Band" (PECLE 32653).
22th – Town Hall (Leith)
6th – E.M.I. Studios (London)
The band recorded some tracks for a new album. "Earth" (take 4) emerged from the vaults years later and was published by Esoteric Recording in 2018 on a 3CDs remastered and expanded edition of "Third Ear Band" (PECLE 32653).
February
4th - Norwich
11th – Fairfield Hall (Croydon)
13th – Guildhall (Southampton)
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| Original flyer |
20th – Crewe Hall (Sheffield)
21th – City Hall (Newcastle)
21th – Brooklands Tech College (Weybridge)
23th – Merry Inn
24th – Bligh’s Hotel (Sevenoaks)
26th - Oxford
27th – The Dome (Brighton)
end of the Al Stewart and Third Ear Band tour
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A page of Al Stewart-TEB tour programme with notes about TEB set.
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| TEB (Smith, Coff, Sweeney, Minns) photo on the tour booklet. Then on the second album cover. |
March
5th - Sunderland
9th – Locarno (Bristol)
TEB with Genesis
? – "Zigzag" magazine # 10
"Zigzag" magazine was a well respected rock folk blues publication started by Pete Frame in April 1969 and lasted until January 1986. Among articles/reviews about Arthur Lee (on the cover), Canned Heat, Tyrannosaurus Rex, Zombies, Hawkwind, Leonard Cohen, David Ackles also the Third Ear Band.
12th – Stoke City
13th – North Oxfordshire Technical College (Banbury Oxen) TEB with Arcadium
“Atomic Sunrise” festival with TEB, Liverpool Scene and Kevin Ayers & The Whole World
16th – E.M.I. Studios (London)
The band recorded some tracks for a new album. "The Sea" (Fire) emerged from the vaults years later and was published by Esoteric Recording in 2018 on a 3CDs remastered and expanded edition of "Third Ear Band" (PECLE 32653).
19th – Scarborough
20th - Glasgow
22th – The Roundhouse (London)
“Implosion at the Roundhouse”
TEB with Kevin Ayers and Brinsley Schwarz
27th – Leicester
28th – Greak Street
29th-30th – Le Bourget airport, Paris
"Music Evolution 70" Festival
A seven day-gig festival with many groups as Pink Floyd, Hawkind, Pretty Things, Grateful Dead, High Tide, Al Stewart, Kevin Ayers. The festival was a complete failure and Third Ear Band couldn't play.
"IT" n. 77 (May 7th, 1969) reported: "The french pop festival (...) promised seven days of music, films, happenings, unusual instruments & exotic exhibithion. Despite the featured non-stop sounds of (...), the whole thing collapsed after 3 days of chaos, confusion & conning. Inefficient publicity meant only 5,000 of the expected 100,000 turned up. Just as well, the food ran out. Cops disguised as firemen roamed about the freezing hall, joined by thirty 'private' heavies hired by the organiser, Claude Rousseau.
Some English groups were not allowed to play (Third Ear Band, Cochise), equipment failed to arrive and most of it fused anyway...".
Ursula Smith (2011): "There was a festival in an Aircraft hangar at Le Bourget airport in Paris, where the Pink Floyd were playing with a whole range of other bands. I remember we stayed at the Paris Hilton and we did a TV show in Belgium...".
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Sweeney, Smith, Minns and Coff in a park during 1970 (Steve Pank personal collection).
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April
3rd – Cornwall
?th - Les Cousins Club (London)
TEB with Nick Drake
(Read in this Archive at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2017/05/nick-drake-and-third-ear-band-at.html)
Recording of "Third Ear Band".
Paul Minns remembered in 1996: "The Four Elements album was made with great difficulty. Basically we had to play each element as we thought it was without rehearsals. I remember "Air". Coff said it was impossible to represent but amazingly we succeeded. Coff was incredibli negative which I put down to a combination of home-sickness and the jew in him. His playing would sometimes degenerate into a wail and he was described on one occasion as making toothache music. His playing was heavily influenced by Penderecki and Lutoslawski amongst others".
Also producer Andrew King was involved with the sessions and his reconstruction (1996) is quite different: "During "Air" "Earth" "Fire" "Water" the band were taking acid fairly regularly. I did not realized it and could not understand what they were laughing at all the time. Anyway I think it's a fine album. I saw Peter Mew, the EMI engineer, a few weeks ago, and he still remembers it as some of the weirdest sessions he ever worked on in 30 years at Abbey Road!".
Sweeney, who confirmed in some occasions the sessions was conditioned by drugs, remembered that the first troubles with the record company rose just during those sessions (1987): "Back in the studios for the second album, we found negative vibes everywhere. Harvest had tired of the "underground" and the engineers refused to mix the "Fire" track so we muddled through as best we could. The album was doomed".
Carolyn Looker (Aprile 2012): "Sorry, we were all stoned. Glen would suggest a feel or vision for each track and the guys played it. I don't think the engineers liked or understood the music, so mixing they weren't into".
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| Two rare photos taken in Abbey Road studios during the recording sessions (the photos was published by Italian magazine "La Domenica del Corriere" at the end of 1970 - read at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2010/02/two-very-rare-1970-teb-photos-in.html |
Maybe a TV broadcast at the French Channel 2 programme titled "Pop Deux" (see at May 28th): TEB played "Hyde Park Raga" and a not announced track (maybe "Mosaic").
24th – Essen TV
25th – Paradiso Club (Amsterdam)
26th – Delft (Holland)
29th – Whiskey Villa Club (Walsall)
Boreham Wood
May
2nd – Hassauit (Belgium)
3nd - Glastonbury Tor
Druid ceremony
The band played at the Tor following a Druid ceremony. Chied Druid (and writer) Philip Carr-Goom remembered the event here
8th – Polytechnic (Leeds)
TEB with Edgar Broughton Band
20th – BBC Studios (London)
“Sound of Seventies” radio show
23th – Bromley
28th - ORTF (Office Radio Television France) - Channel 2
"Pop Deux"
TEB played at inn of Olympia (Paris) "Hyde Park Raga" and "Mosaic".
A broadcast conducted by Patrice Blanc Francard with clip of Kevin Ayers, Bridget St. John and a 17:15 performance of the Third Ear Band ("Hyde Park Raga" and a not announced track) maybe recorded on April 20th (see before). Info taken from the site of INAMediaPro at http://www.inamediapro.com/en/
Read the story of the important retrival of this rare broadcast at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2012/08/a-new-sensational-retrieval-story-in.html and http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2012/09/a-new-sensational-retrieval-second-part.html
29th – Twickenham (London)
The wonderful broadcast is available on INAfr site at http://www.ina.fr/recherche/recherche?search=third+ear+band&vue=Video
TEB with Edgar Broughton Band and Kevin Ayers & the Whole World
June
As for the first album, the new work got good reviews. Sweeney to Richard Williams ("Melody Maker", June 6th, 1970): "It was conceived at about the same time as our first album, when we've found that some of our pieces were beginning to represent the elements, which is something we'd wanted to do for a long time".
"Disc & Music Echo" (June 20th, 1970) defined it "a carefully made, thoughtful and excellent album", analysing in detail the four tracks: "It opens with a piece on "Air" - mainly featuring strings and very Stravinski-ish. "Earth" is earth - a jolly, basic 2/4 rhythm with beautiful stereophonic contrapuntal oboe effect from Paul Minns. (...) The band paints really beautiful musical image of "Fire", capturing its basic power by the persistent steady percussion, and the flicker of the flames by the vacillating strings and woodwind. With "Water" they use cello and viola for the current while the oboe goes off into little eddies with a flowing, repetitive tune".
Richard Williams, appreciating definitely the album, affirmed on "Melody Maker" the difference of TEB music from pop-stylistic features: "What they have to do with pop music I don't know, but that's a point of no importance and what matters is that they produce improvisational music of conceptual interest and fascinating content". Then he concluded: "Difficult music to rationalise about, then, because it simply exists and demands only to be taken on its own terms. If the concept interests you at all, I'm sure you'd enjoy it" ("Melody Maker", June 13th, 1970).
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| Original Harvest ad for "Third Ear Band" (1970). |
A remastered expanded 3Cds edition of "Third Ear Band" (Harvest 1970) was published by Esoteric Recordings in November 2018 with a mess of unrealised tracks.
5th – Leicester
6th – Clitheroe Castle (Clitheroe)
TEB with Kevin Ayers and Michael Chapman (read a report at http://www.ukrockfestivals.com/clitheroe-festival.html)
The same day "Melody Maker" published a very good article on the TEB written by Richard Williams.
7th – Locarno (Bristol)
TEB with Kevin Ayers & the Whole World, Edgar Broughton Band
8th – BBC Studios (London)
“Top Gear” radio show
“Sound of Seventies” radio show: TEB played "Earth", "Downbone Raga", "Water (& Festival)"
14th – Heppenheim (Germany)
15th - Stuttgart (Germany)
18th – BBC Studios (London)
"Sound of '70's" radio show: TEB played "Dog Evil" ("Mosaic"), "The Sea" (a.ka. "Air") and "Water". Read and download the tracks at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2010/10/another-old-rare-teb-radio-session.html
“Top Gear” radio show: TEB played "Downbone Raga", "Feel Your Head", "Hyde Park Raga"
24th – Royal Festival Hall (London)
“The Sun Wheel Ceremony”
"The Third Ear Band have been working with the top electronic musicians in France, Group de la Recherche Musicale de l'ORTF, to create a musical/phisic experience in the concert hall. EMI have developed the concept of periphonic sound and loaned equipment to create a total 'sound surround' within which you can experience the combined effects of the Third Ear and the electronic ideas of Bayle and Parmigiani" (from IT vol. 1 issue 81, June 18th, 1970)
The band played with Bernard Parmegiani two traks, "Fire" and the unpublished ""Freak Dance" (other source: "Pop Secret").
On "Melody Maker" (July 4th, 1970), Chris Charlesworth wrote about the event: "The hall was barely half full. Accompained at times by electronic machines making weird sounds Third Ear Band droned through two lenghty pieces which were well accepted by their fans. Their music has no title and is 90 per cent improvisation. It just starts and finishes when the band feel like it. There's a vague anonymity about their music. However violinist Richard Coff, who hate make announcements, did mention that one piece was called "Freak Dance". This contained some haunting oboe work from Paul Minns, and I rather enjoied it. Their second piece was more ambitious and, I thought, less enjoyable. At one stage I actually saw Richard tapping his foot!".
Quite different Carolyn Looker's memories of the event (April 2012): "Parmegiani concert was at Festival Hall. It didn't work too well in my opinion. TEB's music was organic, the French were music concrete, it didn't got".
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| Blackhill Enterprises ad for "Third Ear Band" and the "Sun Wheel Ceremony" ("Zigazag" magazine # 13). |
You can listen some original Parmegiani's compositions (from 1965 and 1971) at http://www.ubu.com/sound/parmegiani.html
or download his "De Natura Sonorum" (1984) at http://attackshipsonfire.tumblr.com/post/1708248752/the-100-greatest-albums-before-1980-6-bernard
27th – Kralingen, Rotterdam (Holland)
A Bernard Parmegiani video ("Dance", 1962).
"Holland Festival 70"
TEB with among the others Al Stewart, TRex, Family, Byrds and Country Joe
TEB with among the others Al Stewart, TRex, Family, Byrds and Country Joe
Just that day "Third Ear Band" appeared on the UK charts at #51 position (leaving on July 4th at #49).
Double Harvest anthology to promote first albums of the underground label. TEB have "Druid One" from the first record.
"IT" n. 81 (June 18th-July 2nd, 1970): "Harvest's first sampler - a double album at 29/11d, which can't be bad. And it ain't. Tracks from (...). Yeah! Good guide to the Harvest range of goodies, and despite of a pair of album tracks (the Shirley and Dolly Collins thing is horrible), it's really good value".
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| An Harvest ad published by "Melody Maker" on July, 4th 1970 issue. |
July
2nd-3rd – Munich TV (Munich, Germany)
TEB recorded "Abelard & Heloise" soundtrack. The TV transposition of the famous Medieval story, directed by George Moorse with drawings by painter Herbert Fuchs (died in 2006), told the dramatic, contrasted love story between Peter Abelard (1070-1142), French philosophy and theologist with a troubled life, and Heloise, niece of the canon Fulbert who to hinder this passion between the tutor and his pupil, hired some scoundrels to emasculate him.
This classic drama was written by Alexander Pope in the letter "Heloise ad Abelard" (read the complete story at http://classiclit.about.com/cs/articles/a/aa_abelard.htm).
The soundtrack would be been realised years later, included in Luca Ferrari's book on the band titled "Necromancers of the drifting West" (Stampa Alternativa, 1997).
After some researches, in 2014 Ghetto Raga Archive found the original movie at the NDR German TV archives (read at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2014/09/abelard-heloise-german-short-film-found.html and at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2014/10/abelard-and-heloise-short-tv-film-update.html ).
A remastered version of the soundtrack, taken from the original masters, was included on a 3CDs remastered and expanded edition of "Third Ear Band", published by Esoteric Recordings in 2018 (as PECLE 32653).
4th – Hamburg (Germany)
6th – Ursula Smith and Richard Coff quit the band
The two musicians quit officially TEB. An agreement is signed among the group members where with a clearance sum of £ 200 to Smith for the recording of the second album and £ 300 to Coff for the rights of "Alchemy", they can't claim any rights over the band, except for ther royalties coming from the selling of the records...
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| A 1970 studio band shot (photo by SKRN/LFI). |
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| Probably the best TEB line-up ever: Minns, Smith, Coff and Sweeney (photo by Blackhill Enterprises). |
“Solstice Ceremony”
The band takes part to the ritual celebration of the Summer solstice, organized by the Bards and Druids (Order of Bards, Ovates and Druids) of London. Sweeney to "Melody Maker" (June 1970) about the Druids: "We play with the Druids sometimes. They're a bunch of fine old men, and when we played with them at the Tor there was this old chap of about 90 steaming up the hill, looking like he was about to die. I think they're the true guardians of the mystic traditions in this country". About the connections with the Druids read at the page http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2009/12/trird-ear-druidic-band.html
Remembering this wild period, Ursula Smith said: "We had been in Germany playing at couple of festivals and recording the soundtrack for a German TV production of Abelard and Eloise. On that, we first watched the movie though on a TV screen and then it was played in front of us while we improvised the music.
When we arrived back in London having had virtually no sleep we were immediately rushed into the back of a van and driven to Glastonbury Tor. We climbed the Tor carrying the instruments. Luckily it was beautiful day. My cello was the heaviest and the biggest. The person having the most problem was the Chief Druid who looked like he might have heart attack at any moment. He had to keep stopping to have a rest. When we all reached the top I found that there was nothing for me to sit on, so I sat on the side of the Hill. After the Druids performed their ceremony, we played to the people and to the Sun...".
When we arrived back in London having had virtually no sleep we were immediately rushed into the back of a van and driven to Glastonbury Tor. We climbed the Tor carrying the instruments. Luckily it was beautiful day. My cello was the heaviest and the biggest. The person having the most problem was the Chief Druid who looked like he might have heart attack at any moment. He had to keep stopping to have a rest. When we all reached the top I found that there was nothing for me to sit on, so I sat on the side of the Hill. After the Druids performed their ceremony, we played to the people and to the Sun...".
18th – Hyde Park (London)
Free Concert in Hyde Park with TEB, Pink Floyd, Edgar Broughton Band and Kevin Ayers. Even if announced for playing, TEB didn't appear and Roy Harper played instead the band.
Steve Pank (February 2nd, 2012): "The Third Ear Band did at least three Hyde Park concerts, first supporting the Pink Floyd, that one with Blind Faith and also the Rolling Stones. The weather was brilliant for all of them, the rumour started to go round that having the Third Ear Band on the bill brought the sun out!"
24th-26th – Worthing
TEB with Mungo Jerry, Renaissance, Matthews Southern Comfort, Roger Ruskin Spear, Noir, Formerly Fat Harry, Michael Chapman... TEB played on 26th. (A report at http://www.ukrockfestivals.com/phun-city-menu.html)
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The festival manifesto published on I.T. n. 80 (June 5th-14th, 1970). |
Blackhill Enterprises' ad with TEB: "Blackhill gives you a little more than an orgasm"...
August
1st – "Melody Maker" announced Smith & Coff split
The magazine proclaimed the coming out of Richard Coff and Ursula Smith from the TEB, replaced by Ben Cartland and Paul Buckmaster.
Coff: "We have actually been split for about a week now and Ursula and I are forming a new group. There were a lot of reasons for the split and the main one is the new group we want to form. It had a lot to do with musical policy and things like that".
The fleeting band, which was named Cosmic Overdose (some other ones said Unnatural Acts) won't record anything, also because it was just the effect of mere rumours (Steve Pank 2010). Fatalist Sweeney (1990) on the Smith's split: "She's a Libra and they always seem to be influenced by certain people, I don't know how it works".
Ursula Smith (2011): "After Steve left the band as driver, we were doing a tour of Belgium when Richard called me and Paul together, and Richard started a discussion saying he was not happy with the way the band's finances were being run. He said he had decided to leave and asked me to go with him. That was when I left the band.
Richard and I did some rehearsing and got some ideas together. Richard rang the "Melody Maker" music paper and got an interview, but we had not got equipment or management or agency. We were busking near Speaker's Corner Hyde Park when this South African guy came up to chat to us, and said he knew a guy who ran an equipment shop and he could get us some equipment there.
We went to the shop and Richard spoke to the manager who told us that this person was an intelligence agent for the South African government and that we should be very wary of him. After that Richard rejoined the Third Ear Band and so did Paul Buckmaster. Soon after that the Third Ear Band got signed for doing the music for Polanski’s "Macbeth"...".
Steve Pank about his split as a driver of the band (March 2nd, 2012): "One of the reasons I gave up driving for the band was to get into my own music. I was living in a community which Ursula was also in and we started playing music together. I have some songs which I wrote that we used when we were playing at the Albion Fairs in the 70s. They are in a reggae style with Ursula playing the Cello, I have thought of recording them...".
2nd – Cambridge Folk Festival
Sixth edition of the legendary folk festival promoted on the ground of Cherry Hinton Hall with among the others Pentangle, Ralph McTell, Bridget St. John and the Third Ear Band with a new line-up including Sweeney, Bridges, Buckmaster and Minns.
2nd – Cambridge Folk Festival
Sixth edition of the legendary folk festival promoted on the ground of Cherry Hinton Hall with among the others Pentangle, Ralph McTell, Bridget St. John and the Third Ear Band with a new line-up including Sweeney, Bridges, Buckmaster and Minns.
8th – Melody Maker ad for a third new album
Sweeney and Minns formed The Third Ear "Big" Band with Paul Buckmaster on bass and Denim Bridges on electric guitar named it ELECTRIC EARBAND.
Sweeney (1990): "He had this double 'wammy' guitar, which blew everybody's mind! A couple months latere, we discovered that only one neck would play!".
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| Denim Bridges with his double 'wammy' guitar. |
An ad for a new album, titled "The Dragon Wakes", is published by Melody Maker. The album will be recorded just months later (see on February 1971) with a different line-up, but never published.
September
4th – London Lyceum (London)TEB with Edgar Broughton Band, Kevin Ayers and Formerly Fat Harry
6th – BBC Studios (London)
“Sunday Concert” radio show
18th – Eindovhen (Holland)
Tilbury (Holland)
19th – Sittard (Holland)
21th - Bremen Radio (Germany)
TEB recorded three tracks live in the studio intended for "Beat Club" TV programme. The set, consisting of "In D", "Hyde Park" and "Druid Grocking", was realised just in October 2011 by English label Gonzo Distribution as a DVD (you can read a review at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2011/11/lost-broadcasts-dvd-review.html).
With the band, in the studio, played congas a Nigerian session man called Gasper Lawal, a sort of mistery for many TEB fans revealed just in October 2011. About this read an article at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2011/10/revealed-who-is-conga-player-playing-in.html of this archive.
26th – “Beat Club” German TV
TEB recorded live in the studio a short version of "Hyde Park" (here titled "Hyde Park Raga"), - read at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2009/12/hyde-park-third-ear-band-tv-video_09.html
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| Gasper Lawal from the TEB 1972 "Beat Club" DVD. |
October
2nd – Norfolk
10th - Ealing
14th – Assembly Hall (Walthamstow)
21th – Norwich
23th – Glasgow
31th – Cambridge
November
Steve Peacock in "Sounds" (November 7th, 1970): "The greater your disciplines, the easier it is to know whether you have succeeded with your music. As Paul Buckmaster put it after the Third Ear Band's at the Lady Mitchell Hall, Cambridge, going on stage with the Third Ear is like being given a pair of skates and told to go onto an ice-rink and improvise an ice show with three other people. (...) Their's is an ambitious approach to music, and even though they are in the process of discovering what they can do with the new line-up, it worked out very well for the most of their set and really lifted in a couple of places. (...) From the loose, organic feel of the first piece, to the intensity of the build-up in the last, Third Ear Band created some inspiring music on Saturday".
8th – The Roundhouse (London)
"Implosion"
TEB with Soft Machine, Brinsley Schwarz et al.
The band recorded some tracks for the announced new album "The Dragon Wakes". Three tracks ("Very fine... far away", "The Dragon Wakes" and "Sunrise") emerged from the vaults years later and was published by Esoteric Recording in 2018 on a 3CDs remastered and expanded edition of "Third Ear Band" (PECLE 32653).
13th – George Hotel (Walsall)14th – University of Sheffield (Sheffield)
18th – Bordeaux (France)
TV program recording
23th - Paris (France)
TV program recording
24th – University of Keele
26th – EMI Studios recordings (London)
27th – Swansea University (London)
TEB with Bridget St.John
28th – Liverpool Stadium (Liverpool)
TEB with Kevin Ayers, Edgar Broughton Band, Michael Chapman and Formerly Fat Harry
December
2nd – Scunthorpe Civic Teathre
5th – Brighton Sussex University (Brighton)
TEB with Black Sabbath, Patto, Dr. Strangely Strange
5th – Trident Studios (London)
The band recorded three tracks for a forthcoming planned album: "Court Dance", "Groom's Dance" and "Fleance", in 2018 included in a remastered expanded 3CDs edition of "Third Ear Band" (Harvest 1970), published by Esoteric Recordings (as PECLE 32653).
8th – Sochaux (Swiss)
14th - Shepperton
1971
January
7th – BBC Studios (London)
“John Peel’s Sunday Show” radio show
16th – A letter to "Melody Maker" by Paul Buckmaster
In the page of letters in "Melody Maker", Paul Buckmaster answered to an article of Ron Hollingworth where he had been attributed the TEB leadership: "(...) If anybody thinks differently, thinks that the band "led" by one member (i.e. one person deciding the format, tempo, key or mode, changes etc. and imposing this on the others) then they have totally missed on the most important point, if not the most important point of the Third Ear Band. It's not I, it's we, and we're free".
“John Peel's Sunday Concert” radio show: during the running programme a third electric album (never realised) is announced as next. The band played "Eternity in D", "Druid" and "Water" (read at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2009/12/rarities-of-national-balkan-ensemble.html).
In 2018 this radio concert was included in a remastered expanded 3Cds edition of "Third Ear Band" (Harvest 1970), published by Esoteric Recordings (PECLE 32653).
20th – Keele
29th – Free Trade Hall (Manchester)
TEB with Keef Hartley Band
30th – Colston Hall (Bristol)
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| This 1971 Blackhill Enterprises poster emerged from the Internet in March 2015. |
6th – Southampton University (Southampton)
TEB with Keef Hartley Band
?th – Recording Sessions (Balham, London)
Third Ear Band retired to Sweeney and Minns' flat in Balham for three weeks to rehearse the pieces of the third album, already announced on August 1970 as "The Dragon Wakes".
Roy Hollingworth, sent by Melody Maker to 'drive out' the band, wrote on those days he had heard the musicians play a new electric version of "Druid". In the short interview, Sweeney said: "The line-up now seems more viable. I got sick of saying that the old band, with violins and things, had no right to be in the pop business. Now we look like a pop group, but it's still Third music". As to the title of the new record: "There are two sets - order and chaos. Order may go, but out of the chaos comes the dragon. Maybe we will kid everyone now that we are high powered and progressive".
The new album, yet announced, for some problems is never been published.
Minns remembered in 1996: "Heavily influenced by "Bitches Brew" by Miles Davis (an album I hated for its aggression) Paul Buckmaster drove some tracks manically from the bass and flipped during the session. On acid he ran out in the street screaming about the Gurjeffian Eye and I believe stripping off his clothes. He was never the same person afterwards and the recordings went no further".
From these sessions a copy on reel of one track was taken for years by Paul Minns ("Raga n.1") and six by Denim Bridges ("Air", "Mini Mac", "Ghoo", "Game Six", "Discrimination" and "Fire"). Another track, "Mistress to the Sun", was recorded in the same sessions for a planned single, but never published. In 2018 the track was included in a remastered expanded 3Cds edition of "Third Ear Band" (Harvest 1970), published by Esoteric Recordings.
Six unrealised tracks was included on a CD attached to Luca Chino Ferrari's book "Glen Sweeney's Book of Alchemies" published by November Books in August 2020.
Six unrealised tracks was included on a CD attached to Luca Chino Ferrari's book "Glen Sweeney's Book of Alchemies" published by November Books in August 2020.
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A rare photo of TEB (Bridges, Buckmaster, Sweeney, Minns) in 1971.
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12th – E.M.I. Studios (London)
The band recorded the track "Mistress to the Sun" intended as a single for the forthcoming album. The tune emerged from the vaults years later and was published by Esoteric Recording in 2018 on a 3CDs remastered and expanded edition of "Third Ear Band" (PECLE 32653).
March
6th – University of Sussex (Brighton)
7th – Guildford
“Contemporary Music in Guilford”
TEB with Kevin Ayers & The Whole World and Poppa Ben Hook
The band recorded the track "Mistress to the Sun" intended as a single for the forthcoming album. The tune emerged from the vaults years later and was published by Esoteric Recording in 2018 on a 3CDs remastered and expanded edition of "Third Ear Band" (PECLE 32653).
March
6th – University of Sussex (Brighton)
7th – Guildford
“Contemporary Music in Guilford”
TEB with Kevin Ayers & The Whole World and Poppa Ben Hook
11th – E.M.I. Studios (London)
The band recorded some tracks for a new album. "Evening Awakening" emerged from the vaults years later and was published by Esoteric Recording in 2018 on a 3CDs remastered and expanded edition of "Third Ear Band" (PECLE 32653).
19th – Wamrighton
April
2nd-3rd–4th – Amsterdam (Holland)
16th – Ardleigh House (Hornchurch)
May
1st – York8th – Manchester
9th – University of Essex Ent. (Colchester)
“Essex Arts Festival”
TEB with Family and Roy Harper
TEB with Egg
Around this period, TEB was contacted by famous Polish film maker Roman Polanski, suggested by the actress who in Germany starred Heloise in the TV film "Abelard & Heloise".
This anedocte is from Glen Sweeney (1988): "We were in the Blackhill office one day when the phone rang, Andrew King picked it up, I couldn't hear the conversation, but Andrew began to give me strange looks. He put the phone down and said: "Do you know who that was Glen?". "No". "A guy called Stanley Kubrick. He wanted to use "Air" track from the second album for a film called "Clockwork Orange"... "You must be kidding", I said. Andrew gave me a funny look. "Own up Glen, it's some friend of yours, right!". "No... What did you tell him?" Andrew grinned: "I told him to piss off!" "Why?", I said, but the phone rang again: "Hello, Blackhill Enterprises...". Something was happening - I could tell it by Andrew's face... "Roman who?" He bellowed: "Polanski!!!" I panicked and grabbed the phone from Andrew's nervous fingers...".
Roman Polanski with American pornograpy publisher Hugh Hefner receiving questions in a press conference concerning their planned film production of Shakespeare's Macbeth on 22nd August 1970 (photo by Keystone/Getty Images).
Polanski with actor Jon Finch, who has snared the title role in Polanski's upcoming film version of “Macbeth”, attending a press reception in London on 28th October 1970 to announce the initial casting choices (photo by Ian Showell/Keystone/Getty Images).
June
The band recorded a track titled "In D" for the new album. It emerged from the vaults years later and was published by Esoteric Recording in 2018 on a 3CDs remastered and expanded edition of "Third Ear Band" (PECLE 32653).
12th – Wakefield16th – Southsea
17th – Horst Konigstein
23th - Durham
24th – Glastonbury Faire Festival
TEB with Henry Cow, Fairport Convention, Edgar Broughton Band Doncaster
July ?th – Air Studios (London)
"Macbeth" recording sessions
The recording sessions started at George Martin's Air Studios (London) (http://www.airstudios.com/about-us/history/). For six weeks, working almost twelve hours a day, TEB had for this occasion the violin of Simon House, who used to play with High Tide, and is engaged in the studio with the producers' myth George Martin.
Glen Sweeney told about the recording process ("Sounds", 1972): "Well, we originally were going to use a small dubbing theatre at Air and we thought we would rehearse the film score, but on the first few clips - they only sent the movie on a clip at the time, you see - things went to well that we eventually sent the dubbing theatre up and plugged it into an eight-track and it became the original film soundtrack, part from overdubbing... (...) The way we did it mainly was by viewing the clip that they needed music for and them maybe somebody would have musical idea which we would try out, and if nobody had any ideas then we would hope fot the best and try again. And it worked nearly one hundred per cent. I mean, the ideal way would have been to get someone to write the whole score and hire a bunch of studio musicians to play it".
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TEB recording "Macbeth" (hand writings by Glen Sweeney).
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15th-23th - tour in Belgium
24th - Air Recording Studios (London)
"Macbeth" recording session:
"(...) in late 1970, AIR Studios consisted of two studios (Studios One and Two), a mixing room with a small vocal booth (Studio Three) plus a film sound mixing room that was actually once used as a studio by the Third Ear Band, who recorded the soundtrack to Polanski’s MacBeth in it" (Chris Michie on Procol Harum's "Broken Barricades" recordings - read at http://www.procolharum.com/99/michie-air.htm).
During the session, when some music parts are recorded again and over-recorded others, the music sequence of Banquo's death is mixed on three tracks "as per Roman Polanski's comments" - is written in the communication to the band.
Paul Minns on the album ("Sounds", 1972): "It was done very much for the picture in that the actions of the murder are reproduced exactly in sound so that it's too cartoonish, perhaps. I think perhaps we were trying a bit too hard".
And about the relationship with Polanski, Sweeney explained: "He used to come and express either approval or disapproval of what we were doing, but he's very much a sort of artist or something - I don't quite know how to put it - very like we are. We respected what he was putting on tape. There was only one occasion we violently disagreed over a piece of music. We refused to change it and he refused to use it. We put that on the record anyway because we still think it's a very good piece of music".
Sweeney in 1990 ("Unhinged" magazine): "We did the score, a lot of it was improvised, but a lot of it couldn't be improvised. And we were having a lot of bad vibes from George Martin, who ran the studio - he wantedto be on the name check: 'Music by George Martin and the Third Ear Band'. So when he didn't get that, we got a lot of bad vibes - but I was used to that by then!".
Remembering those sessions in 2011, Denim Bridges (e-mail to Luca Ferrari) stated: "I saw about the cover of "Fleance"'s song. I'd like to hear it. Glen and Paul hated that track because it didn't fit in with TEB concept. It was composed for the movie and it was composed by me alone. The words were provided to me so I, of course, just wrote the melody and chords. The turn around where I repeat the line as a sort of refrain was my trick that I often use(d) and using the minor chord was cool I think. The rest of the band improvised the arrangement in TEB style as best we could within the ridged structure. Anyway that song was the start of my demise with TEB as that's the way I wanted TEB to go".
27th-29th – Clacton-on-Sea
"Weeley Festival"
TEB with among the others Edgar Broughton Band, Colosseum, Faces, Arthur Brown, Quintessence (a report of the festival at http://www.ukrockfestivals.com/weeley-festival.html)
September
"Hyde Park free concert"
TEB with Kevin Ayers, Jack Bruce, Roy Harper. Last Blackhill Enterprises' free concert.
October
9th – Huton, Technical College
30th – Redhill, St. Johns Church
TEB with Quorum Lights
? – "Beat Instrumental" # 102
An article on the Third Ear Band written by Steve Turner.
NOTE ABOUT THE SOURCES:
TEB with Quorum Lights
? – "Beat Instrumental" # 102
An article on the Third Ear Band written by Steve Turner.
NOTE ABOUT THE SOURCES:
This historical reconstruction of TEB's musical life has been based on Paul Minns' personal diary; several interviews made by Luca Ferrari to the members of the band between 1987 and 1996 utilised for the book "Necromancers of the drifting West" (Stampa Alternativa, Rome 1997); the extraordinary "International Times" web archive (http://www.internationaltimes.it/); the "Billboard Magazine" Web archive; Nigel Cross' "The Return of the Acid Prankster. Glen Sweeney tells the Third Ear Band story" ("Unhinged" n. 6, Spring 1990); rare paper cuttings & posters from Glen Sweeney and Steve Pank personal collections; "Marmalade Skies" Web archive (http://www.marmalade-skies.co.uk/); the Family Web archive (http://www.familybandstand.com; the British Archive Newspaper (https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/); UK music magazines Archive (https://worldradiohistory.com/); the kind Jon Limbert of Beatchapter music shop in London; exclusive interviews made by Luca Ferrari just for this Archive with Clive Kingsley, Dave Tomlin, Steve Pank, Carolyn Looker, Denim Bridges, Ursula Smith, Brian Meredith, David Loxley, Paul Buckmaster, Muz Murray and other musicians/people involved in TEB's glorious story.
no©2011-2024 Luca Chino Ferrari
(Last update August 2024)
