The next Cherry Red’s Third Ear Band reissue is “Music from Macbeth”, a single CD with few unrealized tracks taken by the vaults. The booklet will be edited and written by Luca Chino Ferrari.
For the beginning of 2019, Cherry Red is planning a big reissue of “Alchemy”, a triple CD with a great amount of unrealized/alternate tracks, BBC radio programmes, and curiosities...
"A NEWLY RE-MASTERED 3 DISC EXPANDED EDITION OF THE 1970 ALBUM
FEATURING 11 PREVIOUSLY UNRELEASED TRACKS DRAWN FROM AN UNRELEASED ALBUM AND THE ENTIRE RARE “ABELARD & HELOISE” SOUNDTRACK
Esoteric Recordings is pleased to announce the expanded and
re-mastered release of the self- titled 1970 album by THIRD EAR BAND.
Formed in 1968 around a nucleus of GLEN SWEENEY (percussion), PAUL MINNS
(Oboe), RICHARD COFF (Violin, Viola) and URSULA SMITH (Cello), the
Third Ear Band were unique in their exploration of exotic baroque music
fused with experimental rock. Signing to Blackhill Enterprises in 1969,
the quartet opened for many of the legendary Hyde Park free concerts by
Pink Floyd, The Rolling Stones and Blind Faith. One of the early
signings to EMI’s progressive imprint, Harvest, their debut album,
“Alchemy” was released in June 1969.
This, the band’s second album, was issued in June 1970 and gained
good reviews in the underground music press. Always fluid with their
line-ups, Ursula Smith and Richard Coff departed the band in September
1970, some weeks after recording a soundtrack to a German television
film, “Abelard and Heloise”, to be replaced by Ben Cartland and Paul
Buckmaster. At this point the Third Ear Band began to explore a more
experimental rock direction, stating that they would go “electric” for
their next album, tentatively entitled “The Dragon Awakes”. Despite an
album’s worth of studio sessions being recorded at Abbey Road studios in
late 1970 and the Spring of 1971, the project was eventually shelved.
This 3 disc digipack edition of THIRD EAR BAND features eleven
previously unreleased tracks; the entire “Dragon Awakes” sessions, all
previously unreleased, along with alternate session takes, two BBC John
Peel sessions from 1970 and 1971 and a newly re-mastered version of the
“Abelard and Heloise” soundtrack produced from recently discovered first
generation master tapes. The set also includes a booklet with new essay
by Third Ear Band Ghettoraga official archivist and biographer Luca Ferrari."
Soon Cherry Red Records (https://www.cherryred.co.uk/) edits a brand new triple CDs of TEB's music related to the wonderful 1970 second album (a.k.a. "The Elements"). The package shows newly remastered edition of the studio album and the full "Abelard & Heloise" TV soundtrack, two rare BBC radio sessions and 8 (eight!!!) totally never issued studio tracks from the Abbey Road vaults (among them the legendary "Mistress of the Sun" recorded in 1971 and different studio takes of "Earth" and "Air"). The booklet is edited by Luca Chino Ferrari.
"I was just sitting down to write a review of Ursula's concert in Burgh House when I saw that Will had beaten me to it. Good one! I will just add that of the three pieces played, the ones sounding most familiar to Third Ear Band aficionados would be the two string trios by Schubert. The sound of the string trio (violin, viola, cello) is leaner than the more usual string quartet, and it also puts more responsibility on the individual musicians. The other two string players in the group met when they were both in the orchestra of the English National Opera. Frank Cliff (viola) moved up to East Anglia some years ago, Jane Faulkner still plays and teaches in London.
I am off to the Electric Universe conference in Bath, the first one outside Arizona USA. Glen would have loved the Electric Universe movement, he was a big fan of Velicovsky, whose theories about the evolution of the solar system were an inspiration to the movement. I have been in touch with Carolyn regarding a collaboration to write an account of Glen's early life, before he formed the Third Ear Band. Good wishes Steve Pank."
Here's an exclusive report for Ghettoraga Archive of the evening Will Hulbert and his wife Veronica (who took the wonderful pictures) had at the Hampstead Burgh House where they met Steve Pank and Ursula Smith, who played her cello at a classical concert.
"So! To try to put a story to those photos, Sunday does not start well! I forget to charge the camera and we find out that there are no trains running on our line up to London. I start to think that we are never going to get there! Who would have thought a short trip across London would be so long and complicated? After a couple of hours, my wife and I find ourselves at our destination, the leafy suburb of Hampstead. I promised my wife Veronica that I would buy Sunday lunch. Think Sunday lunch, wine, followed by a classical recital in a Georgian house in a very select part of town. What’s not to like? Well! Lunch took forever to turn up and was somewhat cold when it did. During the interminable wait I did notice someone pacing the grounds around the house who I was sure was Steve Pank.
After lunch we head upstairs to the Concert Room, Steve was standing alone, so I thought to reintroduce myself. To clarify, some forty years prior (albeit a couple of weeks) Steve had introduced himself to me, in the bar downstairs at the Roundhouse (by coincidence a couple of stops on the tube from Hampstead). The 1978 incarnation of the Third Ear Band (not the best in my opinion but not as bad as later incarnations) at a time when punk and new wave where at their height, TEB’s musical direction of folk songs seemed to be somewhat out of touch with the late 70’s zeitgeist with minimal guitar, violin oboe (Paul Minns hiding in the background). It really needed a cello to give it balance (Oh! and drop the folk singing).
So nearly forty years into the future, my chance at last to see and hear 25% of the Third Ear Band live for the first time. So a classical recital, we sat in the second row with Steve Pank and Sue Rose (she was at the Cambodian Embassy squat with Dave Tomlin, she is now his landlady). Dave couldn’t make it due to ill health. Also, Carolyn was on holiday in Greece and also couldn’t make it. Shame we nearly had another TEB reunion!
Ursula looked just as she does in that TEB French TV video (I did try in my mind to block out the classical stuff and do a TEB soundtrack, but gave up after a bit). During the intermission Steve suggested we go backstage and he introduced us to his other half, the rest of the Quartet seem a bit puzzled by the fact that Ursula seems to have her own fan club! She explains that she “once used to be in a pop band”.
We return for the second half, my wife taking photos and videos. Then after that, we head downstairs for some refreshments and a long chat. I can’t stress enough how friendly Steve and Ursula were, it was as if we had known them for years, I think you can tell by the look on my face in the photos that I had a day to remember. Anyway, I swopped e-mail addresses with Steve and we all headed off to catch the Tube, Steve & Ursula and the Cello having a long drive back up to Norfolk."
Great TEB's fan and music expertWill Hulbert, attending to the concert UrsulaSmithplayed at Burgh House in Hampstead, London on May 13th, 2018kindly shares with Ghettoraga Archive some pictures were taken there. Thanks, Will for your enthusiasm and your rare generosity!
"Hi Luca What does the message on the website mean? It seems to me that the interest in the Third Ear Band is still growing and I hope all the information you have collected will remain available.
Ursula is doing a classical concert in Burgh House, in Hampstead, London on Sunday 13th May in the afternoon, Carolyn has expressed interest in coming, and I will be there too.
Any loyal Third Ear Band supporter who is also interested in classical music would enjoy the music, and a chance to hear Ursie in a classical setting. I have attached a flyer.
Dear TEB's fans and listeners, this is the last post I write for this Archive.
When in 2009 I had the idea to start this, my main intention was to contribute to re-write the story of the band, looking for documents and making new interviews about its obscure legendary short career.
Today, after 8 years (Ghettoraga started in November 2009), we have articles and books published, rare studio & new music recorded (thanks to Gonzo), a huge amount of photos, ads, posters, original documents of/about the band -de facto a brand new story written about the Third Ear Band, instead articles where journalists write the same old few commonplaces about it (one of the strongest that upset me is that TEB was a "progressive" band "born in Canterbury"...).
But dear TEB passionate listeners let me tell you now the reasons why I've decided to finish with this Archive.
Even if I've written books and articles mainly about old musicians/groups (Syd Barrett, Nick Drake, Tim Buckley, Captain Beefheart, Pink Floyd...), most of them unfortunately dead very young,I've been always firmly against nostalgia. For myself, that was powerful psico/socio/political stories to tell, just that.
Nostalgia is one of the most disgusting traits of the global cultural mainstream market, most of the so-called 'new music' products are actually old, bringing us to a far past of the previous Century.
Global commemorative campaigns try to persuade us to buy 'new products' of Beatles, David Bowie, Jimi Hendrix, Kurt Cobain, Fabrizio De Andrè... in name of that glorious past when the music was "more autentic", "real", "honest" and "not compromised"... (of course, all bullshit!)
Scarce few chances for the contemporary creative artists to be known in this world!
Promoting a celebration of the 50 years of Sgt Pepper's or Rolling Stones' "Their Satanic Majesties Request" is a very safe market, you know, better than promote a young unknown new band or a new kind of sounds.
Everywhere I hear people tells that there's no anymore that kind of "old great music", alluding to that sound that is only in our memories, in that dangerous, slick, patetic Mental Land of Nostalgia. The main psicological reason of it is that we are becoming older and older and mental laziness retires us in that old order of reassuring things.
Of course, the reality is very different because men's creativity is still there: there's so much new music around (and this Archive has testified it many times) thata mentally sane man might forget the old '60's-'70's-'80's-90's music and listen just this.
So I suddenly realized that the risk is to be just one of the many islands of Nostalgia in the Internet for old fans (people who now are 60-70 years old), a thing that I didn't want to be when I had the idea to launch this Archive.
I just wanted to tribute the memory (and the art) of two great artists I'm proud to have known - Glen Sweeney and Paul Minns; nothing more and nothing less.
I confess also I had high expectations about fans interested into writing things about this Magic Esoteric Band, but through these 8 years very few was the real contributes and sometimes I asked myself how many fans (maybe music journalists?) had taken informations and documents totally free here without write a word of contribution (an hello, a critic, something else...).
Even if I didn't need it, I feel all of this very sad and miserable now.
So please sorry for this my decision, anyway it's been great to do all this and meet (virtually) many good people around the World to share the fascinating, wonderful epic of the Third Ear Band!
God luck to everyone and... carry on! Yours
Luca Chino Ferrari
PS: I wish to thank these very friendly persons: Carolyn Looker, Mary Haynes, Dave Tomlin, Steve Pank, Martin Cook, Sean Beredin, MircoDelfino, Spirito Bono, Francesco Paladino, Alessandro Monti and all the musicians/artists who helped me with this Archive!
In loving memory of Paul Buckmaster (1946-2017).
PS2: I will ad here the new coming book about Glen and the Thirds, still on editing by Martin Cook... Ps3: Anyway you can follow me on my brand new Italian/English Web site (with blog) at https://chino6339.wixsite.com/gelatoaicorvi
A very young Keith Chegwin on Polansky's Macbeth set.
Musician Danny Barker tweeted about the late Keith Chegwin on December 11th, 2017 with a YouTube excerpt of Macbeth's "Fleance":
"Keith Chegwin. Friend, a fellow euphoric, grafter. I would greet him as 'former member of the Third Ear Band." He sang this magical song when a career in legit film and theatre seemed his destiny. See ya, mate..."
An oddness of the Web market, now we have also a Harvest inner sleeve poster on sale at the Redbubble site (go here).
Printed on 185 gsm semi gloss poster paper in three different sizes, it can be hanged, they say, "in dorms, bedrooms, offices, studios, or anywhere blank walls aren't welcome"...
Do you think Malcolm Jones when he started to manage the label could imagine it would become an home furnishing?
"... Mix a post-Fall with abstractly imagined music that recalls the Third Ear Band", wrote The Wire Magazine for describing the last Cavalier Song's album "A Deep well", published on the Fall of 2017 by Rough Trade.
From the label press release, "Cavalier Song inscribe modern eulogies to celebrate the terrible beauty of rural dystopias. Their cinematic stares study earthy landscapes and post-industrial wastelands, constructing a range of sonic artworks that meditate on the human condition, stirring memory and desire within definitions of a terrific sublime. The results are a series of lush, yet darkly affective, symphonic abstractions weaving in and around melancholic myths and narratives. Cavalier Song deploy a post-minimalist sensibility, referencing a range of art forms including painting, sculpture and literature. Musical and poetic influences include Philip Glass, Swans, Ted Hughes, John Coltrane and King Crimson, each echoing a fascination for melodic repetition, unconventional rhythms and poetic design.
"Their second album A Deep Well depicts a series of shifting mise en scènes - from Arcadian dysfunction to an omnipresence of troubling signs, unfathomable monoliths and abandoned fracking sites. The album has an edgier, starker, more intense and urgent feel than their acclaimed debut Blezard; the noisier provocations of ‘Adam’s Apple’ and ‘Heathen’ vigilantly co-existing with the gentler inventions of landscape, developed in the ambient wanderlusts of ‘St Christopher’ and ‘Shields’. Mysterious, enigmatic choreographies emerge in ‘Insect Fire Dance’, where an oedipal protagonist is confronted with a litany of pagan objects, scattered on an ancient burial ground.
"Cavalier Song have performed across the U.K in a number of venues ranging from the esoteric to the implausible; bingo halls and dilapidated cinemas providing alternative sites for the band to transmit intriguing soundscapes and text to discerning listeners . The band also appeared at the Supernormal Festival in 2016, further securing a loyal following in the experimental music scene. Other live projects have included a series of commissions from The Blue Coat, FACT and Static Gallery with the band providing an ongoing portfolio improvised and soundtrack works.
The band have also received regular radio plays and recommendations for their debut album Blezard from Tom Ravenscroft and Gideon Coe on BBC Radio 6 Music.
As always, please listen to Cavalier Song's music (go HERE and HERE) and decide by yourself if connections with TEB's sound is real or, as often happens, just in the mind of some creative rock journalists...
If "Rolling Stones" magazine can omit the Third Ear Band's records in its celebrated "500 Greatest Albums of All Time" (Wenner Media Ltd. 2005); if "Uncut" special issue "Ultimate Record Collection" (December 2017) in the 70's section 'forgets' Glen Sweeney & C.... maybe a reason there is.
I think popular music history might be re-written and I'm very glad that nowadays, in this age of revisionism, some so-called 'cult records' can be mooted; maybe a new age of free minds is coming for fighting nostalgia and commonplaces of culture that are a real damnation for everyone...
The reasons because TEB's music cannot be ignored are first of all related to its musical nature, the peculiar identity of the sound (the instruments played) that advanced world music and all the forms of 'contaminations' of sounds. Their syncretism was so unique and authentic that was just pure sound with no image (fashion), no indulgences on pop star trivial tricks and other kind of banality.
Other reasons can be found in their implicit contents>: I've tried to explain in a past short essay (read HERE) why "Alchemy" is one of the most dangerous records ever played. And it's possible that this is one of the reasons because rock magazines generally don't consider TEB's work in their useless, boring lists of 'essential' albums.
I don't feel any embarrassment into writing that "Alchemy", "Third Ear Band", or "Music for Macbeth" are more important and fundamental records than all the Led Zeppelin's or The Who's discographies. Or i.e. the Shadows of Knight's "Gloria" or that boring Eagles' "Hotel California"...
In terms of evolution of forms, that specific 'arcane' and 'primordial' traits of the sound, TEB's research was never achieved, also if a lot of bands and musicians are going through the same path...
My only problem is that every time I read this kind of list of records with no a TEB's albums in I have a jump. Well, I might wait for all of this and pass beyond!
But Third Ear Band's fate is not so isolated: some intriguing, wonderful stories are hidden somewhere to be discovered and one of the aims of this Archive was to document it.
One of these 'wrong fates', regarding a less-known Italian composer as Romolo Grano, is related in some ways to Third Ear Band's music, the same rare sensibility for the form, the same cultural/musical roots, the same result...
Please, listen to this track titled "Taranta" (go HERE!), composed and recorded by Grano in 1972: Taranta is a folkloric south Italian dance form, precisely diffused in Salento, a territory inside the Puglia. Studied by anthropologist as Ernesto De Martino in the first half of last century and more recently by George Lapassade as a modern experience of trance, is an old dance people uses to dance today as a mere form of entertainment, in the past as a reaction to the spider's bite, even if characterised by a strong metaphorical element of social liberation for the low-class people.
Italian composer Romolo Grano.
As musician and composer Alessandro Monti wrote me (letting me know about Romolo Grano), "maybe taranta or pizzica could be related to some sections of the film, and to some kind of prog music of the time... but its mood is the same of the Third Ear Band, if one considers it is from 1972. For myself, it's quite similar to "Earth"... maybe it's not so strange that the film's synopsis talks about magic and spirituality... Surely this is not a coincidence!"
Reviewing the soundtrack, recently published in a pirate CD edition, Federico Biella told the genesis of the tune: "The movie's most impressive scene, when Bosè in trance is vomiting frogs, is moving with "Taranta", Mediterranean dance for violin and percussion with unusual origins. Around 1965, Giulio Questi was in Macedonia for filming live some folk rituals intended for a docu-film, never finished, by [famous Italian film maker] Gillo Pontecorvo. Visiting the local countryside, he met a violin player who was playing a monotonous folkish tune. He was impressed by it. Years later, planning with Grano "Arcana"'s soundtrack, he remembered that theme who had recorded on a tape. He gave it to the musician for listening to and he was so excited by it that he decided to arrange it." (from http://www.colonnesonore.net/recensioni/cinema/5109-arcana-l-uomo-del-tesoro-di-priamo.html)
So Grano's track was included in the film soundtrack album titled "Arcana", one of the many works composed and produced (often for TV programmes) by this very eclectic artist - spacing through pop, easy-listening, muzak, electronic, avant-guarde music...
But who is Romolo Grano? Friends of Italian avant-garde composer Bruno Maderna, Grano was born in Santa Maria (Cosenza, Italy) in 1929. He was a composer, arranger, and conductor of music used for movies and RAI television programmes from 1964 ("Ca Ira" movie directed by Tinto Brass) to (around) 1978.
After have been at the legendary Studio di Fonologia in Milan, following the experimental works of Luigi Nono, he was composing music for the most popular Italian TV movies of the Seventies - as "Nero Wolf" or "La Baronessa di Carini" - mixing electronic with classical compositions inspired by Romantic Eastern composers, contemporary jazz, folk music and melodic pop songs in an extraordinary melting pot of sounds created for making a comment to the film scenes.
For some critics, just "Arcana" is Grano's masterpiece and "Taranta" the main theme with its catching ritual folk dance structure that reminds to the Third Ear Band.
Originally realized in few vinyl promotional copies, this soundtrack was a very rare album until Italian label Digitmovie edited it officially in 2015 together with another TV film ("L'Uomo del Tesoro di Priamo"). Other exclusive works are i.e. "Musica elettronica", realised in 1973 and available on the Web (listen to it on Soundcloud at https://soundcloud.com/broken-music-au/cp109cd), a sampler of a huge amount of abstract electronic recordings based on delays, bloops, analog drones, hums...
As like its author - a real genius! - many Grano's compositions are so interesting piece of music that can stay with full rights in that same pantheon with giants as Ennio Morricone, Nino Rota, Piero Umiliani, or Gary Hermann.
Italian musician and composer (and film maker) Francesco Paolo Paladino, apart being a friend of mine for many years (and collaborated on the last Third Ear Band's live CD "Spirits"), is an architect of sounds and concepts.
His last two works, investigating the nature and the power of air and water, are a clear connection to the pagan ideal world of the Third Ear Band, just actualized in these crazy days.
I've asked him some questions about his research, his ideas about the music today and his ideal bond to the TEB's experience.
Luca Chino Ferrari: How do you have moved from a traditional way of composing/recording music to the present research of sounds?
Francesco Paolo Paladino: In June 2016, just the day of my birthday (June 9th), I lived a particular state of reflection, depression, instinct, transgression, that particular feeling of one who becomes "more adult", one who makes a balance with the "outcomes" of his being and acting.
While I was beating around the bush, I felt this incredible creative energy for the making of music and suddenly I had clear the work I wanted to do for the next few years. Actually not a general work but a triptyque. I had clear in my mind the titles of the works I wanted to realise: "Ariae", "Siren" and "Icereport".
Basically, first of all I wanted to consider the element of air, then the element of water. Thus, at the end of this process I wish to work on the modification of both, the dimension of ice.
The transition from the avant-rock to another musical level (but I can't define it) was a kind of unconscious but lucid ones. I'm still guessing why it happened, and why just last year...
Maybe it was all written in my fate, I might work at this particular state of musical knowledge. From there my work started and I'm going to complete the tryptique. I've already published two parts of it - "Ariae", a contribute to the evolution of the so called ambient music, and "Siren", a complex kind of opera or marine cantata, a drama that sounds as an elegy to our sad world destroyed by pollution.
"Siren" encapsulates the female side of my being and my need of protection beyond the life, the desire of a "great mother" who heartens me. But we are alone in the ocean, I know it well...
LF: Can you describe us in detail how is born the idea of this kind of 'collective work'? Apart the beautiful artwork designed by the very talented artist Maria Assunta Karini, in "Siren" among the others 'play' also Judy Dyble, Paolo Tofani, Sean Breadin, Alison O'Donnel, Riccardo Sinigaglia...
FPP: For doing this three-parts project I recycled the concept of "doubling music" I used for years with the Doubling Riders, the band with which I played years ago. During the Eighties, just before Internet and the MP3, I had the idea to make 'sound exchanges' (reels, tapes...) with other musicians, having a 'at a distance collaboration'.
Thanks the melt and the bind of different artistic experiences I produced brand new sonic objects. Well, I ask some friends to send me everything they wanted, suggesting tonalities and explaing the sense of my projects. Maybe this method of work can recall that sort of randomness introduced by Brian Eno in the '70's... but anyway at the end the final results was better that I could imagine.
LCF: So you don't consider yourself a proper typical musician/composer...
FPP: I can consider myself a film-maker, but also a sound artist, a composer, but together with many other musicians, a creativeperson because I make sound entities, starting from the awareness that all is existing out there...
La Monte Young explained it in a very easy and genial way: when he made a full LP with a sound that can be listened to from different perspectives and it become 'different' because different is our perception. Making sounds with already-made stuff is a charming experience. It means to be cauterized for warping and cutting, being concentrated on very pure parts; it means you can realise hidden or only rough architectures, writing a unique personal language that you can play in the same time.
I'm very satisfied with my new direction and I hope I can ride it for a long time.
LCF: Most of all I have been very impressed by "Ariae", because I think here the listener is not simply in an unheard soundscape dimension but also in a real experimental work of physics... For the ears these are very amazing and disconcerting sounds!
FPP: Few people noted this and I'm very glad that just you do it because "Ariae" surely is a CD very inspired by Ambient music but also it's an attempt to go 'beyond' it for revolutioning this kind of sounds. The phisycs of sound you referred to with your questions is an identification (I have to admit very cultured) about my achievement of this new way.
I have created (most of all on the second track) some phisic paths for my recorder and michrophone from a room to another, opening (partially or fully) opening windows for transforming the phisic path in a ritual one, with localized sources and lappings of air that one could find in a predetermined moment. Then, in other sessions I have dealed with masses of air through improvised gestures that forced microphones and recorder to become a method for translating air movements in something that could have a meaning for human senses. There is a moment in "Ariae" where, after few minutes when the wind talks its unique vocabulary, the sound restarts and who have listened to this sequence says that it's very appease. The sound becomes a reassuring element because it can be recognised. Well, this is the part of my album I prefer because just there two different sound languages meet, creating into the listener a condition of disorientation before, then a calmness dimension.
Also the repetition of a theme, its being mutant, is the clear statement of the existence of sound as a container of silence, in other words a silence that is never the same, therefore sound. Also my decision to record the album with a very low sound level, suggesting to the listener to listen to it "playin' loud" (as it happens for the metal) is a strategy to create infinite opportunities of choice for the listener who can decide what to listen to, if prefering "sonic silences" or getting the dynamic of music. Many listeners said that turning up the volume they listened better to the silences and that was exactly what I wanted to obtain!
LCF: In "Ariae" I've found some references to the Third Ear Band music dedicated to the elements. Apart the project itself, and the title of it, some effects of your experiment sound to me as "Water" beacuse your recorded air sometimes surprisingly seems to have this suggesting nature... What do you think about? Was the Third Ear Band a landmark for you through the years? FPP:Third Ear Band is one of the band that goes with my life. I knew the TEB through "Music For
Macbeth", and precisely "Fleance" strake me like a thunder; it was 1972. Suddenly that track reminded me "Le petit Chevalier" from Nico's
"Desertshore" (1970). I was looking that terrific music as a kind of phoenix, for listening to, for realising, for eating it...
From that precise moment I'd been dreaming of a record played by the Third Ear Band with Nico: it would have been wonderful to listen to "Abschied" fading in "The Banquet".... And I used to record on my C45 cassettes tracks from "Macbeth" pasted with "Desertshore"'s tracks, listening them all alone in my little room. From those days that cellos are remained in my heart. "Ariae" is just that "air" I breathed in my little room, a place totally inaccessible to my sister and my parents. Just the friends who "understood" could go in. And I'm sure some notes from that records are still there, in my little room... some sequences of my favourite music...
Of course, just after "Music for Macbeth" I bought also "Alchemy" and "Third Ear Band" (the second
album). It was an emotional earthquake. That records became a magic trio that I listened to just in some particular occasions. I had music for many kind of situations: that very important for me was signed by the TEB, Nico, Tim Buckley, the first King Crimson's record and some tunes from Don Cherry's "Relativity Suite".
If I had a girlfriend, I had to decide what soundtrack to use: I played the Third Ear Band just in some rare occasions, because it was my personal "magic cult" that warmed my heart. "Ariae" is a work that can be interpretate as a spiral of sounds remained in that my little room and thus in the deep of my heart.
LCF: What do you think about the music today?
FPP: I think today there's no a "dominant" kind of music around even if music magazines try to force us to believe it, creating new fashions that vanish in few months... We're living very peculiar times... I remember that on a 70's Italian music magazine named "Gong" someone wrote that the music had to be listenend to without knowing who was the musician or the singer etc., thus not being influenced by the album cover or something else. Well, I think we are here now.
The listening of MP3's and of iTunes by the teens is a sort of buig minestrone where everything is mixed up in a grey anonymity. I think this is not acceptable! Also because some deeped opinions about historical discographies have been challenged. Just an example: Tangerine Dream's "Phaedra" was considered the best album the band recorded before its 'commercial' phase; today this album is valued as the album that launched techno music.
Francesco with a "myth" of our generation, Joe Boyd.
Can I tell you very diplomatically that we are just in a period of "evolution" towards something we don't understand at the moment? Sure, this is an irrelevance, because this is happened in every historical period of music, but we can admit that today music is quite less important for teens than it was for our generation. So, now it's more a question of music market than the music itself, the music as a commercial product. Our myths have been transformed in fetishes by the music market. The only important thing is to sell, and because the market is selling generally the same records, now we have this "box syndrome" where an old album, became an old CD, is now republished in various different editions - blue-ray, mono, stereo, enhanced, with bonus tracks... maybe with boring studio sessions, but with a wonderful, catching packaging... This is the Age of Form that triumphs on the substance, where a pretty and correct "didactis of sounds" is preferredto a "magmatic alphabet"... But a "fog effect" still exists.
LCF: What do you mean with this?
FPP: In this vaste mare magnum of sounds and musicians, with lot of music magazines reviewing more than 300 records in a month, inside this bland soup with too much flavours, we have to activate the "fog effect".
If you drive with the fog, you don't know where you are, you don't realize if you have passed one or two roundabouts, you are alone with your intuition only. This is the magic word, today one says "the password", this is intuition. Inside the fog you meet lot of people, you don't know many of them, you don't see them, but your intuition brings you to some of them, the best ones, as you might reorganise your own microcosm of friends and your musical perspectives. But you have to use your intuition instead the "intellectual factor". We have to reconstruct our lives on an intuition basis, on that intelligence conceived by John Cage where randomness becomes the will to live new experiences. Intuition brings you to your soul mates, people who has your sensibility.
LCF: How can you conciliate this with technologies evolution?
FPP: For myself one has to live technology evolution in this way: I buy a camera, I don't read instructions, I work on it with the same passion of a child who cannot read. It's that intuitive passion that brings me to the "not compliant solution"... (even if soon or late I have to endure one hour or more of reading instructions...).
LCF: What kind of music are you listening to? What do you suggest to a young listener to listen to?
FPP: I use to buy CDs at Amazon or Discogs, selecting the cheapest albums. The offer is so wide that I don't follow the logics of a collector but that of a music lover with no limits. What I like, I listen to. Just recently I've discovered a group (I don't know if they are existing or not), they called AU. Simply outstanding! Again, I listen to poetic ballads by Martyn Bates, Judy Dyble and Alison O'Donnell.
My 'protective deities' are Robert Wyatt and Brian Eno (even if in these last years the latter is fully deluding me), Don Cherry and Alice Coltrane, of course 'our' Third Ear Band. About new things, I'm now oriented to buying "new classical music" at New Amsterdam Records, a label that none knows but in these last few years has published incredible masterpieces. I don't intend to suggest any records or musicians to young listeners, I suggest only to listen to everything with the "third ear": I'm sure they don't be sorry of it!
FRANCESCO PAOLO PALADINO's
SELECTED DISCOGRAPHY
A.T.R.O.X. - "The Night's Remains"
(LP - Trinciato Forte Records T.F.L.P. 001, 1982 - reissued by Spittle Records in 2015)
A.T.R.O.X. - "Water Tales"
(Contempo Records L.P.001, 1984 - reissued by Spittle Records in 2015)
"Someone else who posted here said they've learntmore about TEB in a fewhours here than in 30 years. I'd agree with that except inmy case it would be 44 years. An excellent archive for TEB fans and historians of the era. Thank you!" RACHAEL TYRELL
NEW TEB ALBUM ON SALE!
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Third Ear Band 1969: Paul Minns, Glen Sweeney and Richard Coff (photo: Ray Stevenson).
Luca Chino Ferrari (b. 1963) is an Italian (underground) paperback writer.
Since 1985 he has written and translated books about folk and rock musicians as Third Ear Band, Robyn Hitchcock, Captain Beefheart, Tim Buckley, Nick Drake, Syd Barrett & the Pink Floyd for the main Italian home publishing. He met Syd Barrett in 1986 and did contribute to the reunion of the Third Ear Band during the '80s. His last book, published in 2015 for English Gonzo Multimedia, is a biography about the English talented jazz piano player Mike Taylor. He runs a personal Web site (in Italian/English) at https://chino6339.wixsite.com/gelatoaicorvi
TEB recording at Abbey Road Sudios in February 1971
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Paul Buckmaster at Hyde Park (June 7th, 1969).
"Third Ear Band music is a reflection of the universe as magic play illusion simply because it could not possibly be anything else. Words cannot describe this ecstatic dance of sound, or explain the alchemical repetiton seeking and sometimes finding archetypal formes, elements and rhythms...".
(Glen Sweeney on "Alchemy", Harvest Records 1969)
NEW THIRD EAR BAND RECORD!!!
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Third Ear Band live at Hyde Park (June 7th,1969)
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Richard Coff at Isle of Wight Festival, August 1969 (photo: Barry Plummer).
Read "Necromancers of the drifting West"!!!
A book on the Third Ear Band edited by Luca Ferrari (published by Stampa Alternativa, Rome 1997). WITH THE FIRST ORIGINAL VERSION OF "ABELARD & HELOISE" SOUNDTRACK!
Third Ear Band at the Roundhouse (London, May 30th 1969).
As alike or unlike as blades of grass or clouds...
"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 the 1969 Isle of Wight concert programme)
Third Ear Band 1970: Minns, Smith, Coff and Sweeney (photo: Blackhill Enterprises).
Pseudo-mystical...
“The trouble is that you can't be mystical without being called pseudo-mystical, and it's the fault of our previous education. I'm at Glastonbury most of the time, but we're all completely honest about it. We'll even use it honestly to make money, because the ancient Egyptians who were into it all said that you had to be rich because only then can you resist temptation”.
(Glen Sweeney to Richard Williams, “Melody Maker” June 1970)
"Macbeth" by Roman Polanski (Playboy Production, UK 1971)
TEB - "THE LOST BROADCASTS" DVD (Gonzo Multimedia, UK 2011)
“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."
TEB 1971: Sweeney, Minns, Bridges and Buckmaster (photo: Blackhill Enterprises).
NOTES FROM OVERGROUND
“No announcements, numbers lasting 15 to 20 minutes, art form or con?
This might be valid criticism of (A) Thunderstorm (B) a cricket (C) Third Ear Band.
Their approach to music is different because there is no duality, no conflict between the natural element of chance and the human element of control, did the moon ask to be reflected in the water? If it wasn’t for the trees would the wind know when it was blowing? Paul Minns says there are some very beautiful forests in Hyde Park, trying to put titles to music is rather like trying to answer the question where does my hand when it becomes my fist”.
(From the Al Stewart-Third Ear Band 1970 tour programme)
TEB 1970: Sweeney, Minns, Coff & Smith (photo: Blackhill Enterprises).
"The Centipede was happy, quite, until a Toad in fun said: "Pray, which leg goes after which?". This worked his mind to such a pitch, he lay distracted in a ditch considering how to run". (Third Ear Band, 1970)
TEB at Isle of Wight Festival, August 1969 (photo: Barry Plummer).
"Music from Macbeth" (Harvest 1972)
Third Ear Band - "Experiences" (Harvest 1976)
WEIRD SCENES
“We'd rather people called us a pop group. We do ragas, that aren't really ragas at all, and unless we get a turned on promoter, we get into some weird scenes. At Norwich once, when the promoter saw the audience sitting down and closing their eyes to our music, he accused us of putting them to sleep! Complete paranoia. So I imagine we wouldn't do too well on the Pop Proms”.
(Glen Sweeney interviewed by Chris Welch - “Melody Maker” July 12th, 1969)
"NECROMANCERS OF THE DRIFTING WEST" (CD - Gonzo Multimedia HST, UK 2015)
"NEW FORECASTS FROM THE THIRD EAR ALMANAC" (CD - Gonzo Multimedia HST, UK 2015)
"EXORCISMS" (CD - Gonzo Multimedia HST371, UK 2016)
Third Ear Band - "Fleance" (Odeon 1972) Japan single edition
Third Ear Band - "Live Ghosts" (Materiali Sonori 1988)
VERY MUCH UNDERGROUND
“It's just a question of advertising. We've stayed very much Underground - no photos - and I think this was necessary so people wouldn't put us in a bag. We'd rather the just came up and heard us without ANY preconceived ideas. I suppose it is a bit shattering to see violins and cellos”.
(Glen Sweeney interviewed by Chris Welch - “Melody Maker” July 12th, 1969)
Third Ear Band at a Druids ceremony in Glastonbury Tor (April 15th, 1970).
OTHER TEB RELEASES/APPEARANCES
"Picnic. A breath of fresh air" (2LPs - Harvest SHSS 1/2, UK 1970) various Harvest artists anthology
"Harvest Heritage. 20 Great" (LP - Harvest , UK 1977) various Harvest artists anthology
"The Harvest Story Vol. 1" (LP - Harvest EG 260097 1, UK 1984) various Harvest artists anthology
"All frontiers" (CD - Materiali Sonori MASO CD 90026, ITA 1991) various artists live compilation
"Sonora 2/91" (CD - Materiali Sonori, ITA 1991) various Materiali Sonori artists compilation
"Radio Session" (CD - Voiceprint VPR017, UK 1994) live album
Third Ear Band - "New Forecasts from the Third Ear Almanac" (ADN Records 1989)
90% improvisation...
"I'd say ninety per cent of our music is improvisation. It's not really Indian music, although we use a drone instead of the usual bass line riffs. The music draws from everywhere.
"I think our appeal is that audiences can draw their own thing from us. We make no announcements and none of the numbers have titles. People in colleges we play come up after and say they can get fantastic images in their mind when they listen. We can offer a complete dream. The old Celtic bards used to have the same ability".
(Glen Sweeney interviewed by Chris Welch - “Melody Maker” July 12th, 1969)
“Third Ear Band’s new album “Magic Music” isabout music as pure vibrations, as such it can be linked with colour because colour is vibration. It can even be linked to the music ofthe spheres which states that the vibrations of the planets can be heard with the third ear (silence). The free ragas that we play are modal, each note can be heard as a sound-colour that produces its own mood.Our rhythms come from all overthe world, and we use these ideasand many others to try to make a new world music”.
(Glen Sweeney, notes on the “Magic Music” inner cover, 1990)
SOLOS DISCOGRAPHIES
- GLEN SWEENEY -
Various Artists - "The greetings compact vol. 2" (CD - Materiali Sonori, 1990)
Rolling Stones - "Sticky fingers" (LP/CD - Rolling Stones Records, 1971)
Carly Simon - "Hotcakes" (LP/CD - Elektra, 1974)
Elton John - "Single man" (LP/CD - Rocket, 1978)
- NEIL BLACK (selection) -
UB40 - "Present Arms" (LP/CD - DEP, 1981)
Joan Armatrading - ""Track Record" (LP/CD - A&M, 1983)
Third Ear Band 1969: Minns, Sweeney and Coff at the Kensal Green Cemetery of London (photo: Ray Stevenson).
Third Ear Band - "Brain Waves" (Materiali Sonori 1993)
Eight drunk rugby players
"We once had eight drunk rugby players yelling dirty songs at us. We played quieter and quieter. In the end they seemed ashamed and shut up. But I still don't think they dug the music!".
(Glen Sweeney interviewed by Chris Welch - “Melody Maker” July 12th, 1969)
Third Ear Band, Vinci 1989: Allen, Sweeney, Dobson and Carter (photo: Lucia Baldini).
"A Breath of Fresh Air" (3CDs - Harvest Records 2007).
"Alchemy"/"Elements" (CD - BGO 2009)
Progressive Rock Trilogy
"Progressive Rock Trilogy" (3CDs - Music Brokers 2010)
"Ventis secundis, tene cursum. This is Progressive Rock!" (CD - Angel Air 2011)
"Prog Rocks!" (5CDs - InsideOut 2013)
QUOTATIONS, COVERS, REMIXES, MANIPULATIONS OF THIRD EAR BAND MUSIC
Stone Breath - "A silver thread weave the seasons" (2CDs - Hand/Eye, USA 2008). A 'cover' of "Fleance".
Marco Lucchi - "Baby a" (ITA 1982). A composition with a sampler of "Stone Circle".
Radio Noisz Ensemble - "Yniverze" (CD - Garden of Delights 1982/2009). A 'folky' quotation of "Water".
Fabio Zuffanti - "Third Ear Band demixed" (CD-r - Spirals Records, ITA 2000). The four elements electronically manipulated.
Algarnas Tradgard - "Delayed" (CD - Silence Records, UK 2001). A quotations of "Water" recorded in 1973-1974 (!).
Lady Husk & The Good Ship Neotropic - "A monstrous psychedelic bubble exploding in your mind" (file MP3 - The New Worck, NL 2007). A remake of "No title" (?!).
I Monster - "The Art of Chill vol. 6 - Mixed by I Monster" (2CDs Platipus, UK 2009). A remix of "Fleance".
Vibes and Stuff - guest mix Coby Sey (MP3 - UK, 2010). A remix of "Water".
AA.VV. - "The Fruits de Mer Annual for 2011" (2x7" - Fruits de Mer Records, UK 2011). A cover of "Fleance" by the HI-Fiction Science.
A Third Ear Band tribute
Roberto Musci - "Mosaic. A tribute to Third Ear Band" (CD - Gonzo Multimedia HST411, 2016)
