1972 Japanese esoteric article on the TEB.

Here's we have a very exclusive and extraordinary thing from the past, as an old rare fossil found by chance! Thanks my friend Koro Ito, a very big jazz  records collector, I've got this five-pages article about the Third Ear Band published by Japanese music magazine "New Music Magazine" in July 1972 (!!!). The essay was written by Tadanori Yokoo. Titled "When I died, I heard this sound. The Nostalgic Scary Sound of Third Ear Band", I think is one of few psyco-philosophical/esoteric/paranormal analysis of TEB's sound published, a psychelic trip through the sound and his human and spiritual meanings. 

Tadanori Yokoo is one of Japan's leading contemporary artists, known to music fans for his designs for Santana's "Abraxas" and Miles Davis' "Agartha" jackets. He is also an accomplished writer and has published several books of essays.

 

 

When I died, I heard this sound. The Nostalgic Scary Sound of Third Ear Band.

Yokoo Tadanori

When I first heard the sound of the Third Ear Band, I thought it was definitely my sound, because I felt like I had been searching for that sound all my life. Because I think I was born in this world and I've been looking for this sound all my life. That's how nostalgic I am about this sound. But when I listen to this sound, it makes me afraid of it. Because I have to go back to this sound someday. 

I remember hearing this sound a long time ago, maybe in a dream. I have the memory of this sound in my cells, whether it was in a dream or in my mother's womb or when I was in this previous world. So this sound reminded me that I had died before, and I always had the memory of this sound in my mind. Maybe I was always reminiscing about my previous life in my mind. The world I will leave is also where this sound is. When I hear this sound, I feel like I could die. But I feel as if I am dying right now. Maybe that's why I miss the sound so much, because it's exactly the same thing that happened before. 

I'm very afraid of dying. It's a physical fear of extinction, it doesn't mean the death of the spirit. I'm afraid of being left alone with my spirit. But This Sound separates me from the body and makes me only the spirit. And it flies me from the present world to the next present world, to the spirit world, to the spiritual world. At times like this, I have the illusion of reaching cosmic consciousness, or God consciousness, and I am almost drenched in a shower of light from the divine world. But it would have taken me hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of years in Earth time to walk this far. But this sound remains a reminder of my time in this world, even when I'm only a spirit.

My thoughts were mostly ego dominated by negative thoughts, so my spirit is still wandering in the great dark universe. It's like a bitter taste, like Lugol's fluid attached to the parallelepipedal gland, such an earful thought. But my afterlife must be like that. Of course, it was the same bitter taste when I died before.
I love to get along with death. I love to get along with death because I'm so afraid of it. To get rid of the fear of death, I would have to become the object of my own fear, the death. In that sense, This Sound makes me feel safe. That's why I always want to taste death when I'm alive. My life is a continuation of death. My life is a part of death. My life is a part of death, so I would like to call life the opposite of death. I'm not so much afraid of the afterlife as I am of death. I used to be very scared of it, but now I'm only a little bit scared of it, but the spirit has left the body. But I'm afraid of the pain of the body when the spirit leaves the body, I'm afraid of the moment of death. I'm afraid of the moment of death.
 

I have died three times in my life. 

The first time was when they cut my head off. One moment I felt icy coldness in my neck, and the next moment it was fiery heat. But it was only for a second, and after that, I still felt the same bitterness as the taste of Lugol's liquid. As soon as my neck was cut off, my spirit left my body and fell into a dark, dark well of space. And I remember the pain of the bitter taste of that Lugol's fluid in my neck. My spirit still remembers the pain of my body after death, which really disgusted me. I'm so unlucky that an eternal and immortal soul can remember such physical pain forever. How long has it been since the fall of the spirit? Suddenly I realized that I was walking with my guardian spirit along a footpath beside a stream that runs behind the gravestone store. The sound I heard at this time sounded exactly like this sound.
 

The second time I died was when I dropped something precious in the deep river. I crawled deep into the riverbed to pick up the prized item. No matter how hard I dug in, I couldn't reach the bottom of the river. By and by, I began to feel suffocated. So I hurriedly tried to surface, but no matter how hard I tried, I couldn't get to the surface. However, I couldn't get to the surface, no matter how hard I tried. I must have gone too deep into the water. Finally, I was out of breath before I reached the surface. When I realized how much time had passed, I found myself floating in the water near the bottom of the river.
As it was. But strangely enough, even though I was underwater, there was no water around. Yet I was floating through the waterless space of the riverbed as if I were swimming in the water. This was the first time I realized that I was dead. I looked behind a rock on the dark riverbed and saw a woman lying there naked on her back, in a pose as if waiting for my body. I immediately went to hug her. But what happened was that neither she nor I had any sex organs. But still, the lust that was building up in me continued to intensify. I don't know how much time passed. Suddenly, I felt the presence of people behind me, and when I turned around, I saw many spirits lined up in a long line to the bottom of the river in the distance. The sound I heard at that time was exactly the same as this sound.

 

And when I finally died, my body was nowhere to be found at all. All I had was my spirit, which seemed to be floating in the air. Almost the whole area was covered with a white haze. After a few moments, the haze in front of them disappeared for a moment, revealing a part of the mountain surface that looked like autumn leaves. It looked like a reddish-brown colour, like autumn leaves. I raised my head and started to cry. Without a body, I had to lean on something with an indescribable sense of anxiety. As with my two previous deaths, I was immediately aware that I was dead. I hadn't been afraid or regretful of dying before, but for some reason, this death felt like a real death. It is an indescribable fear. The obsession with the material world, with not being able to return to this world anymore, really drove me crazy. And finally I started to cry out loud. But I don't know what happened, I couldn't cry a single tear as I was crying so sadly. A few tears would have saved me from this immense sadness, but at last the tears wouldn't wet my cheeks. Only the single thought of wanting to go home hits me like a tidal wave. Soon, the faces of my wife and two children appear in the space in front of me. At this point, my obsession with the material world became more intense. I was a little tired of the struggle with this obsession with the material world, and I seemed to fall asleep for a while. The next time I woke up, I found myself in a world of darkness. I felt that I was about 50,000 feet from the earth. This is where the mothership of the flying saucer is flying in the sky. I felt as if my spirit, which had left my earthly body, was now possessing the body of a creature from another planet. No longer did I think about Earth at all. I think the sound I heard at this time was this sound.

 

This sound inevitably appears at the beginning and the end of my life. So, this sound may be the sound of my spirit.
There are countless sounds in this great universe.
The sounds of the Sun, the Earth, the Moon, Venus, Saturn, Mars and the other twelve planets in our solar system each produce a different sound. From this solar system to the other solar systems, the entire island universe is filled with sound. This may be the sound of everyone's spirit soul in their own matter. When I listen to this sound, I know that my life is infinite. But still I am afraid. I am not afraid of infinity, but I am afraid of the finitude of my body. Unfortunately, the body itself is my soul now. I guess I love the crippled body of this ganjigalame more than the spirit that flies freely to the far side of the universe. That's why this sound is a cruel sound. It's not the sound of a spirit, it's the sound of the energy of the material world. Really, I'm crazy. This sound makes me crazy, like a hallucinogen. Anyway, it's a strange sound. It's a straight line, and somewhere along the line, it connects the ends of the line with each other with a whimper. It's like a Möbius wheel, inextricably linked to each other. And I become an eternal slave of this space and time. It is the world of the fourth dimension. I fell into the Möbius circle and I learned about my samsara for the first time. But the sound of the this sound recorded has a beginning and an end. I always have to get out of bed and go to the player to listen to it again, and then put the needle back on the record's head. Then I had to bring the needle back to its original position at the head of the record. What is this all about? I don't know.

 

The afterlife doesn't work the way I want it to. My body, my sensuality, and my material energies, such as material greed and ego, rule the afterlife just as they did when I was alive. It's troubling. But in this material world, I am not so sure about my improvement. Apparently, my body is an obstacle to my spiritual improvement. Sometimes I have to fight against this ego incarnation in my dreams.
In dreams I can at least go to a place a little higher than the present world, the next realm. Of course, the world is invisible to the naked eye. In physics, it would probably be called a molecule. But sometimes we are approaching the world of atoms, or even smaller electrons, made up of even smaller particles than molecules, and we are getting closer to the spirit world and the spirit world. It seems to me that this sound is coming from this area. I think it's more like the sound of an evil spirit from the depths of the earth than the sound of the heavenly realm. It is the sound of the earth, which, when heard from the far reaches of the vast solar system, is more terrifying than the sounds of other planets. It is the sound of the whole earth's thoughts. And one day this sound of the earth may destroy the balance of the solar system. Then it could be the collapse of the solar system, and even the entire island universe. The sound is my sound, humanity's sound, the earth's sound, and it could one day become the sound of the solar system and the entire island universe. It's not a good sound. It's more of a sound of negative thoughts. Now this sound is warning me, warning humanity and the Earth. That's how dangerous the sound is. The sound itself is not dangerous, but the fact that this sound is now being heard in this way is dangerous.
I'll have to die someday. I don't want to think about it, but that's what this sound is all about. I don't want to think about it, but this sound makes me think about it. Maybe that's why I've been thinking about death a lot lately. Next time I want to be reincarnated on another planet. Perhaps on other planets, there is no this sound and it's peaceful. I think death is peaceful by nature. By the way, as long as you die on Earth, I don't think there is going to be a peaceful afterlife by any stretch of the imagination. It seems to me that life to other planets is equal to or greater than the comfort of death. The length of life itself should be about 2,000 years in Earth time. People of the time of Kyristo and Buddha are still worshipped by their cosmic brothers as profound elders in the farthest reaches of the universe.

 

My soul is always sending vibrations to these cosmic brothers. But because my sound is demonic and full of anxiety and fear, like this sound, I don't get a good communication. Still, on a couple of occasions I've succeeded in making contact with them in my dreams. But each of these was not peaceful, and was filled with anxiety and fear. I think it was because of my own fears and insecurities. My soul is pathetic and poor as it continues to have this subconsciousness about them. So it's weird, but this sound is a sound for poor, poor earthlings like me.
I may be far from peaceful as I like this creepy sound, I am fascinated by this sound, but if I had to leave the world of this sound itself, I might become irresistible. The more I listen to this sound, the more I pull it into my spirit. As I start with this sound and end with this sound, I think, "Why can't I escape this sound? It really hurts my spirit." Just as it hurts when the body is strongly stimulated, it hurts when I listen to This Sound, as if my spirit is prickling and stinging. What have I told you so far? It's a strange feeling, as if I'm dreaming because I'm involved in this sound. Talking about this sound confuses me more and more. But my spirit really looks like a picture of this sound. 

 

no©2020 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask firs

Spirits Burning asked Ursula Smith to play cello on a forthcoming record.

Spirits Burning has recently invited Ursula Smith to play cello on two pieces on an acoustic album "that has some tendencies towards Third Ear Band and folk", according the leader of the collective Don Falcone (who is in the U.S.A. but the band includes people for all over the world). 

The album is expected to complete mixing and mastering in early 2021, and then be released later in the year.

You can listen to an example of an instrumental Spirits Burning album here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OVDwVmK5jWQ&t=14s

"Spirits Burning celebrates space rock, progressive rock, new music, and other music. Since 1998, Spirits Burning has brought together over 250 musicians (from the family trees of Blue Öyster Cult, Gong, Hawkwind, Van Der Graaf, and many, many more groups).
Musicians (such as Daevid Allen and Cyrille Verdeaux) have recorded parts in our home base in Northern California, while captain Don Falcone has also done remote recordings (such as flying to Austin to record Michael Moorcock). Other crew members (such as Bridget Wishart and Albert Bouchard) have recorded their parts in their respective local studios. The result is an ongoing series of albums created by an incredible array of musicians."

 

Other Spirits Burning infos at: 

http://www.spiritsburning.com/ 

https://www.facebook.com/spiritsburning

 

Spirits Burning on Wikipedia:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirits_Burning 

 no©2020 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask firs

TEB book outtakes (part 4): all the other stuff left.

Here's below some the other pictures not included in my recent TEB book...

Hydrogen Jukebox's Jim Gypsy Hayes (1978).

 

 

Morgan Fisher with VCS3 in the Seventies (courtesy M. Fisher).

 

 

Jim Gypsy Hayes recording vocals for the HJ's album (1978).

Mick Carter rehearsals for the H.J.'s album (1978).

As above

Rod Goodway in the Seventies.

The Hydrogen Jukebox with a sound engineer (1978).

 no©2020 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

KRIS NEEDS' piece about the TEB for Shindig!

One of the best piece about the TEB ever written, this special feature edited by Kris Needs for Shindig! magazine is very good one; a real qualified tribute to the band, "remained the most intriguingly strange and mysteriously evocative of all"...

 

 

 no©2020 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

Dave Tomlin's "Lark Rise" included in a new 3CDs compilation.

 

Third Ear Band's "Lark Rise" will be included in a brand new 3CDs anthology titled "Sumer Is Icumen In: The Pagan Sound Of British & Irish Folk 1966-1975" released by Grapefruit as CRSEGBOX083. 

The record (for £ 19.99) is scheduled for 27 November 2020. 

This is the Grapefruit's press release:

"Released in 2015, Grapefruit’s 3-CD multi-artist British underground folk compilation Dust On The Nettles was widely praised, with a five-star review in The Times hailing it as “a delight from beginning to end”. 

 

A long-overdue follow up to that set, Sumer Is Icumen In tightens the mesh by focusing on the point when traditional folksong and the burgeoning late Sixties counterculture collided, largely courtesy of seminal acts like the Incredible String Band, Fairport Convention and Pentangle.
As Steeleye Span’s Martin Carthy commented at the time, the scene had a strong pagan feel, dark and elemental, and progressive folk bands like Dr. Strangely Strange, Comus and Third Ear Band (who performed with the druids in dawn solstice ceremonies at Glastonbury Tor) were active at the same time as folklorists like Mr. Fox pair Bob & Carole Pegg and fellow husband-and-wife team Dave & Toni Arthur, whose commitment to the cause saw them dancing naked at a coven led by ‘King of the Witches’, the notorious Alex Sanders. 

 

Showcasing all of the above names as well as a supporting cast that ranges from Mike Oldfield and Marc Bolan to unsigned bands who recorded demos in a barn, Sumer Is Icumen In features four hours of Albion hymns ancient and modern, including three previously unreleased cuts. “Housed in a stylish clamshell box, it includes a 40-page bookletwith track-by-track annotation, numerous band quotes and some very rare photos. 

The result is a secret glade in a darkly pagan woodland that’s peppered with invocations of corn gods, wicker men, bright Phoebus and other non-Christian deities; magickal tales of daemons, sorcerers, false knights and faerie queens; the medieval England myths, legends and traditions of the May Queen, John Barleycorn and the Green Man; paeans to the natural world and the rhythm of the passing seasons; fables of sanctuary stones, scarecrows and buried villages alongside dread stories of purgatory, sacrifice, rape, bestiality and murder."

no©2020 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

---

A TEB DAY-BY-DAY CHRONOLOGY: 2017-2020

[Note: this is the last part of three related to the period 2017-2020. The first part (from 1966 to 1971) is available HERE; the second one (from 1972 to 2016) is available HERE]. 

 2017

September

- "Brain Waves" CD reissue with Carolyn Looker's original cover and booklet notes by Luca Chino Ferrari. In the CD included also a bonus-track 

November

7th - Arranger, producer, musician Paul Buckmaster passed away at his home in Los Angeles.

Read the sad news on Ghettoraga Archive here: https://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2017/11/paul-buckmaster-passed-away-yesterday.html

Obituaries by the press here: https://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2017/11/paul-buckmasters-obituaries.html

Paul Buckmaster at Air Studios during E. John's "Made in England" sessions, February-April 1994 (photo by John F. Higgins)

2018

November

23rd - "Third Ear Band" reissued in a 3 CD remastered and expanded edition by Esoteric Recordings. Booklet notes by Luca Chino Ferrari.

A philological analysis by LCF here: https://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2018/12/the-third-ear-band-cds-unrealised.html

 2019

January

- "Music from Macbeth" original album reissued in a remastered and expanded CD edition by Esoteric Recordings (PECLEC 2656). Booklet notes by Luca Chino Ferrari.

 

March

29th - "Alchemy" original album reissued in a remastered and expanded 2CDs edition by Esoteric Recordings (PECLEC 22668). Booklet notes by Luca Chino Ferrari.

Read a critical review by LCF here: https://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2019/05/alchemy-remastered-edition-critical.html

- A 3CDs anthology boxset of British folk is published by Cherry Red records/Grapefruit with the title "STRANGERS IN THE ROOM ~ A JOURNEY THROUGH THE BRITISH FOLK ROCK SCENE 1967-73".

Among great musicians and bands as Michael Chapman, Pentangle, Trees, Fairport Convention, Steeleye Span, Dando Shaft, C.O.B., Strawbs, Heron, Bridget St. John, on disc  2 also the Third Ear Band with "Fleance".

June

31th - "The Magus" original album (originally edited in 2004 in CD only) is reissued by Tiger Bay in a 12" vinyl edition format (as TB6430).

September

27th - "Alchemy" vinyl 180gr edition released by Esoteric Recordings (PECLECLP 2668).

2020

June 

Luca Chino Ferrari's book on the TEB titled "Glen Sweeney's Book of Alchemies. The life and times of the Third Ear Band, 1967-1973" is published and distributed by November Books (Reccomended Records).

Read the publisher's press release  HERE.

 September

- Original "Music From Macbeth" is reissued in a vinyl edition (with insert) by Spanish label Munster Records. Liner notes by Fernando Naporano.

Read LCF's review of the record here: https://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2020/09/macbeth-vinyl-edition-out-now.html

- Two extraordinary videos of the TEB from a TV appearance in October 1972 taken from ILEA (Inner London Education Authority) archive, appeared on a YouTube channel. The peculiarity of these excerpts is that this is the only existing video thing of Mike Marchant and Peter Pavli with the band.

Read a review and watch the videos here: https://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2020/09/extraordinarly-amazing-teb-tv.html

no©2020 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

"What's this ear?". A Glen Sweeney and Paul Minns short interview on an old issue of Disc & Music Echo.

I've just found in the Web an old copy of "Disc & Music Echo", the British magazine born in the Fifties.

In this issue (April 22, 1972) there's a short interview with Glen Sweeney and Paul Minns about the "Macbeth" recordings.

Nothing of particularly revelatory, but it's interesting for some little known details of that experience, most of all for the relation with filmmaker Roman Polanski.

Also, here there's the proof that Stanley Kubrick was interested into involving the band for the soundtrack of his masterpiece "Clockwork Orange", even if different than the usual Glen's memory. 

In fact, Glen told: "I heard that Stanley Kubrick was thinking of doing the science fiction  novel "Dune". It's a fantastic book, vaguely Eastern and right up our street. However, even if he does do it, we had a bit of a run-in with Stanley, so I don't know how we'd stand. He wanted us to do something  for "Clockwork Orange" for free. We said no chance, but it turned out all he wanted to use was our second album "Air". It was to be played through the scene  in which someone turns sadistic. It has been rumoured that several people have gone mad after hearing that album!"

no©2020 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)