December 02, 2009

TEB's tape recordings at the London British Library.

On May 2008 London British Library, one of the most important library in Europe (13 millions of books, 920.000 newspapers, 3 millions of audio recordings…), having to archive a live concert of the TEB, ask me to contact some band members to obtain the permission to do it.
The live recordings, that can be listened free going to "Popular Music" section of the library, is from a concert at the London "Sir George Robey" pub on December 15th, 1989 - just twenty years ago. 

The tracks played:
1. "Druid One" (Sweeney - Minns - Coff)
2. "Sun Ra Raga" (Sweeney - Carter - Black - Dobson)
3. "Live Ghosts" (Sweeney - Minns - Carter - Samuel)
4. "Solstice Song" (Sweeney - Carter - Black - Dobson)
5. "Behind the pyramids" (Sweeney - Carter - Black - Dobson)
6. "Book of the dead" (Sweeney - Minns - Coff)
7. improvisation
8. "Third Ear Raga" (Sweeney - Carter - Black - Dobson)

This is the line-up:
Glen Sweeney – hand drums
Lyn Dobson – sax and flute
Mick Carter – electric guitar and effects
Allen Samuel – violin

Archive manager Paul Wilson asked me to verify titles and authors of the tracks, and gave me some interesting informations about the recordings:
“The concert was recorded by Michael Gerzon using the combination of two PZM mikes positioned on the floor of the stage and mixed with the stereo PA outputs. The recording is quite listenable but it flawed by distorsion in places so is perhaps not of publishable quality". 
Some months after the concert, Glen Sweeney gave me a copy of the tape telling that the concert was played at London “Dog Club" (a mistake that I put on my book “Necromancers of the drifting West” published in 1997).


For who is interested to it, this is the British Library address:
96, Euston Road - St. Pancras
London NW1 2DB

no©2009 Luca Ferrari

9 comments:

  1. I think you mean 20 years ago, Luca, not 10.... could you post a direct link to the British Library's playback page, as I can't fined it? Thank you, love, Cheggers x

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  2. Right, Keith, I mean twenty... I'll try to post the direct link as I find it...
    Thanks.
    Luca

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  3. Sorry Luca, that link doesn't work either... :(

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  4. Thanks. I've posted a new link to the "Sound Archive" section. Then you have to select the band...
    They have just a selection of that concert, anyway. The most is just produced stuff on CD or vinyl...

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  5. Club Dog was the name used by a collective of people that ran a regular night in London and they tried to create a festival type atmosphere in the venues they used, with psychedelic lightshows, live bands and performance. One of the venues they used was the George Robey and weekly/monthly? nights were put on there towards the end of Club Dog's existence.

    More info here: http://www.megadog.co.uk/

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  6. Thanks Majes, very interesting. So I realize Glen wasn't wrong about it!
    I'll check soon at the address above...
    Thanks again.
    Luca

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  7. I had some amazing nights at Club Dog but sadly not the one where the Third Ear Band played.

    This is a very interesting site. Thanks for putting it all together.

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  8. And Michael Gerzon who recorded the concert could be Michael Dog who runs the megadog website listed earlier??? Just a guess.

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  9. Yes, it's probably so... But I don't know, it could be just a guess...
    Thanks for your appreciation about this Archive. If you have stuffs or something on the TEB we'd be very glad to put on it...

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