The aim of this archive and the endemic scarce information about the Third Ear Band.

The main aim of this archive is to offer first-hand informations about the Third Ear Band, a group on whom music magazines, biographies, essays usually have written few things, most just commonplaces. 

The critical dimension on the TEB is marked by a very common fate to others: apart very rare cases, generally rock/pop journalists use to repeat the same old informations, sometimes with very creative and funny inventions: for example, just recently on a Web site (http://www.progarchives.com/artist.asp?id=1745) French journalist Philippe Blache writes that "Third Ear Band originated from Canterbury", forcing an improbable relation with the so-called "Canterbury Sound" (Caravan, Soft Machine...) - but everyone knows TEB was born in London, in the Grove! 

Even here, in Italy, for many years the few knowledges about the group was limited to the Rolf-Urlich Kaiser's 1969 book on the pop music (read in this archive at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2010/06/one-of-first-quotations-on-book-about.html) or, during the Seventies of past century, to some  little quotations on good magazines as "Gong" or "Muzak". 

For the few Italian fans of that time, better made a seminal book about "Rock-Progressive Music in Europe" printed at  the beginning of 1980 (authors: Luca Mayer and Al Aprile, edited by Gammalibri of Milan) with a page dedicated to the band with a smart analysis of his music ended with the line:
"(...) A tale at the edges of fantasy, maybe, just listened by few (the Bruce Palmer of Alpha, Omega, Apocalypse?), but also a story with no stains and  negotation with business. Without compromises".

First retrospective articles appeared just in that years and  at the end of the decade, when I was so lucky to convince Glen Sweeney to reform the group: touring  in Italy, TEB was involved in various interesting interviews, also revealing for the first time unknown facts from the past... 

One of the best interview ever appeared in UK  (and in the world), edited by Nigel Cross,  was published only in 1990 by "Unhinged" fanzine (soon available in this archive). 
In 1997 Italian home publishing Stampa Alternativa printed my little book "Necromancers of the drifting West", with the first serious attempt to reconstruction of the band's history, thanks some interviews with band members and above all Paul Minns' personal diary.

Even now it's still so fascinating to investigate on TEB's experience and discover so many brand new things, while traditional rock/pop music subculture (press, radios, TVs...) and the Net are repeating the same old obvious things, feeding accidentally that fake aura of mistery surrounding the group... 

no©2010 Luca Ferrari