A new sensational retrieval: story (in two parts) of a rare 1970 TEB TV French broadcast hidden on the Web!!!

Few days ago TEB fan and reader of this Archive Spirito Bono has written me about an important discover he made surfin' on the Web:

"TEB seems to have been featured on the french tv show Pop Deux on May, 28 1970 as stated here :

Descriptive Information
Ina Number: CPF86653646
Programme Title: KEVIN AYERS
Collection Title: POP DEUX
Credits: Blanc Francard, Patrice; Ayers, Kevin; Third Ear Band; Grumbach, Rémy; Dumay, Maurice
First broadcast Date: 28/05/1970
Running-time: 002930
Summary: Patrice BLANC FRANCARD presents this third edition (publishing) of the POP program (emission) 2.
- The BEATLES sings let it be (purchase).
- Clips (extracts) of Kevin AYERS's concert given to the Inn of the Olympia.
- Service (performance) scènique of THIRD EAR BAND.
Category Information
Type of Archive: non theme-based archive
Type of Collection: Production
Type of Documentary Note: Isolated note
Genre: Magazine
Themes: Variety shows
Production Information
Type of Production: Production propre
Broadcasting Information
First broadcast Date: 28/05/1970
Time of First Broadcast: 225200
Channel: 2nd channel
Channel Name: Office Radio Télévision France
Technical Information
Status of Equipment: digitised

Unfortunately, it is not available on INA.fr.

But maybe there's a way to ask for it if duly authorised :
"The service is intended for audiovisual professionals working on projects that incorporate Ina documents, and potential buyers or prescribers of operating rights. These professionals include: researchers, producers, journalists, authors, directors, broadcasters, programmers, and exhibition designers..."

See: http://www.inamediapro.com/".

So I have contacted the Inamedia site trying to register me with the aim to get the video, but they answered me this: 

"Dear Luca Ferrari, We are sorry to inform you that we cannot register you to use Inamediapro, as the website is reserved for professionals working in the audiovisual sector.
You may, however, register on our website designed for public use: www.ina.fr.
If you are a student, a researcher or teacher working on French radio and audiovisual heritage, and can show that your research project requires you to consult documents under French legal radio and television deposit, we would suggest you get in touch with Inathèque.
Best regards.
The Ina team "

Thus I've jumped to the ina.fr site (http://www.ina.fr/) to register me and verify if that programme is available, but unfortunately it's not. Probably it's non available anymore or it's never been available...

Could I give up to it and risk to leave this treasure buried there?

Keep in touch and you'll see it in the second part of this new Web adventure...

(end of part one - to be continued)

no©2012 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)     

Again available for free download Roger Bunn's solo album!

Again available in the Net for free download (in the teeth of F.B.I.!) the great Roger Bunn's solo record "Piece of Mind" recorded in 1969 (Major Minor SMLP70, UK 1970). "A wonderful album", as famous DJ Pete Drummond said. "It's too musical and intelligent to succeed".

As everyone knows, Roger Bunn (1942-2005) was one of the three Giant Sun Trolley in 1966-1967, with founder Dave Tomlin and Glen Sweeney, but - as well documented at http://www.mensch.net/rogerbunn/ - he was much more: an intellectual, an agitator, a creative, original mind.

We like here to remember him.

                                                              One of the last photo of Roger Bunn.

You can download his record (in the good CD edition pubblished by Roller Coaster Records in 2005 with some bonus tracks) at the kaleidoscopic web site Plixid.com at:

http://plixid.com/2012/08/21/roger-bunn-piece-of-mind-19692005-mp3/

Anyway, you can buy a copy of the CD at:

https://www.rollercoasterrecords.com/catalog/product_info.php?products_id=2093&osCsid=dck5mo42fe5ti1tq0622i6ojn5 

                                                          Davey Graham and Roger Bunn live in 2000.

no©2012 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)    

New edition of the book on poet Harry Fainlight edited by Dave Tomlin.

A new edition of the book on the English poet Harry Fainlight originally edited by Dave Tomlin in 2008 is out now thanks Iconoclast  Press of London.

Harry Fainlight

Titled "Fragments of a lost voice" (67 pp.), it's dedicated to the eccentric iconoclast poet Harry Fainlight, dead in 1982 after a 47 years very troubled life (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Fainlight).

The book can be obtained making a cheque of 6 pounds to Dave Tomlin at:   1a, Princess Court, 68, Pilgrim's Lane, London NW3 ISP.

Phil Baker on a recent review of it published by "Times Literary Suppliment", the most prestigious literary newspaper in England: "One of the best minds of a generation destroyed by madness, Harry Fainlight was also the finest poet to emerge from the 1960s underground scene in Britain, transcending it and being much admired by Ted Hughes as well as Allen Ginsberg. For the present, however, he seems doomed to be remembered largely for his performance at the International Poetry Incarnation, a poetry happening with Ginsberg that packed the Albert Hall in 1965. It was filmed as Wholly Communion, in which Fainlight can be seen reading poetry that is too serious for his audience and becoming distressed when they begin to heckle. It was a characteristically troubled moment in a life spent in and out of psychiatric hospitals; at one point Faber and Faber offered to publish him, at Ted Hughes’s suggestion, and he responded by putting a petrol-soaked rag through the firm’s letterbox".

"In 2008, twenty-years after Fainlight's dead in a field from hypothermia, a suitcase was found in a Welsh barn that contained writings in his hand, notably the unfinished drafts of two poems, "City I" and "City II". Difficult to decipher, they are preserved in Fragments of a Lost Voice, in which twenty-two poets attempt to offer transcriptions and write short pieces of their own in response. The writers, all of whom have some personal link with Fainlight, are mostly unknown... 
The poems are concerned with air and earth: a warm evening (planes descending like "brinking brain seeds") and the underground ("thro' the transparent mirror/prehistoric strata flicker"). Fainlight is one of the few poet who could make "ripe overcooked radios" something more than word salad, and amid the unresolved ambiguities the peculiar finesse of his work shines through, with its distinctive spatial qualities and co-extention of mind and environment.
The transcriptions, with their many variants, have the fascination of Chinese whispers ("the first delicate weight" or "the first deluxe night"?) and the form of this little book is probably unique. It has been admirably put together by Dave Tomlin, who describes himself not as "editor" but "curator", reflecting the "archaelogical" nature of the project".

Between the 26 poets, apart the same Tomlin, give their contribution also Steve Pank, Ursula Smith and Allen Samuel, as we know very involved into TEB's story.

A great underrated visionary poet, Harry Fainlight, I have to admit it. Enough to read this fragment, taken from "From the notebooks", a transcription of a 1979 reading edited in 2006 by Tomlin:

"39

This is about cemeteries and death... about the philosophy of death as it presents itself today:

The miniature housing estates of nothing but tiny stone doors; as if everyone’s relatives had done some kind of Alice on them that nobody had ever really written up, and there was nothing else to show for it but these funny little stone doors indicating somewhere they had gone. For certainly the vast majority of the population had now gone over to the ‘little stone door theory’, and the cross idea had become some kind of minority cult. To adopt the cockney saying: ‘Put your religion where your monument is’, something with which any respectable archaeologist would concur; or were we only entitled to adopt the viewpoint of archaeology having reached the final means of these nowhere doors." 

London, early June, 1965. In town for International Poetry Congress at Royal Albert Hall. Poets sit on steps of Albert Memorial. Top Left: Barbara Rubiin. Back row L-R: Adrian Mitchell, Anselm Hollo, Marcus Field, Michael Horovitz, Ernst Jandl. Front row: Harry Fainlight, Alex Troicchi, Allen Ginsberg, John Esam, Dan Richter (photo: John 'Hoppy' Hopkins).

"Wholly Communion"(parts 1-4), the 1965 Pete Whitehead short documentary: in the very first sequences you can see Harry Fainlight reading his poem... Then, at 9.36, you can see Fainlight makes the integral reading with some interjections by the audience...).

A DAVE TOMLIN BIBLIOGRAPHY 

"Tales from the Embassy" vol. 1 (Iconoclast Press, London 2002)

"Bluebirds"  (Iconoclast Press, London 2004)

"Howling at the Moon" (Iconoclast Press, London 2004)

"India Song"  (Iconoclast Press, London 2005)

"Tales from the Embassy" vol. 2 (Iconoclast Press, London 2006)

"The Collected Mister" (Iconoclast Press, London 2006)

"Into the Holy Land"  (Iconoclast Press, London 2007) with Tony Jackson

"Tales from the Embassy" vol. 3 (Iconoclast Press, London 2008)

"A hole in the Wind" (Iconoclast Press, London 2008) 

"Harry Fainlight. From the notebooks. Posthumous pieces" (Iconoclast Press, London 2008) edited by Tomlin

"Harry Fainlight. Fragments of a lost voice"  (Iconoclast Press, London 2008) edited by Tomlin

"Power Lines" (Iconoclast Press, London 2011)

A DAVE TOMLIN DISCOGRAPHY

The Bob Wallis and His New Storyville Jazzmen (UK 1959) Played soprano sax "Pendulum" - Mike Taylor Quartet (EMI, UK 1966) Played soprano sax and designed the album sleeve "Alchemy" - Third Ear Band (Harvest, UK 1969) played violin on a track ("Lark rise") composed by him  "Ancient Gates" - High Tide (World Wide Records, Germany 1990) Played violin, keyboards and bass "Strange Attractor" - Hazchem (World Wide Records, Germany 1990) Played violin, bass, keyboards and guitar in some tracks "Star Map Excursion" - Hazchem (World Wide Records, Germany 1991) Composed two tracks for the album "Magus" - Third Ear Band (Angel Heart, UK 2005) Played bass and edited the CD booklet liner notes

             August 2010: Dave Tomlin (on left) with Steve Pank in London (photo: L. Ferrari)

Follow Dave Tomlin on International Times Web site at: http://internationaltimes.it/

no©2012 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)   

Paul Buckmaster's interview updating.

Paul Buckmaster in September 1970.

The announced interview with Paul Buckmaster, former Third Ear Band bassist, will be on next September, 2012.

no©2012 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first) 

Who knows Brian Meredith?

Sometimes an obscure name from the past emerges on TEB's biography: Brian Meredith.  

Who was/is him?

In the past weeks I've asked my TEB-related friends (Dave Tomlin & Steve Pank) but none knows about him...

Steve wrote a laconic: "I don't remember a cellist with that name..."; Dave told me sardonically: "No, never heard of him. He maybe an alien".

Then, provoked by Steve, Carolyn Looker has got a sort of flash of inspiration saying she remembers him playing with the band in the early days, at Middle Earth.

This is confirmed by Clive Kingsley, the original TEB electric guitarist, that in exclusive old interview of this archive (read at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2010/01/electric-raga-guitarist-interview-with.html) told me: "Glen also found someone to play cello, a chap called Graham (I don't remember his last name). He wasn't really a musician, but was quite keen! He was also rather nervous playing for people, but picked up the idea of being a bit like an Indian tampura quite well. 

A recent shot of Clive Kingsley.

We played a lot of gigs Middle Earth, UFO Club. Many other small clubs and a couple of concerts. There were people around with a lot of jealousy of the band and as well as of myself...
I think Paul Minns did play quite a lot better later one when he just had a violin to duet with. I went to see them in concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall on one occasion about a year after I had left. I don't know what circumstances why he left the band, but did hear about 5-10 years ago that he had committed suicide. Graham, the original cello player, left when I think his cello went along with my guitar and amplifier".

Surfin' on the Net I've discovered a site of an English musician called John Green (http://www.skylinesongs.com/music_journey.htm), he played in some bands with various players.
In 1973 he formed Sugarcane and such Brian Meredith played drums with him. He remembers about that days: "I desperately need to make music again so I place an ad in the local paper to find players, and Tony Lloyd responds. He has a similar guitar playing style to mine, is keen to get a band together and we get on well together. We find a bass player, Bob Sharp, and a drummer, Brian Meredith, and we start practicing and gigging".

He has put this b/w photo of the band in the site:

Bob Sharpe, Tony Lloyd, Brian Meredith and John Green in 1974.

Brian Meredith is the guy with the white jacket. John writes about him: "A very competent, metronomic drummer, Brian joined when I put Sugarcane together in late 1973. Although a superb natural player I don't think he was as addicted to this band thing as the rest of us. He left abruptly in Spring 1974 when he met a girl at a gig, fell in love, and got married, all in a short space of time. The rest of Sugarcane weren't invited".  

Contacted John Green for having other infos, he was direct about this Brian: "Sorry, no. Brian played drums, not the cello".
But are we sure he played drums even in the early gigs with Sweeney? 
Does anyone know something more?

no©2012 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)