Monthly magazine "Classic Rock" (issue 54) published this month two new articles about the TEB, one on their story with references to the Sixties/Seventies popular music aesthetics and the first albums; one on the relation between their music and scores ("Abelard & Heloise" and "Macbeth" soundtracks).
Full of many little factual historiographic errors, the first piece (simply titled "Third Ear Band") written by Marco Braggion is a patchy and omitting excursus through the TEB first phase story, with references to musicians and records of that time, but with very bold time gaps (i.e.: the journalist states that "If man but knew" by Habibiyya, published in 1972, was a clear reference for many groups of the time, one of the first example of "world music"...!) and arguable point of views.
Ignoring the extraordinary tracks of the National Balkan Ensemble (now available on Gonzo's "Necromancers of the Drifting West"), recorded in late 1968/beginning '69, just at the end of the piece he dismisses the last artistic period of the band (1988-1992) with this shallow and debatable way: "After these outputs ["Abelard & Heloise" and "Macbeth" soundtracks], the band splits [sic!], but it will come back in '90's [sic!] with some albums that travel on more predictable tracks - pieces alterning verse and chorus and an use of the voice codified on a suspended Rock music between that psychedelic mood of the beginning and some electronic New Age scent.", showing that he evidently never listened to the live works "Live Ghosts" (1989) and "New Forecasts from the Third Ear Almanac" (1989), and more recent Gonzo's live CDs.
Again, no discography, no references to this Archive, nor a mention to my book published in 1999, before that (at least) in Italy all the journalists was repeating the same old abused commonplaces about the band. (Now it's easy, you know, one journalist goes in Internet and can cut & paste everything from this Archive using that as he was the real author of it...).
Great Italian music journalism!
Better the second piece written by (old) good journalist Giandomenico Curi titled "Visions and soundtracks", where he analyze the soundtracks TEB recorded for "Abelard" (German TV 1971) and "Macbeth" by Polanski with some interesting sparks about the relation between visions and music in the TEB experience.
Anyway, here below you can read (just in Italian, sorry!) the complete special (given to me by friend Mirco Delfino of the TEB Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/third.ear.band/) and form your own opinion...
no©2017 Luca Chino Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)
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