"It's the same the world over", as they said. English rock magazines are generally better than the Italians, but anyway we are very far from the famous legendary Oscar Wilde's statement about the critic being as an artist...
This long tribute to the TEB's saga under the title "Dragon Lines. The curious story of the Third Ear Band" written by Malcolm Dome for PROG magazine (#99, July 2019) is cheap of revelations and shows some little errors (the worst of all is stating Richard Coff is dead!), with well-known opinions by Blackhill's managers (the same old things about Glen being a trickster and a good PR man of the band...) and a arguable assertion by Denim Bridges on the mystic nature of TEB's identity.
Dome: "Celtic, raga, Chinese, Indian and Native American daubs abound throughout Alchemy. And there were rumours the band were actively involved in mysticism. But guitarist Denim 'Denny' Bridges, who joined in 1970, has his own views on this."
Bridges: "I believe Glen was very knowledgeable about the subject. But he was certainly also prepared to use it to get interest in the band. If he felt that using alchemy and magick imagery would get us attention, then he would exploit the side as much as possible".
As often happened on English magazines or books, also for Dome the TEB's Italian reunion is quite irrelevant, and THE MOTHER OF ALL QUESTIONS seems to be that there are still some mysteries around that have to be solved. "For instance, did Sweeney actually fight in World War II?"
So, apart from some well-known pictures, the very scarce informations about the recent three Cherry Red's reissues (!!!), no elements to the readers for understanding the great musical intuitions of the band, no references to the huge work made by this Archive in the last ten years... this is an important stuff because can let many young Prog fans to know the intriguing underground story of the Thirds.
no©2019 Luca Chino Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)
Hi Luca!As you say.More of the same and nothing new perhaps! I bought this purely because I saw it sitting on my local Supermarket shelf in the magazine section, The joy of seeing "Third Ear Band" on the front cover of a magazine made my day,Very much down to the efforts of your good self! Keep it going!
ReplyDeleteThank you dear friend, I'm sure you have perfectly understand my point of view... For many years none wrote a line about the Thirds, so it's anyway a pleasure to realize that now sometimes is different... In fact, the most important thing is that the name is still around!
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