Here's the press release circulating in the first half of 1969 for promoting TEB's music, just before Paul Buckmaster left and Ursula Smith joined the band.
Quite interestingly, the text is based on Glen Sweeney's manifesto written in 1968.
Edited since 2009 by Luca Ferrari
Here's the press release circulating in the first half of 1969 for promoting TEB's music, just before Paul Buckmaster left and Ursula Smith joined the band.
Quite interestingly, the text is based on Glen Sweeney's manifesto written in 1968.
no©2024 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)
Glen smoking pipe at the Isle Of Wight festival, August 26, 1990. (photo: C. Looker) |
A very good review about the record is on the Web at the link https://rythmes-croises.org/third-ear-band-back-to-1970/
Rythmes Croises is a French webzine devoted to alternative and avant-garde music, often interested to the Third Ear Band.
no©2024 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)
Before he "pacefully died" (Carolyn Looker's words) on 17 August, 2005, Glen Sweeney lived his last years at the Royal Star & Garter Home in Richmond (London), a place founded in 1916 "devoted to the care of disabled sailors and soldiers". As we know, Glen was an airman of the RAF and he was involved in WWII as a fighter in Egypt, where it seems he had been fascinated by the view of pyramids.(1)
After two heart attacks and a stroke, in Spring 1999 Carolyn admitted Glen to the very expensive Garter Home where he lived until his death and where I got to visit him in 2004. In his single room, in bed, he listened mainly to Indian music, as one would expect.
What follows is the House's official flyer outlining the services and activities also followed by Glen.
Notes
(1) Manager Andrew King's amusing recollection, published by "Uncut" magazine in 2019 (#261, February 2019), concerning the possibility that Glen defected after parachuting into the swimming pool of an Egyptian bourgeois home, where he was to be host until the end of the war, has never been confirmed by Carolyn or others, and appears to be one of Glen's many mythomaniacal tales.
no©2024 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)
Bernd Ramien, A&R catalog and marketing manager of M.I.G. Music, wrote me that a CD edition of the live gig at Essen Festival is planned for the Autumn. In fact, this limited vinyl edition was thought for the TEB collectors and vinyl lovers.
Updates on the M.I.G. Music web site at http://www.mig-music.de/en/ or https://www.facebook.com/migmusic.de/
no©2024 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)
Some weeks ago I was with my friend musician and filmaker Francesco Paolo Paladino at his home chatting and planning new mad adventures for the future, when I asked him to check his TEB collection in his fabulous chamber of sounds. My intention was to mock him because I was sure he didn't have much of the band...
Incredibly enough, I had the surprise to found, between many CDs and some few cassettes, also the original tape recorded at Teatro Impavidi (Sarzana, Italy) on January 11th, 1989 from which, few months later the gig, I released a 200 copies limited edition cassette only for the fans!
Titled "New Age Music", this was quite a great surprise because I had totally forgot it. Checking the tape, inside the poor photocopied cover there is my old visiting card with two simple indications written on it:
limited edition: 200 copies
copy number: 002
The thing even more strange is that I have no copies in my personal archive... but the really amazing surprise is that this is the full concert with ALL the tracks played that evening and not simply the edition released by ADN in 1990 as "New Forecasts from the Third Ear Almanac" and later reissued by Gonzo Multimedia (as HST312CD, 2015).
The tape shows also the right sequence with the original titles selected by Sweeney and then partially changed for the A.D.N. tape:
1. "More Mosaic"
2. "Egyptian Book Of The Dead"
3. "Third Ear Raga"
4. "Ghosts" (a.k.a. Live Ghosts)
5. "Lark Rise"
6. "The Sun Trolley Raga" (a.k.a.Witches Dance)
I can only guess that ADN decided to reduce the recording for technical reasons (the lenght of the tape at that time related to a standard LP), and it's a pity that we couldn't listen to the full set with the rare Dave Tomlin's "Lark Rise".
Maybe a new edition in the future?
no©2024 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)
The announced LP/CD TEB live recording of Essen Festival (1970), titled "Druid One", will pubblish by M.I.G. on May 31th, 2024.
The news is on line now at M.I.G. web site at http://www.mig-music.de/en/mig-music/
The fantastic unreleased 40 minutes live gig played by the Third Ear Band at the Essen festival in June 1970 will be released soon by M.I.G. Music in two different formats: a vinyl record limited edition and a CD standard edition (with a booklet edited by me including a short story of the event).
The album is engineered by Manfred-Joachim Kaiser and mastered by Johannes Scheibenreif. The cover is a wonderful colorful drawing by Anna Vavatsis and based on this frame taken from a short video of the gig:
These are other frames taken from that great live event:
For further infos and updates go to the M.I.G. web site at http://www.mig-music.de/en/mig-music/
no©2024 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)
As you can read on this short article below, published in Wishaw Press and Advertiser on September, 19, 1969, that year Ursula Smith played cello in an obscure album recorded by a disappeared band called Lever; a band consisting of John Roy, Stuart McIntosh and Tom Morgan.
I asked Ursula and her husband Steve Pank to share with Ghettoraga Archive their memories about this unknown minor event in Third Ear Band story, but it seems they don't recall anything...
What happened to the Lever? What about that first album? Anyone has info or memories about?
no©2024 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)
Dear TEB aficionados, lovers of fine antiques,
I was contacted a few days ago by Made In Germany (M.I.G. Music), a German label specializing in reissues and discoveries of 60s and 70s albums and recordings (http://www.mig-music.de/en/), to collaborate in the production of an extraordinary new live album by the Third Ear Band!
As announced months ago (read HERE), this is a recording of the performance that the band (in the quartet line-up: Sweeney, Minns, Smith and Coff) played on April 24, 1970 at the Essen festival, recorded and broadcasted by German radio. I am working to analyze the seven tracks, partly taken from "Alchemy", partly from the upcoming "Elements" album, with some brilliant surprises.
An extraordinary new chapter in the band's history is therefore expected in the coming months. I am sure that it will amaze and captivate you as in the past.
Keep in touch!
no©2024 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)
"Third Ear Band music is a reflection of the universe as magic play illusion simply because it could not possibly be anything else. Words cannot describe this ecstatic dance of sound, or explain the alchemical repetiton seeking and sometimes finding archetypal formes, elements and rhythms...".
(Glen Sweeney on "Alchemy", Harvest Records 1969)
"The music is the music of the Druids, released from the unconscious by the alchemical process, orgasmic in its otherness, religious in its oneness communicating beauty and magic via abstract sounds whilst playing without ego enables the musicians to reach a trance-like stage, a "high" in which the music produces itself. Each piece is as alike or unalike as blades of grass or clouds".
(From the 1969 Isle of Wight concert programme)
“The trouble is that you can't be mystical without being called pseudo-mystical, and it's the fault of our previous education. I'm at Glastonbury most of the time, but we're all completely honest about it. We'll even use it honestly to make money, because the ancient Egyptians who were into it all said that you had to be rich because only then can you resist temptation”.
(Glen Sweeney to Richard Williams, “Melody Maker” June 1970)
“I've always felt that music should be pure. If you have lyrics, you are preaching in a way. Somehow words are a block to communication. It's almost impossible for me to explain exactly how I feel about this, that's why I'm a musician. The only way to really understand what I mean, is to firstly listen to a pop group and then listen to us, and then I hope you will know what we're trying to say."
(Glen Sweeney to Muz Murray, 1969)
“No announcements, numbers lasting 15 to 20 minutes, art form or con?
This might be valid criticism of (A) Thunderstorm (B) a cricket (C) Third Ear Band.
Their approach to music is different because there is no duality, no conflict between the natural element of chance and the human element of control, did the moon ask to be reflected in the water? If it wasn’t for the trees would the wind know when it was blowing? Paul Minns says there are some very beautiful forests in Hyde Park, trying to put titles to music is rather like trying to answer the question where does my hand when it becomes my fist”.
(From the Al Stewart-Third Ear Band 1970 tour programme)
"The Centipede was happy, quite, until a Toad in fun said: "Pray, which leg goes after which?".
This worked his mind to such a pitch, he lay distracted in a ditch considering how to run".
(Third Ear Band, 1970)
“We'd rather people called us a pop group. We do ragas, that aren't really ragas at all, and unless we get a turned on promoter, we get into some weird scenes. At Norwich once, when the promoter saw the audience sitting down and closing their eyes to our music, he accused us of putting them to sleep! Complete paranoia. So I imagine we wouldn't do too well on the Pop Proms”.
(Glen Sweeney interviewed by Chris Welch - “Melody Maker” July 12th, 1969)
“It's just a question of advertising. We've stayed very much Underground - no photos - and I think this was necessary so people wouldn't put us in a bag. We'd rather the just came up and heard us without ANY preconceived ideas. I suppose it is a bit shattering to see violins and cellos”.
(Glen Sweeney interviewed by Chris Welch - “Melody Maker” July 12th, 1969)
"I'd say ninety per cent of our music is improvisation. It's not really Indian music, although we use a drone instead of the usual bass line riffs. The music draws from everywhere.
"I think our appeal is that audiences can draw their own thing from us. We make no announcements and none of the numbers have titles. People in colleges we play come up after and say they can get fantastic images in their mind when they listen. We can offer a complete dream. The old Celtic bards used to have the same ability".
(Glen Sweeney interviewed by Chris Welch - “Melody Maker” July 12th, 1969)
“Third Ear Band’s new album “Magic Music” is about music as pure vibrations, as such it can be linked with colour because colour is vibration. It can even be linked to the music of the spheres which states that the vibrations of the planets can be heard with the third ear (silence). The free ragas that we play are modal, each note can be heard as a sound-colour that produces its own mood. Our rhythms come from all over the world, and we use these ideas and many others to try to make a new world music”.
(Glen Sweeney, notes on the “Magic Music” inner cover, 1990)
"We once had eight drunk rugby players yelling dirty songs at us. We played quieter and quieter. In the end they seemed ashamed and shut up. But I still don't think they dug the music!".
(Glen Sweeney interviewed by Chris Welch - “Melody Maker” July 12th, 1969)