Viv Albertine, singer, guitar player, founder of seminal female punk band TheSlits (1977-1982), in 2014 published an autobiography titled "Clothes, Clothes, Clothes. Music, Music, Music. Boys, Boys, Boys" where, at page 41, quite surprisingly, she writes a short memory on the Third Ear Band...
"One of the strangest bands I saw around this time was the Third Ear Band at the Queen Elizabeth Hall. I found out about then through listening to John Peel on the radio. He was always mentioning them. He played on their record Alchemy. The music was over my head, really difficult, but I understood their ideas - experimentation, pushing boundaries and not conforming to musical clichés. I stared at the stage, I couldn't tell if one of the players in the band was male or female, the tall skinny one with long black hair; I stared and stared at this one hoping and hoping that they were female. I left without knowing as she or he had their head down the whole time."
"Me and my friend Zaza went to see Third Ear Band again (even though they were very experimental, they played all over the place and had a big following) in July 1969 when I was fifteen. They opened for the Rolling Stones at the ‘Stones in the Park’ free concert in ‘the cockpit’ — the big dip in the grass in Hyde Park. King Crimson were on too."
Would she be pleased today to know that a woman also played at the Queen Elizabeth Hall... Ursula Smith?
For some time now, the music market and the web have been full of surprises and twists and turns that have made it almost impossible to keep up. Videos, radio broadcasts, live recordings, etc., that were unknown or thought to be lost, reappear out of nowhere, adding new pieces to the puzzle with which we have been trying for years to reconstruct the glorious history of the Third Ear Band. Just when everything seems to have been “discovered”, brought to light and made known, new findings undermine our naive ambition to “know everything” and consider ourselves experts on something. Reality, as always, exceeds imagination...
After the recording of the group's third “appearance” on John Peel's "Top Gear" (8 June 1970), which appeared out of nowhere on YouTube, which I dealt with last time, now available to listen to is the “legendary” piece composed by Bernard Parmegiani (19-2013) and performed with the TEB in the “Sun Wheel Ceremony” concert at the Royal Festival Hall in London on 24 June 1970.
Included in the album "Mémoire Magnétiques vol. 2" (Magnetic Memory), subtitled: "A compilation of unrealised magnetic tapes (1968-1993), and released by Transversales Disques in 2021, this is a 4:14 instrumental track from 1970, presented here in a remixed and reduced version.
I.T. announced the concert by writing: “The Third Ear Band have been working with the top electronic musicians in France, Group de la Recherche Musicale de l'ORTF, to create a musical/phisic experience in the concert hall. EMI have developed the concept of periphonic sound and loaned equipment to create a total 'sound surround' within which you can experience the combined effects of the Third Ear and the electronic ideas of Bayle and Parmigiani" (from IT vol. 1 issue 81, June 18th, 1970)
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As I wrote in a previous article in this Archive (read here), "That evening the band played with Bernard Parmegiani two traks, "Fire" and the unpublished 34'56" "Freak Dance" (other title: "Pop Secret", from the Parmegiani official Web site).
On "Melody Maker" (July 4th, 1970), Chris Charlesworth wrote about the event: "The hall was barely half full. Accompained at times by electronic machines making weird sounds Third Ear Band droned through two lenghty pieces which were well accepted by their fans. Their music has no title and is 90 per cent improvisation. It just starts and finishes when the band feel like it. There's a vague anonymity about their music. However violinist Richard Coff, who hate make announcements, did mention that one piece was called "Freak Dance". This contained some haunting oboe work from Paul Minns, and I rather enjoied it. Their second piece was more ambitious and, I thought, less enjoyable. At one stage I actually saw Richard tapping his foot!".
Quite different Carolyn Looker's memories of the event (April 2012): "Parmegiani concert was at Festival Hall. It didn't work too well in my opinion. TEB's music was organic, the French were music concrete, it didn't got".
The Royal Festival Hall in 1964.
As for Paul Minns, in his memories about the Band (included in my books, "Parmegiani had come over previously to record some of our musical sounds so he could take them back, regurgitate and spew out something tasty.
The idea was to play along with this tape at concert. I remember no reharsal, although I can't believe we walked on cold, with a predictable result - a mess. The French tale themselves very seriously and must have been horrified by our laissez-faire approach. I think this had originally been set up by EMI but as usual nothing came of it. One novel feature at the time was the quadrophonic sound. Imagine trying to play to it."
Until proven otherwise, despite negative reviews of the experiment, unfortunately there is no recording of the concert, which was based on pre-recorded tapes on which the quartet (Sweeney, Minns, Smith and Coff) improvised.
According to "The catalogue of Bernard Parmegiani's Works" edited by Evelyne Gayou (read here), "The dialogue between the tape and the instruments (rather unusual for a pop band: oboe, violin, cello, contrabongo, tumba and drums) was fixed for certain parts, leaving plenty of room for improvisation in others. The revised piece was performed at the Sigma 6 concert in Bordeaux in November 1970, with the same performers."
From 16 to 21 November 1970, Bordeaux hosted the sixth edition of the avant-garde Sigma festival, which featured performances by avant-garde musicians (Savouret, Clozier, Bayle...) and also the Third Ear Band with a revival of Parmegiani's electronic improvisations. On 18 November, most likely filmed by French television, the band took to the stage in its new line-up with Sweeney, Minns, Buckmaster and Bridges.
