"Alchemy" remastered edition updated.

First of all, the 2CDs-disc set will be out on March 29th, 2019 with the usual pre-order at the Esoteric Recordings and Cherry Red Records' Websites (go HERE). Maybe a special edition also in vinyl could be released!
About the track-list, "due to issues with the BBC", the updated tracks will be these:

CD One
 
“Alchemy”*
Mosaic
Ghetto Raga
Druid One
Stone Circle
Egyptian Book of the Dead
Area Three
Dragon Lines
Lark Rise
(Released as Harvest SHVL 756 in July 1969)

Bonus tracks**
Hyde Park Raga
Druid One
(BBC Radio One “Top Gear” session – 27th July 1969)
Previously unreleased  

*= remastered from original EMI masters. 
**= actually the tracks are available among TEB fans.


CD Two

Cosmic Trip*
Jason’s Trip*
Devil’s Weed*
Raga n. 1 (mono)**
(Recordings made in 1968)

Unity  
(Recorded at Abbey Road studios – 24th January 1969)
Previously unreleased

The Sea
Druid
Hyde Park Raga  
(Recorded at Abbey Road studios – 12th September 1969)
Previously unreleased

*= same tracks published in "Necromancers of the Drifting West" by Gonzo Multimedia in 2015.
**= same track as "Raga in D", just in studio master quality.
 
For writing the CD booklet I had the opportunity to listen to the four unrealised tracks before, and, well, I have to admit they was a great surprise for me!

no©2019 Luca Chino Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

Stripping the Peel: strange revisionism of an underground icon...?!

JP in '60's ("The Word" Magazine Nov. 2015)

I realize it's difficult to accept when one decreases a cult figure of the underground culture as the late John Peel, but now I think it can be a necessary act.
On this "John Peel Wiki" at http://peel.wikia.com/wiki/Third_Ear_Band I've read, along with a valid reconstruction of the band presence at the JP's radio programmes, these unexpected judgments on the Third Ear Band:

"(...) But the band was beginning to lose impetus amidst a wave of personnel changes and eventually split in 1974. Revived versions of the band in the late 1970s and 1980s did not attract Peel's interest.
Later, indeed, he seemed to regard them as one of the less enduring acts of their time; their first Top Gear session was soon after John Walters had become Peel's producer and to judge by their conversation in "Peeling Back The Years" one can infer that Walters was not entirely convinced by them, although he was less critical than Peel: 

JW: Well, frankly, if we are talking about intolerable music, what about the other sorts of new music that I remember having to record and we had to listen to at that time? The Third Ear Band, for instance.
JP: Well, yes. I mean…
JW: It wasn’t really intolerable; it was hypnotic. JP: Yes, difficult to defend really in a way, except that I played jew’s harp on one track on their debut LP, but that isn’t the reason why they got on the programme. It was just that they again, I suppose, were the sort of band that turned up interminably at benefits and so forth, and when I went down to the various clubs, whether Pink Floyd or Arthur Brown or Hendrix and people were playing, the Third Ear Band would always be on the bill in some capacity, along with another band that we never did actually record, Exploding Galaxies or something…".

John Walters

OK, just licit opinions, but I remember when Glen used to talk about Peel he was always grateful with him and his extraordinary importance in the underground, so it sounds quite strange to me that Peel claimed to have introduced the TEB so many times on his radio programmes just because they were always around...

If you listen to the few BBC radio recordings still available it's a fact their music was totally out of their time, sometimes maybe too naive, but absolutely great and imaginative, creative and unique. For myself very enduring...
So why a so great underground icon could repudiate his choises?

no©2016 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)    

Winter Solstice with the Third Ear Band.

To all the Third Ear Band fans 
and Ghetto Raga Archive readers

(in spite of Maya calendar and other assorted catastrophic prophesies)

HAVE A GREAT WINTER SOLSTICE!

"Stigma. A XMas ghost story" (BBC, UK 1977)
 

Discovered by our post folk-shaman Sedayne, this old short film (just 31.49) was produced by BBC and broadcasted on December 28th, 1977. With a track by Rolling Stones' "Aftermath" ("Mothers little helper"), on the soundtrack you can listen also to an excerpt of "Air" played by the Third Ear Band!

"Stigma" is one of the Christmas BBC short movies (read at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Ghost_Story_for_Christmas) produced in 1971-1978. It was written by Clive Exton and directed by Lawrence Gordon Clark. 

The DVD edition (UK 2012).

This is the original synopsys: "The pagan stone circles of Avebury are the backdrop for writer Clive Exton's modern-day horror. The attempted removal of an ancient menhir from a family's back garden unleashes a bloody curse on unsuspecting housewife Katharine, whose rising panic is captured brilliantly by Kate Binchy". 

Read a good review of it at http://www.the-medium-is-not-enough.com/2011/12/christmas_lost_gems_stigma_1977.php

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

No TEB "Transcription Discs" in the BBC vaults!

"Hello Luca, 

congratulations to your TEB web archive! I have a comment/suggestion with regard to the BBC recordings: since here http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/johnpeel/sessions/1970s/1972/Feb11thirdearband/ they say "Transcription Services" - has it been ever checked whether anything has been released on a BBC Transcription disc? 

Also, usually recordings for the Transcription Services were kept in a different archive by the BBC - and those things were not erased!!! 

Best regards,

Johann Haidenbauer"

So I've asked my friend Nigel Reeves from E.M.I. to have a contact with the BBC Transcription Service.

Very kindly he suggested me to contact Mr.  Simon Gurney there. On February 29th he has answered me:

"Hi Luca.
The man in charge of the Transcription discs here has checked and can confirm that none exist with the Third Ear Band on. You can safely say you have exhausted your search in this regard.
Best wishes,
Simon".

So alas no TEB Transcription discs in the BBC vaults...

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

Third Ear Band's radio broadcasts available in the BBC vaults: a brief updating.

As the Third Ear Band's manager in the Eighties, I've been able to ask to BBC Archive service which TEB radio broadcasts are available in their archives.

Differently from that list published in the past (based on a book edited by Ken Garrer (read in this archive at the page http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2009/12/how-many-teb-unrealized-tracks-left.html), it seems the only broadcast available is just this:

"STUART MACONIE'S FREAK ZONE 

Date: 29/03/2009
Weekly music show presented by Stuart MACONIE. Includes
University of the Strange, live guests, archive performances and sessions. 

Entry produced from production sources This week:
UNIVERSITY OF THE STRANGE with Justin SPEAR: Yusef Lateef

FEATURED ALBUM: The Rotters' Club by Hatfield And The North

LIVE FREAKS: Third Ear Band (archive performance)"

The Broadcast Media Researcher Information & Archives Jeffrey Smith writes me that "the programme I emailed you is all we have listed under THIRD EAR BAND in our archive - I cannot find anything else" but, because I've replied him with the quote of the Garner's book on "John Peel sessions", he promises me "I will ask radio 1 to see if they have any other recordings of the band".

Anyway he cannot tell where, when and what the TEB played on that live freaks "archive performance"...

no©2011 Luca Ferrari