A composition by Dave Tomlin for the London Youth Jazz Orchestra in 1967.

An article by Bob Houston published by the "Melody Maker" on August 5th, 1967 reveals that Dave Tomlin composed at least a score for the London Youth Jazz Orchestra, an ensemble of young people between the ages of 14 and 21 conducted by Bill Ashton, to perform.

The orchestra, dedicated to the performance of contemporary avant-garde jazz music, had in its repertoire compositions by well-known musicians in the London circles of those years: Neil Ardley, John Patrick, Brian Priestly...

 

 

 no©2025LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

Dave Tomlin' son sent to The Guardian an obituary about his great dad.

Tom Hennessey, one of the three children of Dave Tomlin, sent to the Guardian a obituary about his great dad. You can read the original Web page at this link: https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/2025/feb/13/dave-tomlin-obituary

Dave Tomlin obituary

"My dad, Dave Tomlin, who has died aged 90, was a musician, writer and figure of the British counterculture underground from the 1960s.

In 1976, he was one of those who took over the unoccupied former Cambodian embassy in London and established a community of artists, musicians, poets, artisans and radical metaphysicians who called themselves the Guild of Transcultural Studies.

Over the years, the guild became established as an opulent venue for musical and cultural events, hosting refugees from as far afield as Chile and China and holding concerts by musicians from Morocco and India, with attenders often having no idea that their elegant surroundings were a squat. A long-running court case finally forced the guild to close its doors after 15 years in 1991, ending Dave’s dream of handing the building back to a new Cambodian government.

Born in Plaistow, east London (then in Essex), to Stan Tomlin, a packing-case maker, and Louisa (nee Goodsell), Dave escaped a future in factory work by joining the King’s Guard, where he learned the bugle to accompany the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace. This was the beginning of a life of music. He became a jazz musician in the 1950s, playing clarinet and saxophone in Bob Wallis’s Storyville Jazz Band and touring with Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

In the late 1960s he joined the hippy movement, travelling nomadically around the countryside in a horse and cart, playing in experimental folk groups, including the Third Ear Band, and performing at the UFO Club in London, where he would go on at 4am: “Only when the dancers are completely exhausted will they be in a fit state to hear what we have for them."

He became part of the London Free School in Notting Hill, a centre of radical adult education, where he taught free-form jazz. While there, Dave led annual musical processions down Portobello Road that would develop with other events into the Notting Hill carnival.

Other adventures included becoming stranded, penniless, on the island of Fernando Po (now Bioko) in Equatorial Guinea and gaining passage back by pretending, unconvincingly, to be an experienced cook and deckhand. He supported his frugal lifestyle with gardening and working as a handyman.

In his later years, Dave spent his time writing about his experiences (Tales From the Embassy was published in 2017), practising Chinese brush painting and learning to recite the alphabet backwards.

He is survived by three children from different relationships – Lee, Maya and me – and by his brother, Tony."

Very kindly, Tom wrote me: "I could not hope to do justice to him in the limited space available but I think it gives a good flavour of who he was.
I am very grateful to you for your friendship with Dave, it was greatly appreciated by him. He mentioned you to me a number of times. Also for your tributes to him on your blog (which was helpful to me in writing this obituary!).

We are hoping to have an event in London to remember him and we will let you know in case you are able to make the journey.

Best wishes,

Tom"

no©2025LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

Dave Tomlin funeral.

 Dave from the video interview "Radical Elders" (2019).

Dave Tomlin's brother Tony kindly wrote me today:

"Dave was cremated yesterday, an unattended cremation.

Early yesterday morning, around 7AM,  I lit 3 candles in our garden, my way of a funeral. They burned all day and the last one was still burning, in the dark, at 7 PM last night.

Dave really didn't want to let go."

For all the people interested to get his wonderful books (apart "Tales from the Embassy" all the others are almost impossible to find), Tony will ask Dave's son Tom what he intends to do, and I will inform everyone here.

 no©2024 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

Dave Tomlin, a giant of British counterculture.

From the video interview "Radical Elders" (2019).

Multi-instrumentalist, lyricist, writer and poet, David John Tomlin (1934-2024) was a seminal figure of the British underground. A founder of Giant Sun Trolley with Glen Sweeney in 1967, a collaborator with the Third Ear Band on “Alchemy” (1969), he was a cultural and political agitator since the second half of the 1960s, after a militancy in trad jazz from the late 1950s with Bob Wallis' band. From 1976 to 1991 he directed a commune experience in the occupied Cambodian Embassy in London, rejuvenating the countercultural model of the legendary London Free University of the 60s (from where Syd Barrett's Pink Floyd, for example, became known). 

Dave Tomlin (right) with Joe Gannon (left) announcing the Notting Hill Carnival, 1966.

From the early 1990s he began a prolific writing activity, mainly in the online pages of the reborn International Times (read here), publishing several books of an autobiographical nature (e.g., on his experiences in India or chronicling his years at the occupied embassy), poetic, non-fiction with strong political and social characterization (such as the essay "Power Lines").

He acquainted me with the dramatic story of Mike Taylor, helping me with research (with his brother Tony) and the writing of his biography, with suggestions and revision of the text. In 2020 he collaborated on the book I wrote about Glen and the Third Ear Band by sending his memories and giving me this unpublished poem of his from 1967, I decided to use as the epigraph of the book:

"The Giant Sun Trolley is coming

League transversing it globally encircuits

Beneath the eversun  

Where lances of pain

Become rays of warmth

Emanating mindwards and on

Till, reaching the epiphany

Of space and time 

Flash in ozonic  splendour

For Cosmic Man."

A true giant of the British counterculture and underground. Intelligent, sharp, witty, always on the right side of those who claim, especially today, the right to a better world.

From the video interview "Radical Elders" (2019).

 

Since very little can be found about him on the internet, I repost here, updated, Dave's bibliography and discography already posted on this archive, willing to supplement or modify it if suggestions are received from you readers.

 

DISCOGRAPHY

. Mike Taylor Quartet – “Pendulum” (LP - Columbia SX6042, UK 1965) Recorded at Lansdowne Studios, London, October 1965. Dave plays soprano saxophone. A 2007 CD reissue by Sunbeam Records also exist, but now very rare.

. Third Ear Band – “Alchemy” (LP/CD – Harvest Records, UK 1969) Recorded at EMI Studios in 1969. Dave plays violin in one track composed by him, “Lark Rise”.

. Hazchem - "Strange Attractor" (CD – Worldwide Records SPM-WWR-CD-0011 7703, 1990) Dave plays violin, keyboards and bass on three tracks, co-composing six tracks of the album and all the lyrics.

. High Tide – “Ancient Gates” (CD - World Wide Records SPM-WWR-CD-0007, Germany 1990) Dave plays violin and keyboard on all the six album tracks.

. Hazchem – “Star Map Excursion” (CD - World Wide Records, Germany 1991) Dave composed two tracks for the album.

. Third Ear Band – “The Magus” (CD – Angel Air Records SJPCD173, UK 2004) Recorded in 1972. Dave plays bass guitar. He writes also the liner notes. A limited edition of 500 copies of 180 gr. vinyl was published in 2019 by Tiger Bay.

 . The Bob Wallis & His New Storyville Jazzmen - (CD – GHB BCD-262, 2006) Dave plays clarinet on three tracks recorded in London, 1959.

 . The Bob Wallis & His New Storyville Jazzmen - "Vintage" (CD – Lake Records LACD280, 2010) Dave plays clarinet on some tracks recorded in London, in the Fifties.

 . Various Artists – “Trad Dads, Dirty Boppers and Free Fusioneers: British Jazz 1960-1975” (CD – Reel Recordings RR026, UK 2012) Dave plays tenor saxophone on one track, “Phrygie”, recorded at Herne Bay Jazz Club in 1961 by the Mike Taylor Quintet.

. Mike Taylor Quartet – “Mandala” (CD/LP – Jazz in Britan, UK 2021) Limited to 500 copies worldwide. Recorded live by Jon Hiseman on 8th January 1965 at the Studio Club, Westcliff-On-Sea, Southend (UK). Dave plays soprano saxophone.

. Mike Taylor Quartet – “Preparation” (CD/LP – Sunbeam Records, UK 2021) Recorded at 19 The Common, Ealing (Mike Taylor’s home) in September 1965. Dave plays soprano saxophone.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

"Tales from the Embassy" vol. 1 (Iconoclast Press, London 2002)

"Bluebirds" (Iconoclast Press, London 2004)

"Howling at the Moon" (Iconoclast Press, London 2004)

"India Song" (Iconoclast Press, London 2005)

"Tales from the Embassy" vol. 2 (Iconoclast Press, London 2006)

"The Collected Mister" (Iconoclast Press, London 2006)

"Into the Holy Land" (Iconoclast Press, London 2007) with Tony Jackson

"Tales from the Embassy" vol. 3 (Iconoclast Press, London 2008)

"A Hole in the Wind" (Iconoclast Press, London 2008)

"Harry Fainlight. From the notebooks. Posthumous pieces" (Iconoclast Press, London 2008) 

"Harry Fainlight. Fragments of a lost voice" (Iconoclast Press, London 2008) 

"Power Lines" (Iconoclast Press, UK 2012)

Dave in 1967.

no©2024 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

A 1969 letter by Michael Horovitz quoting the Third Ear Band.

In January 1969 International Time published a letter signed by Michael Horovitz, a poet and cultural agitator and editor of the underground magazine New Departures, citing the Third Ear Band and Dave Tomlin as participants in an event held the previous December 15th, 1968.

Just three days before the legendary  "A Hippy Gathering: An Alchemical Wedding" with John Lennon, Yoko Ono, Steam Hammer, Christopher Lodge and Rip Torn, in fact, Horovitz organized at All Saint's All in Powis Gardens "Brave New Departures Revisited."

This is the excerpt of the letter, taken from the issue 48 of International Time: 

no©2023 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first) 

New dates discovered of The Giant Sun Trolley live gigs?!?

During my research on the Edgar  Broughton Band for the book I'm writing, as well as some articles on the Third Ear Band I'm posting in this archive, I found references to dates of concerts by The Giant Sun Trolley. 

Dates unknown to this day that seems to suggest that the duo Tomlin-Sweeney (sometimes a trio with Roger Bunn), had played little and almost exclusively in London.
In fact, I have found dates of concerts in the provinces dating back to 1967, all in Coventry, where the band was introduced only as GIANT TROLLEY or GIANT TROLLY.

Asking Carolyn, Glen's missus, she doesn't remember much ("Sorry can't be positive about these memories. The only gig I can remember Dave doing with Glen which was outside London was a jazz and poetry..."); so she asked Steve Pank, former driver and manager of the band, and he replied that "GST didn't play anymore after UFO"... 

So I asked Dave Tomlin, now living in Hamspead Heath London "reasonably well although pretty old now. However, no complaints." Because I sent him a list of dates to check, he wrote quite laconically: "The list of Sun Trolley dates are fake unless some other group took over the name but I never heard of them."

At this point, any fans memory is well-accepted. 

Here is a list of documented appearances, which update the chronology on the band, taken from newspapers of the period (most of all from the Coventry Evening Telegraph):

 

September 23th, 1967 

Coventry, The Newlands (Flamingo Club) 

November 11th, 1967

Coventry, The Walsgrave

November 24th, 1967 

Coventry, The Walsgrave 

"Stars of Radio One!!!" 

December 10th, 1967 - Coventry, Hotel Leofric

with Jimmy Cliffe and The Shakedown Sound

December 16th, 1967 

Coventry, The Red House Hotel, Carnaby Club

December 23th, 1967

Coventry, The Walsgrave (Flamingo Club) 

"A big Christmas rave-up with THE SUN TROLLY" 

February 2nd, 1968

Coventry, The Walsgrave

"Another sensational night with THE SUN TROLLY"

February 11th, 1968 

Coventry, The Red House Hotel, New Carnaby Club

 

This is a rare photo Dave sent me with him (on right) and Joe Gannon (left) playing in London 1966 for  announcing the forthcoming Notting Hill Carvival in 1967. The picture is copyright Adam Ritchie and any use is under permission.

Gannon did the light-shows of the Pink Floyd in 1966 at Roundhouse.

no©2022 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

New TEB book publication date: March 21th, 2020!

At last the TEB book will be available on March 21th, 2020... such a perfect TEB day! 

120 pages for £15 with a 10% discount for advance orders at the ReR web site.

Read the press release here:

http://www.rermegacorp.com/mm5/merchant.mvc?Screen=PROD&Product_Code=TEB+BOOK&Store_Code=RM 

 no©2020 Luca Chino Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

"Radical Elders": Dave Tomlin.

Lush.com launchs a series of video interviews about English elders. First interview (11:16 long) is with 'our' Dave Tomlin, founder of Giant Sun Trolley and friend of Glen Sweeney, poet, writer, iconoclast.
This very interesting video interview is available HERE.

  

Radical Elders: Dave Tomlin.

"This new series provides a missing platform for our elders to share their experiences and knowledge with those younger than themselves. Instead of simply celebrating the youthful lives of our Radical Elders, we want to know what they have learned as older people and discover more about their experiences as an older person who lives and has lived, differently. Our first subject is Dave Tomlin: a pioneering squatter, musician, author and counterculture activist. Along with our other subjects, who will be introduced over the coming months, Dave continues to engage with the world and remains inflamed by the spirit of inquiry, the desire to learn and to share his experience and knowledge with the rest of us. There is so much that the young can learn from their elders, and there are so many ways our elders' horizons can continue to be expanded by younger people. We hope that you, your elders, and your ‘youngers’, will join the conversation."
 (Lush.com press release)

                  Dave presenting his book "Tales from the Embassy".

      Dave at the Embassy, years ago. Note in front violinist Allen Samuel.

               

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

Will Hulbert tells his evening at the Burgh House meeting Steve Pank and Ursula Smith!

Here's an exclusive report for Ghettoraga Archive of the evening Will Hulbert and his wife Veronica (who took the wonderful pictures) had at the Hampstead Burgh House where they met Steve Pank and Ursula Smith, who played her cello at a classical concert.

"So! To try to put a story to those photos, Sunday does not start well! I forget to charge the camera and we find out that there are no trains running on our line up to London.
I start to think that we are never going to get there! Who would have thought a short trip across London would be so long and complicated?
After a couple of hours, my wife and I find ourselves at our destination, the leafy suburb of Hampstead.
I promised my wife Veronica that I would buy Sunday lunch. Think Sunday lunch, wine, followed by a classical recital in a Georgian house in a very select part of town.
What’s not to like?
Well! Lunch took forever to turn up and was somewhat cold when it did. During the interminable wait I did notice someone pacing the grounds around the house who I was sure was Steve Pank.

After lunch we head upstairs to the Concert Room, Steve was standing alone, so I thought to reintroduce myself.
To clarify, some forty years prior (albeit a couple of weeks) Steve had introduced himself to me, in the bar downstairs at the Roundhouse (by coincidence a couple of stops on the tube from Hampstead).
The 1978 incarnation of the Third Ear Band (not the best in my opinion but not as bad as later incarnations) at a time when punk and new wave where at their height, TEB’s musical direction of folk songs seemed to be somewhat out of touch with the late 70’s zeitgeist with minimal guitar, violin oboe (Paul Minns hiding in the background). It really needed a cello to give it balance (Oh! and drop the folk singing).

So nearly forty years into the future, my chance at last to see and hear 25% of the Third Ear Band live for the first time. So a classical recital, we sat in the second row with Steve Pank and Sue Rose (she was at the Cambodian Embassy squat with Dave Tomlin, she is now his landlady). Dave couldn’t make it due to ill health. Also, Carolyn was on holiday in Greece and also couldn’t make it.
Shame we nearly had another TEB reunion!

Ursula looked just as she does in that TEB French TV video (I did try in my mind to block out the classical stuff and do a TEB soundtrack, but gave up after a bit).
During the intermission Steve suggested we go backstage and he introduced us to his other half, the rest of the Quartet seem a bit puzzled by the fact that Ursula seems to have her own fan club! She explains that she “once used to be in a pop band”.

We return for the second half, my wife taking photos and videos.
Then after that, we head downstairs for some refreshments and a long chat. I can’t stress enough how friendly Steve and Ursula were, it was as if we had known them for years, I think you can tell by the look on my face in the photos that I had a day to remember.
Anyway, I swopped e-mail addresses with Steve and we all headed off to catch the Tube, Steve & Ursula and the Cello having a long drive back up to Norfolk."

 

no©2018 Luca Chino Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

Dave Tomlin's forthcoming new book!

Dave Tomlin's new book will be distribuited on June 9th, 2017 by Strange Attractor (http://strangeattractor.co.uk/), an interesting English publisher. It will be a reprint of the complete "Tales from the Embassy" that he published privately in three different editions (in 2002, 2006 and 2008).

On the back cover of this brand new edition you can read:

"One night in 1976, a group of squatters entered the Cambodian Embassy in London, an opulent building that had remained empty for two years following the bloody revolution of the Khmer Rouge. For the next fifteen years, this peculiar residence would play host to the Guild of Transcultural Studies, an open platform for creative monomaniacs, radical metaphysicians, poets, prophets and exiles.

Dave Tomlin, founder of the Guild, member of the experimental music ensemble Third Ear Band, and contributor to the legendary underground newspaper International Times, traces a playful, semi-fictionalised, and highly readable path through this long occupation, illustrating the unfettered nature of its many occupants while providing a vivid portrayal of a more leisured age in which eccentricity could flourish more readily.
These humorous, insightful, and deftly crafted vignettes boast a thinly disguised cast of provocateurs, many of them celebrated in their own right, including pursuer of earth mysteries John Michell, beat poet Harry Fainlight, playwright of The Warp Neil Oram, the surrealist playwright and performer Ken Campbell, heretical biologist Rupert Sheldrake, countercultural photographer and journalist John “Hoppy” Hopkins, and Sir Mark Palmer, aristocratturned-gypsy-traveller and male-model impresario."

Three excerpts from the old books with references to Glen and the Third Ear Band  are available on this Archive at: 

http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2010/03/first-part-of-excerpts-from-tale-from.html 

http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2010/03/second-part-of-excerpts-of-tales-from.html
http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2010/03/third-and-last-part-of-excerpts-from.html

Dave talks about his experiences at the Embassy on this Soundcloud page:  https://soundcloud.com/oliviadocmaker/tales-from-the-embassy

no©2017 Luca Chino Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)   

New book on Glen Sweeney almost ready!

Since the last October I'm editing with Carolyn Looker the book on Glen Sweeney's poems, lyrics, interviews, aphorisms, drawings, photos and the work is almost finished...A specific section wil have memories of Glen by some of his old friends and/or musicians who played with him as Dave Tomlin, Pete Brown, Paul Buckmaster, Lyn Dobson...

Carolyn has sent me lot of rare photos of Glen, taken in different moments of his life. One of them, in particular, shot in 1970, shows him and Carolyn with their close friend Celia Humphris, at the time singer of the fabulous Trees and wife of radio DJ Pete Drummond. 

Glen in Greece, 1978.

I'm very proud of this book, also because I've tried to collect all the main things written by (or about) Glen and it seems a very good tribute to his long unique career.

Also, I'm very glad the book will be printed by Gonzo Multimedia and all the design will be done by talent Martin Cook!

 no©2017 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)     

Stereolab's Tim Gane included TEB's track in a Jazz compilation!

Stereolab founder Tim Gane included in April 2016 TEB's "Fire" in a Jazz & Avantgarde mix compilation edited for Fact, a Web magazine. 

At http://www.factmag.com/2016/04/04/fact-mix-544-tim-gane-cavern-anti-matter-stereolab/ you can listen to a two-hours sequence of beautiful music played by giants of the English Jazz scene as Ian Carr, John Surman, Mike Westbrook, Lol Coxill, Mike Taylor, Michael Garick, The New Jazz Orchestra... and avantgard musicians as Cornelius Cardew, AMM, Scratch Orchestra... and surprisengly TEB's "Fire".

Apart the TEB's tune you can listen also to the marvellous Mike Taylor's "Pendulum" with Dave Tomlin playing the soprano...

"Tim Gane knows a thing or two about jazz.

The Essex-born musician and studio maverick may be best known for absorbing krautrock, psychedelic pop and freaky library music into the peerless back catalogue of his band Streolab, but the jazz ethos of freedom and experimentation has always been a key influence on his approach.

Currently fronting his new band Cavern of Anti-Matter, a kraut-informed trio that’s just made its epic debut with a triple-album, Gane has put his motorik impulses on pause momentarily to produce this two-hour odyssey into the undersung corners of avant-garde and free jazz.

“British jazz and other new music that’s mainly from the ‘60s and ‘70s, but that’s not to make any particular point about that,” is Gane’s concise introduction to the mix, which spans the radical minds of free improvisors Lol Coxhill, Cornelius Cardew and AMM, library music from Basil Kirchin, pioneering jazz-rock from Ian Carr and much more. Two hours!

It’s easily one of the most head-spinning mixes we’ve ever had the pleasure to bring you, and serves as a proper education if, like a lot of us, you’ve ever wanted to dig deeper into jazz but weren’t quite sure where to start".

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