A very interesting quotation of the TEB and my book on a blog.

A very intriguing quotation of my book was posted in May on a blog titled "On An Overgrown Path" at https://www.overgrownpath.com/2021/05/how-mahler-became-sound-upholstery.html

Titled "How Mahler became sound upholstery", it's a very sharp reflection about the nature of TEB's music, starting with its objective relationships with the academy. This below is the full text:

"Two members of the original Third Ear Band were classically trained, Paul Minns on oboe and recorder, and Richard Coff violin and viola. With founding force Glen Sweeney on hand drums and tabla, and Mel Davis on cello they cut the bands first two legendary all-acoustic albums Alchemy and Elements in 1969 and 1970. For their equally legendary1972 soundtrack for Roma Polanski's Macbeth, Richard Coff was replaced by another violinist from a classical background Simon House, and Royal College of Music cello graduate Paul Buckmaster joined the band*. This classical connection was reflected in the venues where the Third Ear Band played, which included the Purcell Room, Queen Elizabeth Hall, Festival Hall - where they appeared with musique concrète exponent Bernard Parmegiani - and the Royal Albert Hall.

All three albums were released on EMI's newly-formed Harvest label aimed at the emerging progressive rock market. However the Third Ear Band's iconoclastic style did not sit comfortably with EMI's culture. So the band's refusal to allow the 'must haves' of reverberation and phasing added to their master tapes resulted in a stand-off with EMI's Abbey Road engineers. While back at head office the Harvest label managers were sparing with promotional support due to the perceived occult sub-agenda of the Alchemy album, a perception not helped by the band's involvement with Druids. Despite this the Third Ear Band attracted a cult following with their early albums, largely due to advocacy by influential BBC DJ John Peel who also played jew's harp on one track of Alchemy. In fairness however, the failure of these albums to crack the mass market is not surprising. Because, masterpieces as they undoubtedly are, on first hearing they can sound like a cross between the music of David Munrow and Cornelius Cardew.

In his sleeve note for Alchemy Glen Sweeney described the Third Ear Band as creating "music of its time, of course but not bound by it - still with new things to tell us". That uncanny ability to tell us new things is developed by the band's biographer Luca Chino Ferrari in Glen Sweeney's Book of Alchemies: the Life and Times of the Third Ear Band, 1967-1973.

"I'm not persuaded that the sound of a certain historical period in a certain society forecast the times and the social models to come, as the French writer Lacques Attali claimed in his landmark essay Noise: the political economy of music in 1977 (English translation 1985).
The immersion of sounds or noises we are submitted to these days seems to reflect the times - of triviality, superficiality - we live in; actually it seems to describe them perfectly - speaking of the deep social and cultural crisis into which Western countries have fallen, and the strong negative impact technology and the record industry have had on the music created and used by people.
The anonymous non-places (this suggestive expression was coined by the ethnology researcher Marc Augé) in which music is casually used as a simple sound upholstery - keeping company with consumption - suggests the idea that the re-production of sounds and the hidden possibilities of listening to music everywhere, have made the listening experience less the product of an active and conscious process and more the result of a passive and unconscious behavior.
Advertisers have understood this process and use music to persuade us "in a pleasant way" to buy, revealing our presumed needs to us.
The music that goes deep into our daily life has turned into a non-place itself; , deprived of any identity, history or relation with the time and the place of living, it becomes a sort of undefined and virtual phenomenon."

Luca Chino Ferrari originally wrote that in 1996 before technology changed the music industry for ever, and how prescient he was. Mobile technologies and streaming have moved music into non-places, where it now simply fulfils the role of sound upholstery. Music is now listened to passively and unconsciously everywhere. Great music that goes deep into our daily life has become sound upholstery in non-places - listening to Mahler while jogging is an example. But upholstery and furniture are just one component of a living environment. An even more important component is the space around the upholstery. And since the Third Ear Band was around, the sound upholstery has become bigger and bigger, which means the vital space where it is possible to push the creative envelope has become smaller and smaller.

* Roman Polanksi's Macbeth is available on Amazon Prime Video. It is well worth watching as a reminder of how fifty years on visual upholstery, lile sound upholstery, has eroded creative space.

 no©2021 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first).

Blackhill's manager Andrew King continues to sling mud on Glen...

As I wrote in the book recently published by Recommended Records, Glen was a really funny chap, sometimes a comedian, but he had a huge spirituality and a rare deepness for the typical worn rock standards. With a very ugly memory, pulled out of his usual hat of cheap falsehoods for the bad "Mojo" magazine, Blackhill's manager Andrew King says: "Glen always claimed that he was a junkie who cured himself of heroin taking lots of acid".

Apart the ethic question of talking about a dead person in such horrible way, this memory is totally false, there's nothing in Sweeney's personal story that can be related with heroin or other hard drugs. 

Glen always claimed... what?!

I was so pissed off and outraged that I sent to the magazine this short letter:

"Dear editorial staff, on page 102 of your latest issue (issue 331 of June 2021), in an article dedicated to Third Ear Band's "Macbeth", Ian Harrison manages to write more than three thousand lines without mentioning yours truly, curator of the CD booklets remastered by Cherry Red, author in 1996 and 2020 of the only two volumes dedicated to the band (the last one published by Recommended Records), curator since 2009 of Ghettoraga, the band's official online archive.

Add to this some questionable recollections of Andrew King, one of which was even insulting to Glen Sweeney, related to his alleged heroin addiction.
Is this your idea of journalism?"

Asking Glen's partner and my friend Carolyn Looker what she thinks about it, she writes me: 

"Ciao Luca. Brilliant letter to Mojo! I'm debating weather to write to them also. I was furious at first by Andrew Kings ridiculous words about Glen but actually its such a stupid and unbelievable thing to say that l'm sure no-one will take it seriously. Its such a pity that he gets interviewed for his memories as they are now ramblings of a senile old man. In interviews with other band members things have been said which were totally untrue also and made me very angry. I guess Glen did annoy a lot of people and also talk nonsense and put them on!!! He was a very strong personality and the guys were all happy to follow his ideas at the time.

Peace love and freedom...

Carolyn".

All in all, this is a typical cynic way to make music journalism for the most magazines, disinterested in providing objective information to their readers. It's better to gossip, to feed falsehoods and clichés, to exaggerate things as an adolescent would do in his bedroom in front of the poster of his favorite rock star. This is the rock imagery on which rock magazines speculate (and I've ever detested it!). 

As long as they have readers....

no©2021 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first).

A new long good review from a web magazine.

 

Italian journalist Mario Calvitti writes a long good review on the TEB book on AllAboutJazz web site at 

https://www.allaboutjazz.com/glen-sweeneys-book-of-alchemies-the-life-and-times-of-the-third-ear-band-1969-1973

 

This is a quick translation from Italian:

"One of the historical groups of the London underground scene of the late '60s, the Third Ear Band founded by percussionist Glen Sweeney is experiencing a moment of renewed interest. First Esoteric Recordings has reissued the three albums released by the group between 1969 and 1973, in remastered and expanded editions with plenty of unpublished material of extreme interest; now ReR Megacorp (independent record label well known for its activities in the field of avant-garde and committed music) is printing (only in English) a book about the group edited by the Italian freelance journalist Luca Chino Ferrari, their biggest fan and official biographer, and already author of their return on the scene between 1988 and 1992.

The book is not a real history of the band, but rather a collection of various materials (mainly a series of interviews with Sweeney, the band members and other characters that orbited around them) collected by the author in years of research and already largely present on the site ghettoraga.blogspot.com created by him and soon became an obligatory reference point for anyone looking for news or information about the group. Through the testimonies of the protagonists of that historical period we can reconstruct not only the history of the band and its members in all its incarnations, but also the musical scene of the time that saw them among the protagonists, with all the contour of esotericism and mysticism due to the interest in Eastern philosophies, which for Sweeney was a way of life and not just a fashion of the time. Just the figure of the percussionist (died in 2005) emerges strongly from the pages of the book, as was also expected since the band was a direct emanation of him. In addition to interviews in which he tells the story of the group, the book contains sections devoted to his writings, poems and various quotations that reveal the complex personality.

The book is completed by a photographic section, a complete discography, and a chronology of all the main events related to the band's life. Moreover, to the volume is attached a CD with some unreleased tracks recorded for what should have been the third album of the group, never published, containing a little less than half an hour of music.

Perhaps the rich and abundant material could be organized differently to be more accessible to those who are less familiar with the group, but the book is definitely a must for anyone interested in a first-hand testimony by those who lived that unique and unrepeatable period, and to (re) discover one of the most original groups that emerged from that scene."

no©2021 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first).

Another review about the TEB book.

A new (controversial) review of the book dedicated to Glen Sweeney and TEB has been published by the UK site/magazine Northern Sky edited by Allan Wilkinson. The reviewer seems to dislike the structure of the book, deliberately a "non-biography"...

Text of the review on the Web page:
https://northernskyreviews.com/2021/03/15/issue-1/

no©2021 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first).

A new review on the TEB book by Italian magazine!

Here's is the first (and probably the only one) review on the TEB book published on Italian monthly magazine "Rumore" #349 (February 2021). 

Thanks  to Alessandro Besselva Averame for his kind attention.

 

English translation:

Glen Sweeney was an unusual character, even by the standards of a time when almost everything was unusual; he was a bit mystic and a bit trickster, an experimenter of ways and worlds, a man of another era (it seems that he was 45 years old in 1969 when the apocryphal and ancestral raga of his Third Ear Band made their debut). It's a great challenge to tell his story, and Luca Ferrari, a freelancer who has always been interested in heretics and outsiders, succeeds in doing so, drawing on the materials of the boundless online archive on the English band, which he has been feeding for a decade, ghettoraga.blogspot.com.
The book, in English, collects interviews with Sweeney (who died in 2005), his writings, illustrations, photos, correspondence with the author (responsible in the '80s for a brief reunion of TEB) and testimonies of anyone who crossed the path of this syncretist who perceived every single percussive beat "as if it were a symphony".  He provides at the same time a nice cross-section of the British underground '60s and '70s. Manic chronology and video/discography also attached a CD with unreleased recordings of the '70-'71. 

Alessandro Besselva Averame

 
no©2021 LucaChinoFerrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

TEB book outtakes (part 4): all the other stuff left.

Here's below some the other pictures not included in my recent TEB book...

Hydrogen Jukebox's Jim Gypsy Hayes (1978).

 

 

Morgan Fisher with VCS3 in the Seventies (courtesy M. Fisher).

 

 

Jim Gypsy Hayes recording vocals for the HJ's album (1978).

Mick Carter rehearsals for the H.J.'s album (1978).

As above

Rod Goodway in the Seventies.

The Hydrogen Jukebox with a sound engineer (1978).

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

KRIS NEEDS' piece about the TEB for Shindig!

One of the best piece about the TEB ever written, this special feature edited by Kris Needs for Shindig! magazine is very good one; a real qualified tribute to the band, "remained the most intriguingly strange and mysteriously evocative of all"...

 

 

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

Third Ear Band on Shindig! October issue!

Here's the cover of the last new issue of the Sixties/Psychedelic/underground British magazine Shindig!, this month featuring the Third Ear Band. 

Rock journalist KRIS NEEDS dedicates a long piece to the band and hopefully to the book... 

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

The TEB book outtakes - part. 2: Carolyn Looker.

This sequence is about Carolyn Looker, Glen Sweeney's missus. She has cooperated really much to the book, opening her family album and writing a brand new piece on Glen.

 

 

 

 

 

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

The TEB book outtakes - pt. 1: Glen Sweeney.

As promised, these below are some pictures not included on the TEB book. The first gallery is about Glen Sweeney, portrayed in  different places. Pictures are taken from the family album, courtesy of my friend Carolyn Looker.

Glen at St. Ives (Cornwalls).

A stoned Glen.

Glen in Greece in 1978.

Glen on Paxi (drawing by Carolyn Looker, 1984).

A Glen portrait by Carolyn Looker (1990).

Glen, Carolyn and Celia Humphris (Trees' singer) in London at the beginning of 70's.

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

Italian composer and filmaker Francesco Paolo Paladino writes about the TEB book...

My friend Francesco sent me this little unexpected gift, a review of the TEB book. It's in Italian, but I know that the one interested can translate it in English and appreciate his pyrotechnic way to write.

 

ULTIMO TANGO ALCHEMICO

Luca Ferrari me l’aveva preannunciato: “Ho scritto a Chris Cutler per farti inviare una copia di BOOK OF ALCHEMIES e a giorni ti arriva”. Confesso che ero scettico, non certo per i suoi buoni intenti, fuori discussione, ma per la politica Recommended Records che, pur da elogiare senza se e senza ma per essere una delle poche etichette rimaste in trincea nonostante la desolante situazione attuale, non brilla certo per prodigalità.


“BOOK OF ALCHEMIES, the life and times of Third Ear Band, 1967-1973”, per chi non lo sapesse ancora, è un raffinato volume di 225 pagine (231 pagine per alcuni, qui c’è odore di cabala), edito dalla storica R&R il cui autore “potrebbe essere” Glen Sweeney, membro fondatore dei TEB,, ma che in modo quasi pirandelliano viene attribuito “anche” a Luca Chino Ferrari. Io so che il libro è di Luca e soltanto il suo squisito senso di generosità lo porta quasi a renderne fumosa la sua paternità. Per non farci mancare nulla il libro contiene anche un CD “THE DRAGON WAKES- The legendary unrealesed album” una chicca di cui ha scritto in modo più che eccellente Alessandro Monti su queste longitudini. Sorprendente che a scrivere dei TEB siano – per ora - soltanto musicisti e/o creativi e che i dichiarati critici non abbiano ancora assaggiato questo indispensabile manicaretto. Non vedo l’ora di leggere le parole di Gino Dal Soler su "Blow Up", uno dei pochi critici indispensabili alla nostra salute. Ma torniamo al volume, è scritto in inglese, niente traduzioni in italiano, il “range” (si dice così?) di pubblico che vuole interessare è internazionale ed è ben comprensibile. Oggigiorno i budget sono talmente risicati che è già un miracolo avere tra le mani un volume come questo! Per le traduzioni ognuno s’ingegnerà come potrà. Io che mastico poco la lingua inglese, speravo in una versione “kinder” da poter tradurre con Google trad, ma – come vi ho già accennato - per ora non è previsto. “E più non dimandare” direbbe il Sommo Poeta. Ma la soddisfazione di avere tra le mani nel 2020 un libro che, per 225/231 pagine, parli di T.E.B. è talmente un “godimento esperanto” che supera ogni possibile cimoseria. Per la verità io e Luca condividiamo da anni una insana passione per la THIRD EAR BAND; anzi questa nostra passione ci ha resi ancora più amici e ci ha indotto a collaborare in altri mille progetti.


Poi, qualche giorno prima di Ferragosto, in mezzo ai consueti scatoloni di Amazon, trovo un plico che contiene un libro. La modalità di apertura dei pacchi postali meriterebbe un articolo a sé; diciamo che per noi musicomani senza speranza assume una sacralità rituale. Ed è un rito plurisensoriale che include un primo movimento muscolare il più delle volte lieve (il ritiro del plico/pacco); l’apertura con lacerazione o con tentativo conservativo dell’orecchia adesiva con o senza oggetti opzionali (forbici, coltelli, plettri, monetine); rimozione di eventuale strisce di scotch o nastro adesivo; eliminazione di plastiche anti-urto e/o giornali ammassicciati per espletare tale importante funzione. Ma forse la fase clou dell’apertura del pacco/plico è il percepimento dell’odore dell’oggetto che viene sfilato fuori dal pacco, che non è più l’odore del vecchio vinile, ma una “essenza cocktail” di tipografia, plastica protettiva, odore di carta non sfogliata, sudore del corriere e –certe volte- della passione dell’autore.


Bene, visto che non so leggere la lingua inglese come vorrei, ho annusato più e più volte il libro di Luca e devo dire che l’essenza cocktail di cui vi ho parlato qualche riga fa, vede prevalere senza possibilità di smentite l’ingrediente della passione dell’autore. Una passione che, si badi bene, non è una smanceria da fan club, ma una virginale ed immensa estasi da stupore. Luca ha superato da tempo la gelosia del giocattolo personale; il suo lavoro è quello del minatore che sa di essere in una miniera, una miniera piena di gemme che però non sono lì in bella evidenza, non basta schiacciare un tasto per farle emergere, bisogna lavorarci duramente sopra, ecco cosa bisogna fare. Un lavoro minimale di contatti, di amicizie guadagnate nel tempo, un lavoro di rianimazione di spigoli musicali inadeguati, di insperati ritrovamenti impensati.


Ecco il libro che vi consiglio caldamente è un piccolo museo di tutti i reperti che Luca ha trovato in quelle dimenticate miniere che ha picconato da mattina a sera senza mai perdersi d’animo. Mi diceva Luca qualche tempo fa che scrivere un libro serio sui T.E.B. non è cosa facile perché i musicisti principali sono tutti deceduti e quello che riesce a ritrovare emerge da persone che erano vicine ai tre TEB principali. Ora se avete visto qualche serie televisiva gialla su Netflix, solitamente “le persone che erano vicino” allo scomparso la pensano in modo completamente diverso da quello, pur amandolo o stimandolo immensamente. Danno poco importanza a cose, frammenti, oggetti che l’ispettore di turno, quando ne prende possesso, ne comprende invece l’importanza fondamentale per la sua indagine. Ferrari ha fatto una lunga indagine, ha interrogato familiari e amici con quel senso di ottimismo che è assolutamente padano. Un lavoro maniacale, che lui stesso definisce “non finito” che è consistito nell’accedere a tasselli e indizi sui quali ha duramente lavorato. Il libro è bello di per sé ed è bello dentro, cosa volete di più? A tutti gli appassionati di “musica diversa” non potrà che eccitare; ai fans dei TEB regala nuove emozioni nella rilettura e risistemazione della cronologia dei concerti e della discografia e nell’emersione di foto di cui si era persa traccia. Questo libro, rispetto a “Third Ear Band Necromancers of the Drifting West”, che Luca aveva scritto nel marzo 1997 per Stampa Alternativa, ha una dimensione più “internazionale”, un respiro più compiuto e – soprattutto - la minestra non è riscaldata. Il nuovo libro di Ferrari testimonia e documenta tutta la ricerca che l’autore dal ‘97 in poi ha continuato e splendidamente realizzato. Luca è un amante dei T.E.B. sincero e appassionato. Per lui non è una fesseria ma una necessità continuare a dimostrare il suo amore per i TEB. Con BOOK OF ALCHEMIES, the life and times of Third Ear Band, 1967-1973 il suo atto d’amore diventa uno splendido scritto, un libro sublime. E noi non potevamo chiedere di meglio perché così le rifrazioni di quei raggi di passione ce li godiamo tutti.

17 agosto 2020
Francesco Paolo Paladino


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

The very first Web review about the book.

This is the very first Web review of the book by Arcana.fm, "set up to give you the chance to step into classical music with no fear or pressure – just the chance to enjoy and read about good music!", written by  Richard Whitehouse and put on line on August 8, 2020.

On paper – Glen Sweeney’s Book of Alchemies: The life and times of the Third Ear Band 1967-1973 by Luca Chino Ferrari 

Glen Sweeney’s Book of Alchemies: The life and times of the Third Ear Band 1967-1973
by Luca Chino Ferrari
ReR Megacorp/November Books [softback, 226pp plus CD, ISBN: 978-0-9560184-6-5, £18]

Reviewed by Richard Whitehouse

What’s the story?

Over two decades after his pioneering biography of Third Ear Band, Necromancers of the Drifting West (Sonic Book: 1997), Luca ‘Chino’ Ferrari has now published this larger and more inclusive survey of arguably the ultimate cult band to have emerged in the late 1960s.

What’s the book like? 

One thing it is not is an update of that earlier study. Instead, Ferrari has assembled a range of documents from a variety of sources centred on TEB’s guiding force: the often enigmatic and always recalcitrant Glen Sweeney. Only in those (brief) first and second sections does Ferrari posit his thinking as to why this outfit flourished, foundered yet refused to die across a period of almost 30 years. The third section showcases Sweeney’s poems and lyrics – ranging from the inspired to the not so inspired while suggesting that, with a degree of luck, the proto-new wave incarnation of the mid-1970s (aka Hydrogen Jukebox) just might have broken through.

The fourth section features Sweeney’s writings – engaging and frustrating in equal measure – but most valuable are the interviews in section five; above all, an expansive 1990 Q&A with Unhinged’s Nigel Cross as captures Sweeney in almost confessional mood. Quite a contrast with those gnomic ‘soundbites’ in the sixth section where he dons the guise of false Messiah. Much the longest section is the seventh, ‘memories and interviews’, carried out over almost a quarter-century and drawing in almost all TEB’s one-time members (except for the elusive violinist Richard Coff). They range from the humorous to the desultory, with several of those featured seemingly intent upon post-priori acts of self-justification, but not oboist Paul Minns – who, writing in December 1996 (months before his untimely death) places the triumphs and failings of TEB in the wider context of post-war Western culture with a precision and pathos that makes it required reading for anyone at all interested in this veritable fable of disillusion.

The eighth section comprises a chronological listing of audio and video releases – worthwhile especially as TEB releases from the late 1960s or early 1970s have been reissued on various occasions in numerous formats, whereas those from the 1980s onwards constitute a minefield of reissues and partial re-couplings which Sweeney must have relished. Hardly less welcome, section nine offers a day-by-day chronology of the band across 53 years and which is, almost inevitably, at its most thought-provoking when the band had all but ceased activity and those associated with it make a (not always fond) adieu – above all, Sweeney himself in 2005. Chris Cutler’s footnotes are a judicious enhancement from one ‘who was there’, while the selection of photos is decently reproduced with several stunning shots of drummer Sweeney in action.

Does it all work?

Yes, despite vagaries of presentation (Section IV is headed ‘VI’ on p28, and where exactly is the Epilogue?) or inconsistent layout. Whether or not the attached CD indeed constitutes The Dragon Wakes, the unreleased third album from 1971, its content is never less than absorbing.

Is it recommended?

Absolutely. Apart from its historical significance, Third Ear Band’s extensive recorded legacy is still of undeniable relevance, with this latest publication a valuable and necessary resource. Whether or not it proves to be the ‘last word’ on TEB rather depends on Luca Ferrari himself.

Orginal Web page at:  https://arcana.fm/2020/08/08/glen-sweeneys-book-of-alchemies/

 

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