A TEB day-by-day chronology: 1972-2016.

[This is the second part of the TEB day-by-day chronology [for the first part, related to the period 1966-1971 go to http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2010/02/after-attempt-to-make-complete-list-of.html]

1972

January  

?th – "Macbeth" album realised

Free copies are given by Rolling Stones to the new subscribers. One again the opinions in the press was very good. Deborah Thomas wrote: "Film track music often falls down when you take the film away. But the score painstakingly created for Roman Polanski's disturbing version of Macbeth stands on its own. A baleful, but strangely beautiful interweaving of modern and medieval music by the Third Ear Band".
The reliable "Observer Review" in the "Pop" section expressed enthusiastic opinion as well, concluding: "It's the first 'pop' score for a film can be misleading; it is skilled, farout chamber music, like so much rock today".

 

Glen Sweeney in 1991 (interviewed by Brazilian DJ Fabio Massari): "The album was an our big commercial opportunity. We had a great expectation, but the distribution was terrible... as for the film as for the record. We did play some concerts to promote it, but we lose some of our energy... we had economic problems and we were sad about negative results". 

An ad taken from "Melody Maker" published on March 25th, 1972.

23th – The Roundhouse (London) 
“Benefit for U.C.S.”
TEB with Matching Mole, Trees, Keith Christmas and Mike Gibbs.

25th - BBC Studios (London) - Studio T1, Transcription Service, Kensington House, Shepherd's Bush
"John Peel Sessions" radio show: TEB played/recorded "Air" and "I The Key" 

Quite strangely, for the official BBC site (read at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/johnpeel/sessions/1970s/1972/Feb11thirdearband/) the TEB line-up that recorded the session was: Denim Bridges (guitar), Simon House (violin), Mike Marchant (guitar & vocal) and Peter Pavli (bass).

The session would be aired on the next February 11th.

About the Transcription Discs, on March 2012 BBC cleared no recordings of the TEB are still in the vaults (read at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2012/03/no-teb-transcription-discs-in-bbc.html).
31th – Plaza Theatre (London)

Original French poster of the film.

Original German poster of "Macbeth".

Roman Polanski's "Macbeth" premiere. The first acceptance from the movie critrics is really very good. "Best film of the Year Award", said the "National Board of Review", echoed by "Polanski's triumph" of the "Daily Express".

Fergus Cashin wrote on the "Sun": "It's sexy! It's modern. It's a work of genius. One hell of story! Polanski gives us a movie to queue for. Not be missed. Better than a Western. I love it". Another review was written by critic Roger Ebert: read it at  
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=%2F19710101%2FREVIEWS%2F101010319%2F1023&AID1=%2F19710101%2FREVIEWS%2F101010319%2F1023&AID2=

Hugh Hefner (second right) joins (from left) Francesca Annis, Roman Polanski, Irene Tsu and Barbara Benton at the premiere of their 1971 film MacBeth (Photograph: Everett Collection/Rex Feature).

 

Japanese film flyer published in 1972.

Other interesting stuff at http://www.bibliotecapgnegro.unipr.it/help-desk/macbeth/Macbeth_index.html and at http://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/3775/The-Tragedy-of-Macbeth/
Technical notes at http://www.michaeldvd.com.au/reviews/reviews.asp?id=6847

Polanski with Princess Anne at the film's premiere (photo by Central Press/Getty Images)

              

                                 "The tragedy of Macbeth" original trailer (UK 1971)

Original Italian poster of the film.

                          
February 

5th – Essex University (Colchester)

Benefit concert in aid for striking miners withTEB, Mick Abrahams Band, Lol Coxill etc.  
12th - Town Hall (Birmingham)

 

15th – Colston Hall (Bristol)

Italian VHS edition of the film.

Around this period Paul Buckmaster quit the band. As to Paul Minns, by then famous musician and arranger thought the music played by the band in that period was really bad and just compromising for its own artistic reputation.

Sweeney, tactfully, to Roy Hollingworth ("Melody Maker", 1972): "Well, it was always a strange thing with Buck. He sort of drifted into the band, and I could never work out whether he was really with us or not. I remember we were travelling on the continent at one time, and Buck was sat writing music. It was "Space Oddity" - and suddenly Buck was famous. He drifdted away, and we struggled on with Ursula Smith on cello. Then I met Buck again - he was famous by then - and before I knew it, he was back in the band. But during the period with Macbeth, I had to tell him that we wanted him permanently, or not at all. We all know how pressured he is. Infact, during Macbeth, he should never have been working at all".

The English VHS edition of "Macbeth" (1971).

March 

1st - Chelsea College (London)
3rd - Seymour Hall (London)
"Fun 'an Games"
TEB with MC5, Pink Faires and Magic Michael

16th - Kingston Polythechnic
18th - Sweeney announced to "Melody Maker" a new line-up

A new TEB line-up is announced to the press: besides Sweeney and Minns, also Simon House on violin and VCS3, Peter Pauli (ex High Tide) on bass and Mike Marchant on guitar an voice. Interviewed by Roy Hollingworth for "Melody Maker", Sweeney explained the great changes in band's music: "I think us changing in a natural way - and not just for the sake of it - is far more rewarding. I know we will be far more rational band - giving out something which everyone can enjoy. After three months of rehearsing we are now capable of playing a varied menu for more than two hours. You wouldn't have got more 45 minutes a year ago".

21th - BBC Studios (London) 
"Drummond" radio show 

TEB played "Groan's Dance", "Fleance's Song", "Hierophant".

The TEB's appearance on "Macbeth".

Around this period E.M.I.-Harvest terminates the contract with TEB.

A wonderful promo poster of  Harvest (circa 1970).

April

20th - "IT" vol. 1 n. 128

"International Times" announced: "A group temporarily without a recording contract - Third Ear Band. It seems that EMI's "progressive underground label" (or its overlords) doesn't see fit to employ "pot smokers" amongst its roster of artistes. Dear me, we don't want people like Syd Barrett to be influenced in any way, do we?"

A new ad taken from "Melody Maker" published on April 22th, 1972.

22th - Disc & Music Echo 

A short interview with Glen Sweeney about the recording of "Macbeth".

 

28th - London School of Economics (LSE)
TEB with Camel, Sandy Denny and others.

 

May

5th - Bickershaw (UK)

"Bickershaw Festival"

Announced by press and the promoters, TEB with  Roy Harper, Memphis Slim, Jonathan Kelly. TEB, Royd Harper and Memphis Slim didn't show.

 

June

3th - Clitheroe Castle (Clitheroe)

"Clitheroe Festival"  

TEB with Trees, Bridget St. John, UFO
(read a report at http://www.ukrockfestivals.com/clitheroe-festival.html)

9th – King Cross Cinema (London)
"As a 19 year old immigrant from Baltimore. Glen Sweeney was very nice to me. I met him back stage at the premier of Matching Mole's "Little Red Record". He was the first person to start talking to me. I told him that I had seen Third Ear Band at the Kings Cross Cinema that summer supporting Hawkwind. I remember Third Ear Band played last that night well into the dawn they were magnificent. They were performing material from the recording that released years later entitled "The Magus". I specifically remember the song "Cosmic Wheel" being performed. The vocals in this haunting song were unforgettable".
(Craig Runyon on the Facebook TEB's page, September 2013).

July
1st – Battersea Pavilion (London)

“War on Want Benefit”
TEB with Steve Tilston, Pete Atkin etc.

9th – The Roundhouse (London)

"Implosion"
TEB with Egg and Edgar Broughton Band

18th – Marquee Club (London)
TEB with Camel 

21th –Commonwealth Institute Theatre (London)

"Space Community"

TEB with Canton Trig and Dave Russell

22th – Peter Jenner on "Billboard" magazine about the problems with EMI

Philp Palmer on "Billboard magazine": "Blackhill, the management and production company, has severed his connections with EMI. "There's now no contractual relationship between us", commented Peter Jenner of Blackhill. Blackhill artists have been realised through EMI for nearly four years. "The Third Ear band and Chris Spedding are now free and we owe EMI one more album from Kevin Ayers" claimed Jenner. "Only Roy Harper is still tied to EMI". Blackhill is currently looking for a new production deal although no negotiations heve yet been finalized".

September

30th – Battersea Town Hall (London)
TEB with Matumbi Band

 

October
11th – Bumpers (London) 
TEB with Arthur Brown's Kingdom Dome and Graham Bond among the others.
 
November  

16th - TEB signes a recording contract with Island Records

Thanks to Blackhill's manager Peter Jenner, who has placed The Sharks to Chris Blackwell, TEB signed a contract with Island Records for a new album, characterized for the first time by right songs composed and played by Marchant, who got inspiration from the Tarot. The agreement scheduled this track-list: "Cosmic Wheel", "I the Key", "Hierophant", "Magus", "New Horizon" and "Tent Dimensional Landscape".
Sweeney to Hollingworth ("Melody Maker", 1972): "Mike has been hanging around the group for some while. We heard the songs, and well, it seemed only natural that he should come in. It's a tremendous jump for us, I mean, we've never done songs before. It's right to say that Thirdies are feeling a little schizofrenic at the moment. I mean, there's that album out from Macbeth, and that's totally avantgarde, and there's us playing songs".
"So what of these songs?" - asked the journalist. "Well, at the start, we teated them in a sort of Velvet Underground, Leonard Cohen type of way. But we became dissatisfied with the limitations of eight bars, an 16 bars. We decided that we really wanted to open out. They certainly aren't pretentious songs, there's no pseudo rubbish about them. There's no Lucy in the Sky with feedback. But they are songs that fit Third Ear".
"They are all based around the Tarot, and they are purely descriptions of the cards, and their meanings. It's meant a lot of work, changing from a purely instrumental band, but it really seems to be working. And people certainly like it".
The album, in spite of all the enthusiastic anticipations, would be "disasterously recorded at Island and rejected" (Paul Minns in 1996).
It's been realised by Angel Air just in 2004 with the title of "The Magus".

Later, Sweeney had strong opinions about it: "(...) At the time I was surronded by idiots who were hoping I had a few quid! They dragged me in there - even now that Simon House swears it's a msterpiece - I had this rodie, Ron Cort, whose father was a hire car wallah, rolling in it - Ron really went to town on that album - he got acetates made, he got a single made. It was crap - even I didn't know what I was doing - the singer was terrible, we had vocals. All the songs were based on the tarot, but strangely enough his father [vocalist Mike Marchant's father] was a vicar and all the songs were based on hymns" ("Unhinged", Spring 1990).
17th - Chelmsford Mid-Essex College

December

16th - "Billboard" magazine Vol. 84 n. 51 (page 48)

On "Billboard magazine" an announcement: "March Artists, the agency arms of CBS has secured sole representation of Blackhill artists as Kevin Ayers, Third Ear Band and Roy Harper. The deal was set by Andrew King and Peter Jenner of Blackhill and David Apps of March".

 

 1973

January  
23th – Arts Theatre (Cambridge) 
“Multimedia Mixed Festival”

TEB performed after Gentle Giant with this new line-up: Sweeney on drums, Minns on oboe, Simon House on violin, VCS3 and synth, Mike Marchant on guitar and voice and Dave Tomlin on bass and voice.
Sweeney remembered in 1990 that particular period: "That was the pits. I've got this awful thing. Whatever the trip, you must do it to end. Dave said that the band at the time sounded like an used car yard and it probably did. We did it till the end until nobody wanted to know" ("Unhinged", Spring 1990).
During the gigs TEB played also old Fugs' and Edgar Broughton Band's tracks (as like "Out demons Out"...). Sweeney (1990): "We had the whole audiences just split the gig immediately".

 February  
28th – Royal Albert Hall (London)
"1972 Film Performance Nominations. Awards Presentation Dinner & Dance" 

TEB gets the nomination for the "Macbeth" soundtrack. Among the fourth nominations, also Nino Rota with "The Godfather" soundtrack, that will win. 

About the film and the TEB's contribution to the music soundtrack, on January 2006 Film Score Monthly Online (http://wordsofnote.wordpress.com/articles/shakespeare-films-tragedies/) wrote: "Superstition has surrounded productions of Macbeth since the 17th century. For instance, if a theater company was financially strapped, it would often announce a production of the popular tragedy in an attempt to boost ticket sales. If times were particularly bad, the play was often not enough to position the finances in the black, and Macbeth became synonymous with a company’s demise. Even today, it is referred to as “the Scottish play,” believed to be a precursor of bad luck to utter the name “Macbeth” inside a theatre. (...) Roman Polanski vehemently denied that his 1971 Macbeth was a personal response to the Manson murders of his wife, Sharon Tate. But the critics didn’t see it that way and the film languished in cinematic wasteland for years. Third Ear Band’s score, however, is a trip. The five-member band was formed in 1968 from an earlier psychedelic group, The Hydrogen Juke-Box. For Macbeth, violin, cello, bass and electric guitar, and synthesizers were added to the group’s foundation of percussion and oboe/recorder. In addition, rock elements enhanced the steady pulse of the hand drums, providing a contemporary complement to the gloomy, mystical aspects of Shakespeare’s story. But not everything in the score is “far out.” The Court Dance contains delightful folk rock, and the song, “Fleance,” is sung to a medieval accompaniment of recorder, guitar and drums.
Theatrical traditions and superstitions don’t often cross over to film, but neither Macbeth was particularly successful at the box office. So maybe there’s something to the superstition after all".

April ?

? – University of East Anglia (Norwich)
TEB with Claire Hamill and John St. Field.

                                             From the UAE student newsletter

May  
18th – BBC Studios (London) 
“Pete Drummond’ sequence” radio session with Al Stewart: TEB played "I The Key", "The Magus", "Ten Dimensional Landscape".
19th – Hampstead Town Hall (London) 
TEB with Global Trucking Company

October 

26th – Hemel Hempstead Arts Centre (London)
TEB with Kevin Coyne

1974 

August

24th-25th - London
"3rd Windsor Free Festival"
A festival with a lot of bands, among them Hawkind, Pink Faires, Skin Alley.

Around this time, Blackhill Enterprises quitted the group definitely...
Andrew King reported about the experience (1996): "Blackhill was interested only in Art, TEB was interested in money (and sex and drugs). EMI didn't know what they were interested in, but felt there should be money involved. There weren't really anyone at EMI (except perhaps Malcolm Jones) capable of having a conversation with them. So Blackhill was always the go-between; and really Blackhill had no clear plan as to what we were trying to achieve. Third Ear Band was so divorced from the normal sort of 'act', that it was always difficult to see them as anything more than a sort of strange hobby; despite the fact they sold a lot more records than more conventional bands (e.g. Kevin Ayers)".
Peter Jenner (1996): "Sweeney's approach to the musicwas a mixture of misticism, naivety and opportunism. He was the boss of the band and I can't believe how hardly was to talk with him. He wasn't a great drummer... he was a bullshit... but a great leader of the Third Ear Band".
Read a short interview with Andrew King about the TEB at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2009/12/blackhill-enterprises-manager-and.html

Carolyn Looker (April 2012) has a different opinion about it: "Blackhill never really understood the music, if they had been more supportive TEB made more of film music. I.e. Polanski and Kubrick admiring TEB and involved them more in the arts as in Pink Floyd. Steered the right way the band could have been big".

Once the band definitively break, Glen Sweeney bought an houseboat and lived with Carolyn on a river in Kent.
He remembered in 1990: "Well, it took me three years to recover my brain. We bought this old houseboat down in Kent. There was this flood and it got washed up into a field - I didn't have anything to get it back into the water, so we just stayed there - and the council used to come and photograph it every week to see if it had moved".

An anedoct about the boat by Dave Tomlin (January 2012): "Glen was very much drawn to the Alchemical myth. In fact a few years before he died he kept an ex-WWII torpedo-boat on a north London canal. It's name was 'ALCHEMY' he and Carolyn used to roar around the canals in it and everyone had to get out of the way; they were the terror of the waterways. I sometimes visited them on the boat and when Glen died she took the compass from the boat and gave it to me. (This compass came from Glen Sweeney's boat Alchemy) I then passed it on to a friend but I don't think he is possesive about it and I'm sure would easily return it to me, and then... I wondered If you would like to have it. ( If so you could pick it up when next in London. It is too heavy to post)". Read a file about the Glen's compass discovered at: http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2012/02/glen-sweeney-s-compass-discovered.html

Carolyn Looker in April 2012: " "We had an idyllic Summer on the boat. Glen was writing poetry, I was painting. Hard work because the mooring wasn't residential we had to collect our water and calor gas about 1/2 mile away. We retired to a friend's flat in the Winter as the river flooded all the time. Infact one huge flood, the Ark, our boat, flooded over into the field and settled there when the floods ended. We lived that way chocked up in the middle of a field for an year. The council complained and at great expense we hired a crane to put us back in the water".

 

1976 

May 
?th – "Experiences" is realised by Harvest Records

"Fantastic cover!" was the Paul Minns' comment in 1996.
The album, sold at a very special price (just £ 1.99!), was launched in the Harvest Heritage's series with a promo poster (with Kevin Ayers' anthology titled "Odd Ditties"): "A superb compilation album performing The Third Ear Band at their best...".

The cover was especially designed by chief Druid Lynn Darnton (read some memories on him at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2010/02/lyn-dobson-or-lynn-darnton-david-aragon.html).

Come back in London with the project to reform the Third Ear Band, Sweeney met Terry Haxton and Gary Heath (probably through a magazine ad), two musicians who had played in some bands not very successful indeed.
A new line-up is built infact during that year around the founder Sweeney and Minns, with Heath on bass and keyboards, Heath on synthesizer and Mick Carter, a musician known in Kent, on guitar. They rehearsed for some weeks at the Swiss Cottage Pub in London. But even if the new TEB have got some enthusiasm again, no contract is available and the band split again.

 

1977

Spring-July  

New attempt to reform the band, this time with ex-Magic Muscle Rod Roodway involved. Rod Roodway: "I ended up getting a call from Glen Sweeney. Now my whole attitude was kind of punk at that time but the thought of joining a reformed Third Ear Band was bizarre to say the least. So bizarre, what with my marriage cracking up and all, that I thought "Great, I'll go along with it".
So in the spring of 1977 I started to go to London, go down to Shepherd's Bush and rehearse with The Third Ear Band once a week to start with. Every Saturday we'd go and rehearse and there were tapes; we recorded them ourselves, they weren't studio tapes but they were well recorded Glen Sweeney apparently played one of these tapes to Pete Drummond the Radio One DJ and he wanted us to do an "In Concert" immediately, for the BBC.
I've got a piece here that says "whilst still at rehearsal stages, members have come and gone, but with only the problem of finding a bass player left, the remaining lineup was settled down finally to Glen Sweeney (percussion), Paul Minns (oboe), Mick Carter (guitar and violin) and ex-Magic Muscle guitarist/vocalist Rod Goodway. Musically things have changed dramatically. The extensive use of stringed instruments has been replaced by more inventive use of conventional rock instrumentation. The new material also lends a more attacking quality (“a type of medieval rock'n'roll” is what Glen Sweeney calls it) - a sharp contrast with the calm floating sound of yore. "I thought it was quite good because it had a lot of eastern tinges to it and that kind of is my dream, eastern-flavoured rock or mantra rock That was definitely what The Third Ear Band were into doing in 1977".
Sadly, and I take the full responsibility, my marriage breakup had caused more of an impact than I'd thought and my liver (you know, with the previous problem I'd had) couldn't take the drinking and stuff that I was involved in, and I had a liver failure. So I'm afraid - what with the liver and a mini nervous breakdown - I couldn't continue with The Third Ear Band and wrote many letters to Glen Sweeney and had many kind letters back. We parted amicably but sadly; I'd work with the guy again any day. Great guy".

The "piece here"... David Ilic article published by NME in 1977.

  

1978

During the year a new project for the Third Ear Band thought as a pop-rock group involveed Sweeney, Minns and Carter. A lot of rehearsals (mostly in Minn's flat in Sheperd's Bush) but very few concerts.

June 

4th – Roundhouse Downstairs Theatre (London)

A new TEB line-up played in concert with Sweeney, Minns, Carter and new musicians Marcus Beale (on Fender violin) and Brian Diprose (bass), the latter member of the Ragged Robin and session man for folk artists as Anne Briggs or Steve Ashley.

?th – Norwich University

During that year, after Paul Minns' quit (not interested to invest energies in a pop-rock project) a new TEB line-up with Sweeney, Carter, Diprose and Jim "Gipsy" Hayes (on vocals) played at Norwich University and recorded in Dansette Studios (Kent) the album "Apocaliptic Anthems" with the name The Hydrogen Jukebox [Listen a rare Glen Sweeney's auto-interview at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2010/06/glen-sweeney-interviewed-himself-in.html about the brief story of the Hydrogen Jukebox].
The tracks, once again inspired by Tarots, had been composed by Sweeney during the 'houseboat period'.

The Hydrogen Jukebox (L-R: Diprose, Hayes, Carter, Phil Shaw (recording engineer) and Sweeney).

Jim 'Gipsy' Hayes recording his vocals.

                                                                    Another shot from the sessions.

The album, remixed by Carter, had been 'forgotten' in his own studio file and realised only later, in 1991, by Italian label Materiali Sonori with a new title, "Prophecies".

A cover designed by Glen Sweeney in 1990 for the Hydrogen Jukebox CD edited by Materiali Sonori.

 

 1979

German underground filmmaker Clemens Klopfenstein used Third Ear Band music for his b/w film "Geschichte der Nacht" (Story of Night).
As journalist Chris Auty ("Programme Note London Film Co-op") writes, "It's a black-and-white record of European cities in the dark (2-5am), from Basle to Belfast. Quiet, and meditative, what ermerges most strongly is an eerie sense of city landscapes as deserted film sets, in which the desolate architecture overwhelms any sense of reality. The only reassurance that we are not in some endless machine-Metropolis is the shadow of daytime activity: a juggernaut plunging through a darkened village, a plague of small birds in the predawn light. The whole thing is underscored by a beautiful 'composed' soundtrack, from quietly humming stretlamps to reggae and the rumble of armoured cars in Belfast. A strange and remarkable combination of dream, documentary and science-fiction".
Watch the intriguing film (about 61 minutes) for free at http://ubu.com/film/klopfenstein_nacht.html

Clemens Klopfenstein.

1984

"The Harvest Story vol. 1. Art School Dancing" anthology realised by Harvest Records with "Druid One" from "Alchemy".

 1987 

July 

Luca Ferrari, during some researches on Syd Barrett, interviewed Peter Jenner and got Glen Sweeney's address. He met the drummer & his wife Carolyn Looker at their home in Sheperd's Bush (London) and tried to convince him to reform the TEB.

Glen Sweeney, Luca Ferrari and Carolyn Looker just that day of July 1987.

Glen, Luca and Elena (Luca's wife) photographed by Carolyn.

 

1988

Summer 

After months of hesitations and suspects ("Glen suspicious of you? I think he was suspicious of most people's intentions till proved otherwise!", stated Carolyn Looker in April 2012), Sweeney agreed to reform the band. During that Summer, Sweeney (han drums), Mick Carter (electric guitar and effects), Paul Minns (oboe) and Samuel Allen (a young violinist with academic career and Dave Tomlin's pupil) rehearsed some new tracks at the squatted Cambodian Embassy of London (read in this blog at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2010/02/third-ear-band-rehearsaled-at-occupied.html).
From this sessions is been realised in 1993 "Necromanticus", a bonus track for the new edition of the CD "Live Ghosts". In the meantime "The Ear Management", a sort of agency witht the aim to organize band's concerts, especially in Italy, is made up. They pressed promotional t-shirts with the TEB concert playbill at Purcell Room in 1970.

 

The original card of The Ear Management.

September 

"The Peanuts tour"
The short tour, so called by Sweeney because the scarce moneys gotten, was organized by The Ear Management (Luca Ferrari) with the enterprising Gigi Bresciani's Music On agency.

Third Ear Band played with Sweeney, Carter, Minns and Allen.

Glen Sweeney photographed by Elena Blasi in Gandino (BG) on September 7th, 1988.

                                                                    

8th – Chiostro di S. Agostino (Bergamo)

TEB with Zsaratnok and Whippersnapper
The complete concert is been realised by Materiali Sonori in 1989 with the title "Live Ghosts". Also an home video of the gig does exist...

Original handmade flyer for the concert.

Alternative poster

9th – Umbertide (Perugia)

"Rockin’ Umbria” festival with TEB, Novalia and Peter Principle 

Sweeney (1990): "I received a letter from Luca offering me a gig at Rockin' Umbria, a big rock event in Italy. He was very shrewd, he said £ 250 each and put me on the road, right? I was out there. It ended up at about £ 50 each, but it put me back in the picture.

 Allen Samuel (photo by Elena Blasi).

TEB on stage at Umbertide: (L-R) Samuel, Carter, Minns and Sweeney (photo by Elena Blasi).

Sweeney and Carter playing on stage (photo by Elena Blasi).

 

Minns and Sweeney just before the concert (photo by Elena Blasi).

                                                     

Sweeney protographed by Elena Blasi.

                                                                                                                 

The late Brian (the tour driverman), Sweeney, Allen and Ferrari relaxing in Umbertide.

                                                            

December

A second Italian tour with four gigs (Gorizia, Bergamo, Genova and Viterbo), managed by The Ear Management, is cancelled owing to Sweeney’s unexpected personal problems. 

Promo ad for the cancelled gig in Genova.

Flyer for the cancelled DIA Club (Bergamo) concert.

During November the band had reharsaled at the Cambodian Embassy (read in this Archive at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2010/02/third-ear-band-rehearsaled-at-occupied.html).

The band at the Cambodian Embassy (photo by Carolyn Looker).

 

Glen Sweeney playing tablas at the Embassy (photo: Carolyn Looker).

 

 1989

The “Bad news, baby!” tour
Three concerts, once again organized by The Ear Management and Music On agency, have played by a new line-up with, besides Sweeney and Carter, Lyn Dobson (flute and saxes) and Ursula Smith (violin).

January
11th – Teatro Impavidi (Sarzana, La Spezia)

The complete recording of the concert has been released by Milan’s avant-garde label A.D.N. on cassette only with the title “New Forecasts from the Third Ear Almanac” (read at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2009/12/new-forecasts-from-third-ear-almanac.html). 

ADN promo for "New Forecasts" (January 1990).

12th – Psycho Club (Genova)

Thanks to TEB Italian fan Mirco Delfino, the concert is available (in a rough recording) at:
https://soundcloud.com/mirco-delfino/teb-ge-2  (part one)
https://soundcloud.com/mirco-delfino/teb-ge-1 (parte two)

Sweeney and Carter on  stage at Psyco Club (photo by Luca Ferrari).

Lyn Dobson and Ursula Smith playing on stage (photo by Luca Ferrari).

Ursula Smith and Lyn Dobson rehearsaling before the concert (photo  by Luca Ferrari).

                                                                                                                                             

13th – Sala Piatti (Bergamo)

TEB with Martin Carthy and John Kirkpatrick

The line-up of this tour: (L-R) Sweeney, Dobson, Smith, Carter (photo by Gigi Bresciani).

14th – Circolo Tuxedo (Piacenza)

This was a day-off gig, just before the band went back to England. Just 50 people in the audience for a very good performance now available at www.dimeadozen.org - a Torrent forum. The band played "Druid", "Hyde Park Raga", "Egyptian Book of the Dead" and "Spirits". Very particular the encore, Dave Tomlin's "Lark Rise" (from "Alchemy"), represented by Sweeney as "the legendary Dave Tomlin"...

Also an home video recording of the gig does exist...

  
March

“Live Ghosts” is realized by Materiali Sonori on LP, cassette and CD format. 

Enthusiastic reviews: Ugo Bacci on Italian rock magazine "Rockerilla" (July-August issue): “The album is divided into acid sound dissertations, charming and essential, exquisively minimal. They progress in a costant flow which admit “Alchemy” ascendancy; they may be considered the sourest raga in English underground”.

Really surprised by how “a simple instrumentation could be the basis for such intensive and fascinating music”, Alan Freeman writes: “”Live Ghosts” (…) features just four tracks, these are lengthy hypnotic rhythmic works, with simple yet intense rhythms (on hand drums), varied use of guitar (picking, strumming, droning) topped off by carefully crafted entwining solos from oboe and violin. The ritualist intensity that grows out of the music is totally engrossing and exceptionally stimulating” ("Audion" #13, November 1989). Edwin Pouncey ("New Musical Express", August 19th): “New Age fans could do worse than dip into this smokey swamp of drifting sound. No dreamy, blue sky gazing anthems here though, instead expect storm clouds, ectoplasmic mirage and as near to an out of the body experience you'll get from listening to a mere LP. Let there ghosts haunt your house soon".
"Live Ghost" is moreover reviewed with exciting tones in France by the well known jazz critic Philippe Renaud ("Revue Notes" n. 34, August) and Sawada in Japan as well ("Marquee" n. 32, July).

March-May

The band, in the same line-up of the tour (Sweeney, Carter, Dobson and Smith), came into Alchemical Studios (Kent) to record the new album announced as "Magic". A demo tape of that sessions is recorded (read at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2010/11/feeding-starving-magic-never-realised.html).

  Mick Carter photographed at the "Psycho Club", Genova January 12th, 1989 (photo by Luca Ferrari).

June 
25th – S. Agostino Choister (Bergamo)
Luca Ferrari shows TEB album "Live Ghosts" inside the fifth edition of "Folk Out", a three days of concerts and various events promote by Gigi Bresciani.

July  

8th – Vinci (Florence)

TEB with Novalia and Nazca
Due to her job as a teacher in the school, Ursula couldn't stay in the band. Allen Samuel came back replacing her in the line-up.
That July 2nd, in a sunny morning, first (and last) photo session of the new TEB managed by Materiali Sonori with photographer Lucia Baldini. Read and watch the pictures at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2010/02/third-ear-band-last-photo-session-vinci.html

  The original postcard realised by Materiali Sonori for the event.

TEB photographed by Lucia Baldini at Da Vinci's museum.

                                                                               

 
The poster printed for the two-days concert.

October 

Neil Black, a young violinist with experiences with UB40, Joan Armatrading and John Porter, joined the band replacing Samuel Allen. The new TEB recorded some rehearsals in London then titled "Necromancer Suite", where the new album tracks previously recorded with Ursula Smith were resumed.

Promotional photo of John Porter and Neil Black (on right), circa 1989.

                                                         

November

TEB went into Alchemical Studios to record the new album with the final title of "Magic Music".

Carter and Black recording "Magic Music" at the Alchemical Studios (Kent).

  The pre-released review of "Magic" published by "Rockerilla" on November 1989.

                                                                   
24th - Borgo Castello (Gorizia) 

"Aria, terra, fuoco, acqua..."
Piero Bielli wrote on the event ("Auditorium" n. 4, 1990): "It's a total music which involves the listener's spirit in order to subdue and lead him in a sort of Nirvana; Glen, old elf with devilish eyes, would enchant the hardest viewer. "The Book of the Dead", another fantastic piece, has ended the gig with an anguish crescendo, so that the frailest minds feel confused as after a peyotl".

The concert will be published later on two different CDs ("Live", in 1996, and "Hymn to the Sphynx", in 2005). About the event read in this archive at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2010/12/live-ghosts-at-all-frontiers-beautiful.html

The band on stage: (L-R) Dobson, Carter, Sweeney and Black.

                                                   " Il Messaggero del Veneto", November 24th, 1989.

 25th - Sala Piatti (Bergamo)

In the afternoon the band met the students of Centro Didattico Produzione Musica [Music Production Educational Centre] at a stage on "Research, technique and electroacoustic music instruments".

Ugo Bacci wrote in the local newspaper "L'Eco di Bergamo" (November 27th): "Sweeney, as in the past, looks on music with hieratic attention beating with the same regular times. He has got a sort of magnetic fluid which goes beyond technique and virtuosity. THe music of Third Ear Band is not a music that tends to a formal beauty, but a deep whirpool made of intensity and tension. The electric guitar as a cello, Ursula Smith's violin, the saxophone of an old character born from Lindsey Kemp's imagination: all this makes a mysterious music which is permanent fluid and rhythm".

December  

15th - "Sir George Robey" pub (London)

Read about this concert in this archive at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2009/12/tebs-tape-recordings-at-london-british.html
and download the full concert at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2013/06/tebs-1989-concert-at-london-club-dog.html

1990 

January

"Magic Music", recorded by Sweeney, Carter, Black and Dobson, is released by Materiali Sonori on LP and CD format.

Sweeney talked about it to Italian magazine Auditorium: "It will be a collection of magic sounds, coloured by an antique Indian patina; with the electronic games of Mick Carter's guitar, Neil Black's soprano sax and flute and Glen Sweeney's alchemical percussion. Take a walkman, tune in and drop out with the magic music".

In another interview of that year (with Brazilian DJ Fabio Massari) he declared that "a music is magic because it doesn't exist, it hasn't a concrete form. So the voice... It's all very subjective, so it's magic".
"Are TEB playing "world music"?" - asked the journalist.
"It's cosmic music! It's music of the universe. It embraces all cultures, we mix all kind of references - Africans, Indians... We play every kind of mixture...".

Brouchure realised by Materiali Sonori for promoting the new album.

                     

February

A new tour, organized by Materiali Sonori with the cooperation of The Ear Management to promote the new album, is played by Sweeney, Carter, Dobson and Black. 

TEB technical equipment managed by Materiali Sonori for the tour.

3rd – Teatro Vespasiano (Rieti)

4th – Il Classico (Roma)

Aldo Lastella, on the Italian national newspaper "La Repubblica", ended a good article titled "Oriental scient" where he emphasized the novelty of the musical proposal of the band: "Nowadays it's electronics which supplies the sound carpet to the evolution of the wind instruments and to the overcoming tabla. And Mick Carter's versatile guitar and Neil Black's electronic violin change a piece twenty years old, like Egyptian Book, into a sort of bridge between yesterday and today, always witht the same desire to be free, without any compromise".

Aldo Lastella's article published by "La Repubblica" on February 6th, 1990.

 5th – Prego Club (Milan)

The gig, broadcasted live on Italian radio programme "RAI Stereonotte" was compromised by technical problems on the PA system. A nervous Dobson quitted the stage while other band's members went on trio with no amplifiers.

    "La Repubblica - Tutto Milano", February 1st, 1990.

                                                           

6th – Auditorium Flog (Florence)
TEB with Novalia

That day, just before the gig, Glen Sweeney was invited by Italian avant-garde composer Fabio Capanni (leader of an Italian group called Nazca) to record in a studio in Florence with Amon Duul's founder Chris Karrer. A track, titled "Old Man Kangaroo pt. 2" is recorded. It'll be include later in a Materiali Sonori compilation titled "The Greetings Compact" (read in this archive at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2010/12/another-little-gem-for-tebs-aficionados.html).

Luca Ferrari and Lyn Dobson at the piano in a recording studio in Florence (February 6th, 1990).

7th – Sgt. Pepper (Genova) 
"The concert"

The programme of the club.

9th – Teatro Municipale (Meda, Venice)
10th – Teatro Petrella (Longiano, Forlì)

"Il terzo occhio" - Musica per la scena.

The original concert programme.

Mick Carter, Neil Black and Luca Ferrari on the scene at Longiano.

Spring

"Unhinged" Glen Sweeney interview

Interviewed by Nigel Cross for the English fanzine "Unhinged", it's one of the best and deep interview of the press with Glen Sweeney. Read it at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2010/09/return-of-acid-prankster-glen-sweeney.html

May  

12th - Dog Club (London)

August

26th - Isle of Wight Festival

Glen Sweeney and Pete Brown that dat at the Isle of Wight

Glen in his Sheperd's Bush flat on August 1990.

September

Glen wrote me a letter announcing the idea to reform The Giant Sun Trolley (!!!) for a new record: "(...) I have a new musical event, it will be the return of the Gaint Sun Tolley with the star Dave Tomlin on genar (a musical instrument invented by Dave), I will play drums and Mick will play guitar and effects. Mick will record an LP of this music on digital DAT tape, we will then send you some copies to send to record companies. If we are succesfull you can get us some dates to promote the LP. I will be busy getting all the promo and photos together for the start, which will take about six months, so we will be ready in March...".

1991

March

Nothing happened about the new Giant Sun Trolley, the group by Sweeney's will became Elektric Third Ear Band and went into Alchemical Studios to record a new album.
Barry Pilcher, Sweeney's old friend since The Hydrogen Jukebox, replaced Lyn Dobson on the sax. A track from that sessions, titled "Raga of the Wind" is been included by Materiali Sonori ont the CD "Sonora - The compact", given free with magazine "Sonora" (issue 2, 1991): read and download the track at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2010/11/elektric-third-ear-band-raga-of-wind.html
Another one, "Song of Gaia", will remain unrealised.

A poor poster designed by Sweeney about the project of the Elektric TEB.

In the meantime, owing to some disagreements with the band regarding the relationship with the record label, The Ear Management winded up.

Pilcher posing with Glen in his flat at Sheperd's Bush.

April
12th - Dog Club (London)
This concert, as the following one, was held by the Elektric TEB with Barry Pilcher on sax.

May
12th - Il Posto (Verona)
A concert managed by Gigi Bresciani's "Music On" agency.

A postcard from Cappadocia by Paul Minns and his wife Kathryn...

August
29th - Sant'Anna Arresi (Carbonia - Sardinia)
"Ai confini tra Sardegna e Jazz"
TEB (Mick Carter and Glen Sweeney) with Sardinia Project (Roger Eno).

September
5th - Naples
Lyn Dobson got back on the TEB line-up replacing Pilcher.

December
28th - Rome

1991 Materiali Sonori promo ad.

1992

April
A new Italian mini-tour is organized by Gigi Bresciani's Music on. TEB line-up was Sweeney, Carter, Dobson and Black.

Glen tries to involve Luca Ferrari in a new adventure, but Luca is not interested anymore in managing the group. On a postcard sent to him, Glen writes: "Dear Luca, sorry to hear you are an idealist, because playing great music means having a great band and that costs money. My job is getting work for the band and selling records, so that more and more people get to hear the band, which makes me an idealist with experience! Anyway, come and hear the band in Bergamo, first week in April. I will bring you a Jukebocx CD. Love and peace, Glen".

Luca, you're an idealist!

                                                               

The last TEB line-up!

11th - Mantova
12th - Folk Club "Gli Zanni" (Ranica, Bergamo)

"Magiche alchimie" (Magic Alchemy)
With an audience of about fifty persons (!), at this tiny club it'll be remembered as the last ever TEB concert!

During that year TEB came back in the studio to record a new album, being not satisfied with the results of the year before. Lyn Dobson returned definitely in the band on wind instruments and vocals (for the first time in the TEB history two vocal tracks was recorded!) replacing Barry Pilcher. An instrumental track, recorded with Pilcher ("Song of Gaia") was put aside to remain unrealised.

July
Glen and Carolyn went to holidays in Greece.

Glen's postcard sent to Luca Ferrari from Greece.

December

Around Christmas, Glen Sweeney had a strong heart-attack and he's recovered at the hospital for some weeks.

1993

In the meanwhile, at the beginning of the year, "Brain Waves" was realised by Materiali Sonori.

  TEB last line-up (from the booklet of "Brain Waves", Materiali Sonori 1993 - photo by Lucia Baldini).

March

Glen Sweeney sends a little message to Luca Ferrari, announcing to stop live concerts and the intention to write a novel based on TEB's story.

Glen in Richmond (London), just after the first heart-attack (March 1994).

A bitter balance about the experience witht he TEB by violin player Allen Samuel in 2013 at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2013/02/a-valuable-lesson-but-not-one-that-i.html

  

1996

Italian home publishing Stampa Alternativa realised Luca Ferrari's book on the Third Ear Band titled "Necromancers of the drifting West", written with the direct contribution of band's members (copies is available at http://www.stampalternativa.it/libri/322-0/luca-ferrari/third-ear-band.html).
In the book is included, for the first time, a CD with the unrealised music of "Abelard & Heloise" soundtrack.
"The recording quality of original recording of "Abelard and Heloise", wrote me Richard Coff in 2008, "was not great"... It suffer, too, from poor production (mix and editing) and, because they are not in multi-track format, there is little or nothing that can be done to mine any musical gold that may be hidden with. The transfer to the master you made appears to be as good as can be expected". 

 

1997

Paul Minns, come back to live in Scotland after the last TEB reunion, committed suicide. Popular music lost one of the best oboe players ever...

Paul Minns rehearsing at the Cambodian Embassy (London, Summer 1988).

Another portrait of the great Paul in 1988 (photo: Carolyn Looker).

  1999

November

 

A very good retrspective on the band by Alan Freeman on "Audion" magazine.

 

2000

October

During that year Carolyn Looker, Glen Sweeney's wife, painted a work inspired by the history of her and Glen, intended as a cover for a tribute CD projected by Luca Ferrari.
Titled "The Dragon Wakes", the album was compiled with unrealised studio and radio tracks from Luca's private archive.

Read a reconstruction of the story of this project - never realised - at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/2009/12/on-october-2000-just-after-paul-minns.html

 

The beautiful painting made by Carolyn Looker.

 

2004

Quite surprising, the legendary fourth 'lost' album recorded in 1972 riemerged from the vaults thanks to (the late) sound engineer Ron Cort, published by Angel Air as "The Magus".

2005

August 
17th - The Royal Star & Garter Home (London)

After some strong heart-attacks (the first was on December 1992) and a long sojourn at The Royal Star & Garter Home (a residential hospital in Richmond, London, where he was recovered from Spring 1999), Glen Sweeney died "peacefully" (in his wife Carolyn's words).
 "(...) It was a beautiful ceremony rather than a conventional funeral, Steve Pank read from the "Egyptian Book of the Dead" and tracks from "Alchemy" were played, incense was burning, Glen was in a raffia coffin with sunflowers on top. Everyone said what a wonderful experience it was and some were reminded of being at an early Third Ear Band concert. I'm sure Glen would have approved" (from a postcard sent by Carolyn Looker to Luca Ferrari on September 3rd, 2005).

A nice portrait of Glen Sweeney in 1989 (photo by Carolyn Looker).

A tribute to Glen Sweeney written by Steve Pank (December 2005).

Glen drinking wine just before the Umbertide concert, on September 9th, 1988 (photo by Elena Blasi).

In the same year also Roger Bunn, former musician of the Giant Sun Trolley passed away. Read a brief article at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2009/12/roger-bunns-role-in-giant-sun-trolley.html and watch a 2004 video with him at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOgzb6Ym84Q

 

2007

April

Original viola player Ben Cartland died. He was living in the Northamptonshire where he used to play avantguarde music with the Northamptonshire Composers Association. It seems he was writing a book with his memories...(read at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2010/01/teb-viola-player-ben-cartland-died-on.html). 

 

                          2009
November
13th - Guitarist Mike Marchant passed away.
Read in this archive at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2010/01/mike-marchant-rip.html

 

2011

October

3rd - DVD with rare TEB television appearances realised.
English Gonzo Multimedia realised a TEB DVD titled "The Lost Broadcasts" with TV video from 1970 (German programme "Beat Club").
Read a review in this archive at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2011/11/lost-broadcasts-dvd-review.html

 

 

2012

January 

From the miracles of YouTube emerged a very rare unknown short clip of the band playing at Hyde Park on June 7th, 1969 (the so-called "Blind Faith concert"): 

September

Another unexpected miracle! On INAfr (the Web site of French television) at http://www.ina.fr/ a rare 27:00 TEB broadcast is available, recorded on May 25th, 1970 at the Olympia Theatre of Paris. Two tracks ("Hyde Park Raga" and "Mosaic" (or "Dog Evil") played by the legendary quartet with Sweeney, Minns, Smith and Coff.

The story of this incredible retrival is reported at the pages:

http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2012/09/a-new-sensational-retrieval-second-part.html
http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2012/09/at-last-heres-wonderful-tremendous-1970.html
http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2012/09/teb-french-broadcast-unseen-cuts.html

 

2013

November

Pianist/multistrumentist  Mel Davis (who played on"Alchemy") passed away.
Read at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2013/12/bad-news-for-christmas-mel-davis.html 

Lyn Dobson about him: "I can say first that Mel was an exceptionally warm, empathetic and caring person,who almost single handed, started the Free Music movement in the entire world (including the United States!). He also pioneered the self sufficiency movement in England. I first met him in Luton in my early twenties at Art college, where we played with a young Graham Collier, before all moving to London...".

The funeral lament played by musicians friend of Davis.

December 

Obscure  cellist TEB's founder Brian Meredith (here on a picture taken in 2012) emerged from the Web writing to this Archive!  
Read at: http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2013/12/finally-also-first-teb-cellist-brian.html
The first part of a planned two-parts exclusive interview is pubblished in this Archive here   

After that he disappeared another time...

 

2014

June

Just unexpected an unknown 1971 TEB short video emerged from the Web thanks to a fan (read here).
Original TEB guitarist Denim Bridges talks about it here

 

September

Gonzo  Multimedia announced two new records by the TEB with old stuff. The project will be realised in cooperation with Ghettoraga Archive.

 

2015

May
Barry Pilcher (old Glen Sweeney's friend)... lost & found!  Read a report at  http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2015/05/lost-found-news-about-barry-pilcher.html

English Gonzo Multimedia published "Necromancers of the Drifting West", a brand new Third Ear Band CD with "Rare gems from the Vaults". The record was edited by Luca Ferrari who wrote the booklet with all the story of these rare tracks. Read a brief articles at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2015/04/first-of-two-new-third-ear-bands-cds.html and some reviews HERE.

June

Ghettoraga published an exclusive interview with Mary Hayes, Paul Minns' first wife.  Read it at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2015/06/interview-with-mary-hayes-paul-minns.html  (first part) and at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2016/04/with-obsession-of-reed-second-part-of.html (second part).

Luca Ferrari, editor of this Archive, published for Gonzo Multimedia a biography on English jazz pianist Mike Taylor, with memories of Dave Tomlin and Steve Pank who played and knew him in the Sixties.

September
English Gonzo Multimedia published "New Forecasts from the Third Ear Almanac", the official reissue of the old rare live cassette recorded in Sarzana in January 1989. The record was edited by Luca Ferrari who wrote the booklet with the story of these concert.

 

 

 

 2016

February  

Gonzo Multimedia published "EXORCISM", an album that showcases recordings from the 1988-1989 period, when the musicians involved were Glen Sweeney, Mick Carter, Ursula Smith, Lyn Dobson and Allen Samuel: three tracks from the Cambodian Embassy rehearsal (Summer 1988) and five from the sessions for "Magic Music" (May-November 1989), with a different line-up from that played on Ma.So. album published in 1990. 

March

An unknown wonderful footage with the TEB playing in 1970 emerged from the Web aired by German WDR TV on March 28th, 2016: the brief cameo (2:38), maybe recorded in studio at the Essen TV on April 24th, 1970, is the last part of "Earth", from the "Elements" album, played by Sweeny, Minns, Coff and Smith. 

An article in the Archive at http://ghettoraga.blogspot.it/2016/04/an-unknown-wonderful-footage-with-third.html

 

NOTE ABOUT THE SOURCES:

This historical reconstruction of TEB's musical life has been based on Paul Minns' personal diary; several interviews made by Luca Ferrari to the members of the band between 1987 and 1996 utilised for the book "Necromancers of the drifting West"; the extraordinary "International Times" web archive (http://www.internationaltimes.it/); the "Billboard Magazine" Web archive; the "OZ" Web archive; Nigel Cross' "The Return of the Acid Prankster. Glen Sweeney tells the Third Ear Band story" ("Unhinged" n. 6, Spring 1990); rare paper cuttings & posters from Glen Sweeney and Steve Pank personal collections; "Marmalade Skies" Web archive (http://www.marmalade-skies.co.uk/); the Family Web archive (http://www.familybandstand.com; the kind Jon Limbert of Beatchapter music shop in London (old issues of "Zigazag", "Beat Instrumental" and others); original interviews made by Luca Ferrari just for this Archive with Clive Kingsley, Dave Tomlin, Steve Pank, Carolyn Looker, Denim Bridges, Ursula Smith, Mary Hayes, David Loxley, Muz Murray, Paul Buckmaster, Brian Meredith and other musicians/people involved in TEB's glorious story.

Original TEB pins produced by The Ear Management in the '80's  (sold out).

no©2013 Luca Ferrari (unless you intend to make a profit. In which case, ask first)

(last updated August 2024)

Third and last part of excerpts from "Tales from the Embassy" trilogy written by Dave Tomlin, Giant Sun Trolley founder.

This is the third excerpt from Dave Tomlin trilogy inspired by his experiences in 60's/70's at the squatted Cambodian Embassy, in London.

Here you can read about an happening Giant Sun Trolley (Tomlin, Sweeney and Dadem) played in Oxford in 1967...

"Morning

Morning comes to the Free School, but precisely what morning is a consideration long abandoned by the faculty and whatever guests they are entertaining, who themselves have been drawn here by their desire to attain the same exalted state.

At the Free School, or ‘School of Freedom’, as Smith prefers to think of it, the ruthless eye of this collective regard had quickly identified the first major obstacle to that freedom, and time, together with day of week, has been entirely excluded from their discourse and eradicated entirely from any serious consideration. Serious because the occasional visitor, wandering into the cellar on some local errand might innocently enquire: ‘What time is it?’ To be met with much mirth from the faculty. However, this nameless morning infiltrates the blanket of sleep which enshrouds the recumbent forms and first one, and then another yawn their way up into a sitting position and begin warily watching each other to see which will succumb first to the desire for tea. 

P. B. Rivers sits up and runs his hands through his hair. ‘Why have we woken up?’ he asks the room at large. P. B. Rivers teaches 24hr existentialism at the school and frequently starts the day with difficult questions of this kind. Smith, always ready to stick his neck out says the first thing that comes into his head. ‘Well why not?’ he asks. ‘You’ve got to start the day somehow.’ P. B. Rivers fixes him with a long, cold look. ‘Have you ever considered,’ he says. ‘That there may be other ways to start it?’ 

Smith hasn’t considered this and it is way too early to do so, what he wants is a cup of tea and he leaves this challenge to the others. ‘As Jane Austin might have said,’ he thinks, ‘P. B. Rivers has no small talk.’ Finally, conceding defeat, young Nick gets up and puts on the kettle and before long is handing round the cups. Nothing is now heard for a while but the grateful slurping of tea until a bell rings out twice. Everyone looks at P. B. Rivers, for had the bell rang once it would have been Smith who received this attention. As a small notice on the doorbell indicates: One ring for a music lesson. Two rings for a dose of 24hr existentialism from P. B. Rivers. Should Smith be called upon he will begin at once explaining the fundamental laws of music to the visitor. ‘Music,’ he begins on such occasions, ‘can only do either one of two things. It can go up. Or it can go down, no other direction is possible.’ So far he has not been refuted, although sometimes among the contentious he encounters a suggestion of volume or speed as alternatives, but these he easily dismisses as secondary considerations. 

However, this morning the bell has rung twice and P. B. Rivers goes to open the door. It is Scipio Hawkins, one of the prime-movers in setting up the school, and he seems to be the bearer of some exciting news. But P. B. Rivers forestalls him, he has a duty to perform and he takes the role seriously. ‘Why did you wake up this morning?’ he asks. But Scipio nimbly fields the question. ‘To come and tell you something, I only rang the bell twice because I didn’t want a music lesson,’ he says. ‘Then speak on,’ says P. B. Rivers magnanimously. ‘There’s an event coming up next week in Oxford,’ says Scipio. ‘International Times is supporting a movement for spontaneous street theatre which a group of undergraduates are fomenting. A few of us are going up to give our support and some music would be really cool.’ 

P. B. Rivers is interested in none of this, his mind focused entirely on the present he has no room for such poncey notions as some “other” place called “Oxford”. ‘If that’s all you got up for then you should have stayed asleep,’ he says dismissively. ‘But now you’re here you can have a cup of tea, which is the real reason that you and everybody else wakes up.’ Smith’s ears have pricked up on hearing of this opportunity to take his guerrilla music to the streets, for now that the Portobello is closed to him he is at a loose end. ‘I’ll see if I can get a couple of Moonjelly men’ he says, and later, when the London contingent arrives at Oxford, Dick and Zen have come to stand shoulder-to-shoulder. Through the warren of narrow streets the revellers march, their banners waving amongst a sea of hippy flowers and a whiff of incense is in the air. Scipio, his silver lamé jacket discarded and dressed now in an outrageous suit of psychedelic camouflage moves here and there, flickering through the crowd like a crackerjack with camera at the ready. And Zen, somewhere behind Smith is punctuating the whole thing with his alchemical beat. 

Booma, booma, dinga, 

booma Booma, booma, dinga, booma 

Dick is prancing well ahead, his trombone swinging from side-to-side as he bellows out a military march, which, conceding a little to Smith’s musical approach, he is making up as he goes along. Smith is playing in precise five second bursts, a sudden swirling cluster of random tones, followed by five seconds of silence; he finds these kinds of yogic disciplines a satisfying contrast to the exuberant circumstances. The grey stone walls of church and college echo back the trombones roar and the piercing squawk of saxophone. Back and forth from steeple to tower the echoes ring and Dick is in his element. Forgetting all his good intentions and carried away in his excitement he now begins putting in a bit of elephant. ‘Oh, no,’ thinks Smith. He had warned him about this. ‘Whatever you do, don’t put in any elephant,’ he had told him. ‘Oxford is a quiet city and if you start rampaging it could lead to serious trouble.’ In his next five seconds of silence Smith moves forward to restrain him. Dick however, is far beyond any constraint; he is unleashing the raucous trumpeting of a mad bull-elephant as it lays waste to all around. Smith gives up, resigned to the disaster that must surely follow. Then, the wild bellows suddenly cease, and Dick stops dead in his tracks. He shuts his slide with a snap, turns, and runs off down a side street as fast as he can. Smith stares after him wondering what has got into him. ‘Maybe he left the gas on,’ he thinks, and is about to formulate more theories of this kind... but he is only allowed the one shot, for the next moment he feels a firm grip on either arm and he is in the hands of the police. They bundle him roughly into the back of a van and through the back window he watches as a line of policeman link arms and attempt to funnel the crowds into a side street. Suddenly from amongst the students a huge roll of ‘Mellomex’ silver plastic film appears and begins to unroll. The students take it at either end and hold it up like a long mirror stretching from one side of the street to the other. The police cannot get past this barrier, for as they attempt to push through in one place it only tightens it in another, and now the two ends begin an outflanking movement. Getting behind the police they start to roll up their line and try to wrap them up like a gigantic parcel, but just in time to avoid this they withdraw to mount an offensive elsewhere. Smith sees no more for the van starts up and he is on his way to the police station. Sitting in the back he is puzzled by only one thing. How did Dick get warning in time to do a runner? 

At the station they push him towards a heavy iron-sheeted door and his saxophone, still slung around his neck, tilts forward and a bunch of daffodils, slipped into the bell by a young hippy girl during the march, slides out and falls to the ground. Smith stops abruptly, and the policemen who surround him come to a halt and watch, as slowly and deliberately he bends down, and collecting up the daffodils places them carefully back into the bell of his saxophone. He is just about to put the final touches to the arrangement, wondering how long he can spin it out, when he receives a violent push from behind. He is launched forward straight at the iron door and only just manages to get his hands up to save his face, but his saxophone, hanging loosely before him smacks into the unyielding door with a nasty crunching sound. The delicate shell-like bell crumples on impact. ‘Well, I suppose I asked for that,’ he thinks, and having conceded this, wonders if the gesture had been worth it, and then... ‘Probably not,’ he thinks. The police station is small and ill-lit and the desk-sergeant looks up as they enter, his nameplate, gold lettering against the varnished wood says: Sergeant Hillter. ‘Name?’ he barks and then... ‘Address?’ Smith gives him both and the Sergeant looks at him with narrowed eyes. ‘London,’ he says. ‘Come down here to stir up some trouble have you?’ Smith doesn’t answer; he no longer feels so bolshie. ‘Have you got any identification?’ asks the Sergeant next, but Smith has nothing of the kind about him, he knows no one in Oxford and cannot even provide a phone number to check on. ‘Then we shall just have to keep you till we find out who you are.’ says the Sergeant, handing a bunch of keys to one of the constables, and Smith is taken along a short corridor to a cell and locked up. 
The cell has a small barred aperture through which he can watch the reception area; he doesn’t even want to think about his saxophone. A long boring hour has gone by when a sudden flurry of activity seems to electrify the dark-uniformed denizens in the reception and a swirl of bright colour lights up the gloom. Smith catches a flash of something at the front-desk and the Sergeant stiffens in his chair. It is Scipio Hawkins, his psychedelic camouflage amplifying the low-wattage bulbs of the room to mesmerise the Sergeant with its dazzle. ‘I think you’re holding a friend of mine here,’ he says. ‘A certain Mr Smith.’ His manner is confident and there is the suggestion of an edge to his voice. ‘We do have such a person here,’ says the Sergeant stiffly. ‘But he has no identification.’ ‘I can vouch for him,’ says Scipio. ‘Oh, yes,’ says the Sergeant. ‘And who might you be Sir?’ Scipio takes out his wallet and hands over his card. 
The Sergeant takes it and reads: 

Mr Scipio Hawkins. Editor. 

International Times. London. 

The Sergeant frowns, he has never heard of the paper, but these are London people and the International sounds impressive. ‘There will be a report in tomorrow’s paper about today’s event,’ says Scipio, ‘I shall write it myself and it can come out one of two ways. We can thank the Oxfordshire Constabulary for their wise forbearance etc., since I don’t suppose anybody wants to be accused of Gestapo tactics. And,’ he goes on, placing a significant finger on the Sergeant’s nameplate. ‘Names might well be mentioned, and typographical errors are endemic in the newspaper world.’ The Sergeant makes no answer to this, Scipio’s psychedelics seems to have completely thrown him, after all, anyone with enough bottle to wear such a garment might well have a lot of clout and he wants no trouble. Getting to his feet he retires to an inner-office from where, after a brief conference with its occupant he returns with a bunch of keys. ‘We’re letting him go,’ he says, and his tone gives nothing away. Smith watches as the Sergeant comes to his cell and he hears the welcome sound of a key turning in the lock. Outside, evening is falling and the setting sun paints the old stones of the ancient city in a ruddy glow as Scipio and Smith walk back to a flat where their friends are gathered. ‘What happened to your saxophone?’ asks Scipio, noticing the smashed bell of the horn. ‘They ran me into a door,’ says Smith, regarding the ruined instrument. It is a bad omen. It looks as if, like it or not, he is being drawn in McCafferty’s direction and the thought is depressing. ‘There’s something about me the police don’t like,’ he thinks, and looking at his damaged horn he sees immediately what the finger of fate has so obviously pointed out: It is not he the police dislike. It is his saxophone. ‘It’s my saxophone!’ he bursts out. ‘I must be playing the wrong instrument.’ Not being party to Smith’s inner thought processes, Scipio has to take this at face value. ‘Yeah. Wow man,’ he says. But Smith has plunged once more into his latest revelation. The saxophone. The most bolshie instrument on the planet. Its associations with jazz making it decidedly hip, and hipness raises the hackles amongst the Philistine. The status-quo represents the fixed; while the hip is fluid and changeable, and change is anathema to the powers-that-be. Now Smith can almost hear the voice of the establishment raised to admonish. ‘If there’s any changes to be made around here, we’ll make them. All right? Then we’ll tell you about it.’ Smith is now at the edge of a major shift; his saxophonic days are over for sure. But what next? ‘Something you don’t have to put in your mouth,’ he thinks ‘The Banjo? No. Something more respectable like the violin. Then... That’s it; the violin of course.’ Having made this decision, the mere intention has given him an inner gravitas. As a violinist his credentials will be assured, already he feels the sense of dignity appropriate to such a respectable member of the musical community. ‘I’m going to take up the violin,’ he announces, and Scipio, a man who has rung many changes himself, takes it in his stride. ‘Wow man, yeah,’ he says. 

Back at the flat Smith catches sight of Dick and Zen. ‘How did you know they were coming?’ he asks when he gets Dick alone. ‘I saw them reflected in my trombone,’ he says. ‘The bell is like a rear-view mirror and I saw them coming up from behind.’ ‘Why didn’t you warn me?’ asks Smith. ‘There wasn‘t time,’ answers Dick. ‘You had just started a burst and I wasn’t going to hang about counting up to five till you’d finished.’ But Smith is not mollified. ‘Well if you hadn’t put in so much elephant we might have got away with it.’ he says". 
(©2010 Dave Tomlin - from the book "Tales from the Embassy" vol. 3)

no©2010 Luca Ferrari

Second part of the excerpts of "Tales from the Embassy" trilogy written by Dave Tomlin.

Here's the second part of Dave Tomlin's "Tales from the Embassy" excerpts. You can read here the meeting with Dick Dadem and Glen Sweeney and the first Giant Sun Trolley appearance at UFO Club. 

Behind the name of Skipio Hawkins there is John Hopkins, the manager at UFO... 

"(...) Noticing Smith’s lack of interest he falls silent and directs his gaze upon the man in the corner, who, without a pause in his booma-booma dinga-booma, repeats in the tone of a Magus: ‘This is where it’s at,’ and then, a considered afterthought: ‘All the rest is funny hats and hoo-ha.’ 

Smith later recruits the man, whose name is Zen Glen, to accompany Dick and himself that night at UFO. ‘What will we play?’ asks Dick. Again Smith can only speak for himself. ‘Well I’m going to be a bird,’ he says, ‘probably a seagull.’ 

The idea of rending that desolate squawk intrigues him no end and his saxophone will lend itself well to the task. Dick is beginning to relish this new approach to music and his naturally zany nature leaps at possibilities. ‘I’ll be an ostrich then,’ he announces. ‘It has to be a big bird because of the size of my trombone.’ ‘But ostriches don’t sing,’ says Smith. ‘And anyway we don’t both have to be birds.’ 

Dick thinks for a bit, and then... ‘A lion,’ he shouts with glee. The idea excites him, ‘I’ll be a lion roaring in the jungle,’ he says. 

Now Smith knows he has struck gold and found two worthy companions for Moonjelly’s Saturday night sojourn into the ridiculous, the outrageous, and the incomprehensible. Putting their heads together they work out the finer details of the coming performance. ‘Dick will go roaring through the jungle,’ says Smith. ‘Zen will let them know where it’s at, and I’ll soar around screeching and squawking. It will be a riot,’ he says. Zen now leaves to pick up his drums while Dick goes off for something to eat, and they arrange to meet later in the Tottenham Court Road. 

UFO
From the left a large magenta blob comes wobbling across the field of view. The upper part is swollen and barely able to contain its fullness, while below it trails nebulously away into a long trail of misty red particles. Soon, however, two bright orange discs, close together and following parallel trajectories speed into view and head directly across the path of the blob. A collision is unavoidable, and when the impact occurs the orange discs sink deeply into the blob and seem about to pass right through to continue their course beyond. But the greater mass of the blob slows their progress, bringing them to a halt barely half-way across. Captive to its greater momentum, they now yield all independent movement and join the blob in its stately progress to the right.
This however, is a minor incident in comparison to the larger threat that now challenges the blob. For behind it there appears a fast moving wave of emerald green, the trailing wake of an even larger blob which, unable any longer to contain its huge mass spills over from above and engulfs the magenta blob in a great wave. For a few moments the entire field is green, and then: Blip! From deep within its emerald centre the magenta blob re-emerges, and: Blip! Blip! Its two orange eyes appear.
Light shows of this kind are the latest thing, and in every available corner enthusiasts set up their screens and drip their coloured blobs onto slides held in the beam of a projector. The medium is evolving fast as they vie with each other to produce different effects and like alchemists guard their techniques closely. The venue is dimly lit but for the splurging colours from the light shows; and the air is perfumed by clusters of incense sticks which project smouldering from every cranny, sending their smoke to drift in languorous clouds across the flashing projector beams.

The concourse is crowded with a carnival of revellers dressed in a motley of freaky costume. They come to trip, to dance and chew the psychedelic fat. It’s Saturday night at UFO! This is where it’s really at.
Upon the podium a black-clad figure leaps, its bowler-hat aflame with candles perched around the rim. An amplified voice thunders out across the concourse, and a demon drummer wildly flails his sticks. The figure whirls around and round the candles spinning a wheel of fire as if, shape shifting, it has stepped from another and crazier world.
A silk top-hat projects like a chimneypot above the sea of mop-headed hippies, bobbing around on the head of a lone dancer in full evening-dress. Complete with silver-topped cane he dances a solitary jig, as if unaware of the rebel costumes of his compatriots. Foxy girls with heavy mascara slink in the candlelit shadows, where sugar-cubes receive their globule of nectar from the tip of a glass dropper, to be sucked like lemon-drops by hopeful trippers intent on adding spice to the night.
Tralee, her usually wild hair combed and piled high for the event, has dressed in black and stands regal as a duchess talking with Harry Flame. Harry has made no concessions to the carnival air, but wears his usual tatty raincoat and grubby collarless shirt. He is above and beyond such irrelevancies and is here merely to sniff the psychic atmosphere, and perhaps distil a potent line of poetry from some small but significant incident.
Skipio Hawkins; Impresario and host of these weekly revels flits here and there, his silver-lamé flowered jacket flashing as he goes about his thousand-and-one Saturday night scams.
The podium is hosting a succession of flamboyant groups, who each take the stage with their retinue of devout followers. For this is the breeding ground of future superstars, and from here they launch themselves like rockets high into the new musical firmament.

‘What time are we on?’ asks Dick.
‘Around four o’clock,’ says Smith. ‘Only when the dancers are completely exhausted will they be in a fit state to hear what we have for them.’
‘Right,’ says Dick. ‘And then we blast them with the jungle stuff.’
‘Don’t be too sure,’ says Smith. ‘That’s only plan “B”. Plan “A” is whatever happens when we get up there.’
Moonjelly waits and bides its time. The energy is still too high and the atmosphere taut with an expectation which they will not even attempt to fulfil. Moonjelly is something else altogether.
Much later, Smith goes looking for Zen and Dick. Their moment is fast approaching and the dancers are working themselves up into a final frenzy. The podium is now bathed in a ruddy glow from a bank of rosy-hued spotlights, while the latest avant-guard of psychedelic rock-groups reflect this colour and cavort, strutting like pink flamingos amidst a maelstrom of electronic guitars.
‘Get ready,’ says Smith, having found Dick and Zen. ‘This is their last number and we’re on next.’
The dancers, now utterly exhausted, are dropping like flies to the floor and seem, to Smith’s eye, to be about ready for an earful of Moonjelly.

Moonjelly
Zen sets up a simple mid-tempo beat:
Booma-booma, dinga-booma
Booma-booma, dinga-booma
He closes his eyes and is off, drifting away into his own rhythmic self-hypnosis until oblivious to anything else at all.
Dick raises his trombone and lets forth a terrible roar; then, as if not satisfied with this he unleashes a torrent of roars and fearsome growls.
Smith is already squawking away in his highest register. Up here above the clouds he dips and soars, sending his harsh call out over the recumbent figures that litter the floor before them. Ten minutes of this and Dick, not one to hide his feelings looks fed up. He walks across the podium and speaks into Smith’s ear.
‘I’m going to put a bit of elephant in,’ he says truculently, as if daring Smith to object.
‘Brilliant,’ says Smith, much heartened by his new friend’s genius. Dick starts screeching in his upper harmonics before descending into a trumpeting bellow, which, were the space not confined, could have been heard as far afield as Farringdon or Charing Cross. Smith however, sticks to his seagull and flies now above a bleak foreshore where craggy rocks sit in white necklaces of broken sea, as his forlorn avian song comes echoing from the bell of his tenor-saxophone.

Eschaton
When Moonjelly has blown itself out Dick puts away his trombone and makes off. Smith is about to leave the podium himself, when he notices that Zen, eyes still shut, continues to beat out his...
Booma-booma, dinga-booma
Booma-booma, dinga-booma
Smith taps him on his shoulder and Zen, from deep within his bongo nirvana opens startled eyes.
‘What’s happening?’ he asks.
‘We’ve finished,’ says Smith.

(©2010 Dave Tomlin - from the book "Tales from the Embassy" vol. 1)

no©2010 Luca Ferrari

First part of excerpts from "Tales from the Embassy", Dave Tomlin trilogy on his experiences in the Sixties!!!

You can read below the first part of some excerpts from "Tales from the Embassy" trilogy written by Dave Tomlin about his esclusive experiences in the Sixties.
Behind some nicknames you can discover well-known characters of the TEB story:
Zen Glenn is Glen Sweeney
Mr. Smith is the same Dave Tomlin
Dick is Dick Dadem
Moonjelly is the Giant Sun Trolley
Trios Eros is The Third Ear Band.
So now we have the rare opportunity to know some obscure facts of the past, as the happening in Kensington park that was the beginning of the so-called "guerilla warfare" ...

"No flowers for McCafferty
A police inspector from a central London station has telephoned the embassy asking to speak with Smith.
‘I understand that you are a friend of Mr Michael McCafferty,’ says the inspector.
‘Well I know him,’ says Smith. ‘But I doubt he has any friends.’
‘So it seems,’ replies the inspector. ‘And what about relations, did he have any family?’
‘I think he may have a sister somewhere,’ says Smith. ‘But why did you say “did”?’
‘Because he’s dead,’ says the inspector. ‘He was found floating in the river off Wapping Pier with a knife in his back and we’re trying to trace his next of kin.’
Smith cannot help him and the inspector refuses to give any further information.
‘I’m afraid the matter is still under investigation.’ He says, and ends the call firmly by putting down the phone.
McCafferty dead, and in such a fitting way, thinks Smith. It seems to him almost inevitable that given his approach to life he must end this way. He imagines the shadowy hulk of Wapping Pier. A full moon hangs over the river. Street lamps on the far shore dapple the surface with dancing reflections and a black hump quietly breaks the waterline turning lazy circles in the shadows of the pier. McCafferty, face down and transfixed has gambled once too often and someone has finally called him out. Nevertheless the news appals Smith, and he sits on the stairs near the telephone casting his mind back to the time when McCafferty had first appeared on his event horizon. 

It is the summer of 1966 and revolution is in the air. Something new is trying to be born and the establishment ethic is nervous, shifting uncomfortably on its ponderous foundations. McCafferty has arrived at the London Free School with a short haircut and a copy of Auden’s poems in his jacket pocket from which he is fond of reading aloud. He renders the lines in a forceful manner, the words articulated precisely and delivered in a sarcastic tone, as if the poem lays bare the pathetic and sorry state of his listeners. Smith’s connection with the school had begun the previous winter, when at a meeting called to found a free school in Notting Hill he had volunteered to teach a class in music composition. He had subsequently spent many chilly evenings in the dank basement in which it is housed waiting for the hoard of culture hungry locals to come pouring through the door. His waiting had been almost entirely in vain. One or two pensioners had ventured down looking for a cup of tea, a few bolshie teenagers hang around for a while restless and looking for some action.
‘I’m here to teach you how to write music,’ says Smith, and they look at him as if he is mad.
‘It’s the Thursday night down at the scout-hall syndrome,’ he thinks. ‘We’d do better running a bingo club.’ 

Around about this time, what with the ozone in the air from the seismological shifts taking place in the culture and one thing or another, Smith embarks upon a course of madness which involves the casting away of all possessions and the abandonment of his rented room. He has decided to take to the streets with only the clothes he wears and a wooden flute. Having just finished reading Herman Hess’ Magister Ludi, the image of its hero leaving all behind and casting himself upon the whim of circumstance has appealed mightily to his imagination. It is spring and the weather is fine; he feels confident that by nightfall of the first day providence will have provided him with some shelter.
Providence however, decrees otherwise. After spending a fruitless day wandering the streets of Notting Hill, eyes alert for the chance circumstance which will open the door into a new life, he finds himself late that night still in the same predicament. The streets are deserted and Smith is forced to conclude that nothing much is coming his way at the moment. It is getting dark and a little chilly, he thrusts his hand deep into his trouser pocket and feels a flat tapering object. It is his key to the cellar of the Free School and he cannot resist the opportunity it offers.
Letting himself quickly in he goes to the cellar below where he takes off his shoes, bundles up his jacket for a pillow and climbs upon a small billiard-table which has been donated to the school. Morning comes and he rises early and departs unseen. The next day brings nothing in the way of doors to new worlds, and since he had moved to the area barely six months before he knows no one. Night falls and he must use the key again. And again, and again, and again. But he cannot see any harm in it and no one is any the wiser. After a while he gets the old iron range working with wood taken from local skips. He finds a large can, cleans it out and cooks himself the odd stew with vegetables left by the market barrows in the Portobello road. He is surviving in this way when he meets Bob, an old friend and trumpet player who has nowhere to stay. Smith, feeling that he has a moral obligation to help a friend invites him to shelter for the night at the school.
‘But we must leave early in the morning and allow no one to see or hear us,’ says Smith, and Bob accompanies him down to the cellar that night. And the next, and the next, and the next. Pretty soon a friend of Bob’s turns up. He is a painter and on the street. Bob Dylan is singing, “How does it feel to be out on your own?” and Smith doesn’t say no.
Things are now beginning to happen for him. He has recently collected a few interesting musicians together and formed a group called Moonjelly, and chief amongst these is Zen Glenn, a drummer who uses certain alchemical principles to reduce his technique to a minimum. He produces a simple rolling beat from which he will not deviate whatever the mode or speed of the music. The group play at various neighbourhood venues where their abstract improvisations are looked upon favourably by the freaks of the time. Zen has also picked up the sense of change which lies sparkling in the air and joins Smith one day in a spot of musical guerrilla warfare. Free concerts are the latest underground revolutionary fashion and Zen and Smith have decided to donate their talents to such a concert. They tell no one of their plans or the purity of the ‘happening’ would be sullied. One afternoon they descend upon Kensington Gardens where the bandstand is empty. They mount the steps to the podium.
Smith has recently borrowed an old tenor-sax from Bob’s brother and now he takes it from the bag in which it had been hidden, while Zen unwraps the cloth from a flat Sufi drum. It is a sunny day and the park is tranquil, dotted only here and there by the odd dog-walker or perambulator-pushing nursemaid. ‘It is a good day for a concert,’ thinks Smith, and raising his horn to his mouth blows a sudden high stream of tones which whirl around each other in a tight cluster. He blows hard and long, while behind him comes a mesmerising throb as Zen applies his alchemical skills to his drum and gives support to Smith’s shrieking horn. This performance is no adolescent defiance of authority. It is the creation of an event, a spontaneous happening bursting into life out of the sheer joy of living.
‘Well that’s the theory,’ thinks Smith. ‘Now let’s see how many notes I can play before a park-keeper or the fuzz turn up.’ He applies himself with vigour to his horn, riffling up and down on the keys his fingers striking willy-nilly where they fall, while from the horn comes a wailing stream of honks, shrieks and cacophonic bursts of iconoclastic music.

As the sound reaches them, the figures which dot the landscape turn their faces towards the bandstand and some of the dogs set to barking. But Zen and Smith play blithely on, their music permeating to the far reaches of the park where a keeper on his rounds hears the distant racket and begins his long determined plod to put a stop to it. They see him coming long before he reaches the bandstand and continue the performance until, stern of visage he mounts the steps to the podium. Unscrewing the neck of his saxophone Smith drops the instrument back into the bag, while Zen’s drum disappears with equal speed. They do not wait to hear the municipal admonitions but leave and make for the exit, the keeper’s voice following them across the park.
‘You can’t do that,’ he shouts. ‘Music’s not allowed in the park!’
Smith is glad to have found Zen who doesn’t get nervous in these situations. He has discovered that Zen is an ex-burglar who because he is smallish in size kept watch at the bottom of the ladder while his two accomplices went inside.
‘Yeah man,’ says Zen, when Smith asks him about it. ‘I was third man in a ladder gang.’
‘Do we have to play everything at the same speed?’ complains Dick, a trombonist who joins Moonjelly occasionally.
Zen’s Zen emerges like the proverbial uncarved block.
‘If you want to go faster, go ahead,’ he snarls, and means it.
They are playing a gig at a local church hall and the audience are interested in this altercation and clearly think that the dialogue is part of some multi-media set up. ‘Well sod you!’ shouts Dick, who loses his temper easily and he begins speeding up, pumping the rhythm faster and faster. But he is on his own since Zen stubbornly refuses to budge. Smith, torn between the two, opts in this instance for a speed around half-way between the drum and the trombone. Now he has upset Dick for his lack of support and ditto Zen for his betrayal and they glare angrily at each other, while their audience look on with delight. The performance has real depth and the music is wonderful...".
(©2010 Dave Tomlin - from the book "Tales from the Embassy" vol. 1)

no©2010 Luca Ferrari

Johnny Rotten selected a Third Ear Band's track in an old interview!

During an old interview with Tommy Vance for Capital Radio (July 16th, 1977), Sex Pistols/Public Image Limited vocalist and frontman Johnny (Rotten) Lydon selected “Fleance” 

 

from TEB’s “MacBeth” soundtrack between the records he liked in that period. 

You can check and read it at: http://www.fodderstompf.com/ARCHIVES/REVIEWS%202/capital77.html#3rd
or listen to the original Capital Radio show at:
https://soundcloud.com/rotten/sets/john-lydon-capital-radio-tommy-vance-show-july-16th-1977 

Also David Tibet (Current 93) on an unedited transcript of "The Wire" Invisible Jukebox interview (May 2001), tested by journalist Mike Barnes, said that "I quite liked the early Edgar Broughton Band. Third Ear Band, my favourite album was Macbeth and my favourite track on that album is that vocal track [Fleance, with vocals by the young Keith Chegwin]. Steve Stapleton is a big fan of the Third Ear Band. They were a band I liked the idea of but the music is a bit too frenetic" (read it at http://www.thewire.co.uk/articles/142/ ).

no©2010 Luca Ferrari

An analysis of TEB music by guitarist & electronic wizard Mick Carter.

Mick Carter, the last guitarist and engineer of the band, involved with Sweeney in the Hydrogen Jukebox project at the end of Seventies, on October 1996 wrote for my old book an interesting analysis of TEB music.
Now a Senior Archivist near to pension, Mick is an electronic experimental guitarist (à la Derek Bailey), the main responsible of the last TEB musical evolution.

"A note on the Third Ear Band's music

Third Ear Band music is based on scales/modes/ragas. To take only one example, "Alchemical Raga" (on "Brain Waves") uses the Lydian mode alias Raga Yaman (the Greek and Indian versions of the same scale) whose notes are (as we play it in A): A B C# D# E F# G# A compared with standard major scale (or Ionian Mode, or Raga Bilaval): A B C# D E F# G# A.

 

Mick Carter  on January 12th, 1989 with TEB at "Psycho Club" (Genova) 

Just the use of one change of note in a scale gives it its characteristic "flavour" (Ionian - positive, outgoing; Aeolian - sad, melacholy, introverted; Lydian, a kind of superIonian - open, positive but slightly less "grounded" than the Ionian: this is my subjective view; I'm sure the modes/ragas affect different people different ways).

It has always intrigued me how, despite changes in players from recording to recording (and despite even more radical personel changes during the intervening periods) there seems to be a continuity in the Third Ear Band recorded output from record to record, a retention of identity and approach in what has always been an improvised music and, one would think, dependant on individual and individualistic skills and attitudes.

Within this, the music also seems to progress sonically from recording to recording, a factor which can be partially explained by a gradual change in instrumentation - from acoustic to electric to electronic - partly by gradual changes in the recorded presentation of the band.

"Alchemy" is chamber music for somewhat mutated oboe quartet; the instruments are all acoustic, the ambience, apart from where the band motors off into the reverb, that of a concert hall. Double tracking is minimal.

The "Four Elements" album keep the same acoustic line-up but, although the reverb is used  in the same way as on "Alchemy", instruments are layered upon layer to give the dense texture which, at least on "Fire", gave the recording engineer such problems and which, together with "real world" sound effects, gives the album such an expansive sound.

The soundtrack of "Macbeth" ("Entr'acte"): although a  film soundtrack album, and thus approached somewhat differently to the other records, we see the first entry of electric (bass and guitar) and electronic (VCS3) instruments. Multi-tracking and studio effects are now an integral part of the sound, although necessarily undestated and non-intrusive.

"Live Ghosts", as a live recording, is obiously restricted by practical contraints, but (and from here on I am obviously less able to be subjective) the sound harks back to the "Macbeth" soundtrack and pre-echoes the album to come.

The cello has gone, replaced by electric guitar, which attempts a greater expansiveness and timbral range, but the band  is still three-quarters acoustic.

By "Magic Music" only two strictly  acoustic instruments remain, the reeds and drums, and the violin  and guitar, electronically modified, together with  the reintroduction of a later form of synthesizer, further broaden the sound out into all the ambiences possible in a studio recording.

"Brain Waves", on some tracks at least, features only one acoustic instrument - the drums. Electric violin, electric guitar, wind and guitar synthesizer all combine in the virtual world of studio electronics to produce a large and variegated sound of "orchestral" expansiveness.

Mick Carter 1996 handwritten text

Although I was obviously involved in the later recordings and, one would think, able to shape them according to my and the band's preferences, the music seemed to have a life and development of its own, a "wish" to expand and proliferate within its own identity, which, strangely, the players could only stand and watch and listen to".

©1996 Mick Carter

no©2010 Luca Ferrari

A brief interview with Dave Tomlin, Giant Sun Trolley founder.

Thanks to journalist Andy Roberts (his last book is titled "Albion Dreaming: A popular history of LSD in Britain", published in 2008 by Marshall Cavendish) I have had the opportunity to contact  Dave Tomlin, founder with Sweeney of Giant Sun Trolley and guest musician in some other TEB recordings (“Lark Rise”, on “Alchemy”, composed by him, and “The Magus” album…). 
Even if concise, Tomlin explains here some obscure things about his experience with Sweeney and the TEB...

When/where/how you met Glen in the Sixties? What you was doing in that period? 

"I met Glen at the London Free School where I was teaching music in 1966. Up until that point I was saxophonist playing modern jazz with The Mike Taylor Quartet having just recorded the LP 'Pendulum' which had just been released [Released in 1965, this very rare record it's been re-released on CD in 2007 by Sunbeam Records. Interesting to know that Tomlin recorded in studio also with The Bob Wallis and His Storyville Jazzmen in 1959. A CD, realised in 2007, is now available...]".
 

Who had the idea of Giant Sun Trolley? Which's the meaning of the band name? 

"The Sun Trolley takes its name from a poem I had written that year. It is rather naive and very hippy: 

"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
Flashes in ozonic splendour for Cosmic Man."

©1967 Dave Tomlin 

Sometimes to Glen the Giant Sun Trolley was basically a duo - you and him... but in other interviews we realize that probably was a trio, with Roger Bunn in it... Can you make us the things more clear?

"The group was composed of myself and Glen plus occasionally Dick Dadem on trombone and Roger Bunn on bass…"

Which was the project behind the Giant Sun Trolley? Glen talked about it as "a music guerrilla"...

"The group was 'free-form' so had no repertoire, and each week used different musicians to augment the group at UFO. There were no recordings. The guerrilla music was played without permission in local parks which meant we had to do a runner whenever the authorities turned up. All these details are contained in my three books "Tales from the Embassy" vol. I, II, and III [if someone is interested to buy it, please contact him through blog's editor e-mail address]. The empty Cambodian Embassy in London was squatted for fifteen years by myself and others. Glen sometimes rehearsed the Third Ear there before going to Italy. He formed this group in about 1967 when I left Sun Trolley to go travelling…". 

What do you remember about your involvement with TEB in "Alchemy" recording sessions, where you recorded "Lark Rise", a your composition? 

"I composed 'Lark Rise' on violin whilst travelling with horses and carts and came into London just as Glen was recording 'Alchemy' and did just one track before leaving". 

Do you know if some GST musical recordings (probably live) exist? 

"Sun Trolley made no recordings...". 

Did you considered Glen a friend of you? 

"Yes, Glen was a friend and I used to visit him in his last days in the hospital". 

Do you think there is a place now - in contemporary arts - for projects as GST and TEB? What are you doing now? 

“No, there is no use for anything like GTS or TEB now, everything dumbed down and too commercial. Not doing anything now except writing”. 

no©2010 Luca Ferrari

Third Ear Band rehearsaled at the squatted Cambodian Embassy in London during the late Eighties.

As every serious fan knows, Third Ear Band used the squatted Cambodian Embassy to rehearsal at least two times - in July-August 1988, just before the first Italian tour, and in November 1989 for a new Italian tour scheduled for next December, then cancelled because Sweeney's personal problems. 

You can see here a sequence of unpublished photos of the TEB (taken by Carolyn Looker) playing at the Embassy in November 1989:

TEB at the Cambodian Embassy (L-R: Dobson, Carter, Sweeney, Allen) Photo: Carolyn Looker

Maybe it's interesting to know that, inspired by the story of the squatted Embassy, Dave Tomlin wrote an interesting trilogy  titled "Tales from the Embassy" - "a non-fiction book; a true story about a group of hippy artists in the ‘70s who squat the abandoned Cambodian embassy and turn it into a Transcultural centre for Art" (according the same Tomlin). 

A long review of the book is available at www.scriptconsultancy.com/4Consultancy/Samples/SampleBookReport.rtf

no©2010 Luca Ferrari