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English Gonzo Multimedia has in its catalogue many other interesting videos with rare broadcasts of Incredible String Band, David Allen & Gong, The Byrds, Edgar Broughton Band, Hawkwind...
On the wonderful monumental "Electric Eden. Unearthing Britain's visionary music" (Faber & Faber, London 2010), an essay on folk music written by Rob Young, editor of famous English magazine "The Wire", a little place is dedicated to the Third Ear Band (with a generous quotation of this archive).
Here's the excerpt: "(...) Harvest was also the home to the Third Ear Band, who pursued a rarefied version of Pink Floyd's abstract music of this period. They were a loose conglomerate of occult-minded instrumentalists that had its origins in The Giant Sun Trolley, one of the many acts appearing at the 14 Hour Technicolour Dream. Percussionist Glen Sweeney, the group's one constant member, began his career by seizing the bandstand in London's Hyde Park with several freaky friends, and playing even after the police informed them that music was banned from the park. (They politely asked wheather the rule applied to the birds.) After Sweeney and oboist Paul Minns took part in a December 1968 multimedia event at the Royal Albert Hall called The Alchemical Wedding - at which John Lennon and Yoko Ono conducted a forty-five minutes bag in - The Third Ear Band sculpted an esoteric chamber music from acoustic elements; their first album was duly titled Alchemy. With track titles such as 'Druid One', "Stone Circle', 'Dragon Lines' and 'Egyptian Book of the Dead', these were incantational songs-without-words, a ritualistic consort music whose atonal tinctures sometimes recalled the European folk-chamber music of Béla Bartok and the terse reductionism of Anton Webern, sometimes the free play of John Steven's Spontaneous Music Ensemble. John Peel even turned up to play Jew's harp on 'Area Three'. 'I call the music alchemical because it was produced by repetition', explained Sweeney, whose muted battery of hand drums shaped hypnotic hymns to the fearful symmetry of the elements and the heavenly rotations. This was not cultish window dressing, though: the group made connections with Druid orders and accompanied their dawn solstice ceremonies. Third Ear Band (1970), often referred to as Elements because its four lenghty improvisations 'Air', 'Earth', 'Fire' and 'Water', found the group - now a quartet with the addition of Ursula Smith (cello) and Richard Coff (violin, viola) - propagating a fungal acoustic music with spores of pan-European folk, Early Music and oriental drone dynamics. Their meditational medievalism found its way into two film soundtracks they created in 1970 and 1971: for a German television film about Abelard and Heloise, and for Roman Polanski's dark-age rendering of Macbeth. The Third Ear Band's arcane, absorbing music stands as one of several unexplored lanes leading away from the psychedelic garden that remains neglected and 0vergrown". (Rob Young, "Electric Garden", pages 472-473)
Just in the first days of October, Steve Pank has sent me the photo below, portraying David Loxley (Chief Druid) during the druid ceremony of the Spring equinox in Tower Hill (London) on 2010. Just behind him CarolynLooker, Glen Sweeney's missus.
As you know, David Loxley was very close to the TEB from the beginning, involved with Druids and drawing TEB's first concert posters.
Thank to Steve, maybe one day we'll have an interview with him about that years and the band's connections with the Druids...
I think maybe even our latest project also has references to TEB. We are about to finish an album as a result of three concerts we held during the last three years loosely based on drones/electronics/acoustics/poetry. I think this live piece also proves this to be a bit influenced to TEB in bringing "the oriental" into experimental western (unscholared "rock") music. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=klf-x0X745w Sound quality is a bit poor. Plain old video recorder I guess. ChrispH (playing that lously Akai pseudo-shenai)".
Watch and listen to the track below: after three minutes of electronic carpet, infact, TEB seems almost to be reincarnated here & now!
Here's the second part of the rare Italian stuff on the Thirds written by journalist Maurizio Baiata and published on "Ciao 2001" magazine on December 24th, 1973.
Thanx researcher Daniele Briganti (read him at http://stampamusicale.altervista.org/) we can read what one of the best (at that time) underground Italian music magazine wrote about the band, with common places, gross infos, cheap philosophy and some brilliant insights...
"(...) Black misterious pages, a draw full of strange and gelid signs, a music as a viaticum to the acoustic Hell: this is the Third Ear Band of "Alchemy", first record experience, first album thrown out in whirpools of the unknown in music, nothing of "dark" or the classic gastronomic flavour as like as Black Sabbath or Black Widow: strange stories of past and cruel times open in the grooves, collocation of historical order let you know how the group mainly persue a right rediscovery of the English and Scottish black folk music, with temporal movements limited to XI and XII century, with the rhythmic outstretched to rediscovery of cults dear to Ossian, then sung by William Blake and the other sepulcher poets. But there's a background mood that seem to miss: with the coldness of music contents something of indefinable is leaping in front of eyes, maybe that love for nature, that frantic order that rules human things.
"Alchemy" is a complex and difficult work, complete. (...) The basic sound has its rise in a monodic pulse most of the time created by the percussions, then it enriches with the strings and oboe,both played on patterns of an haunting and perfect iteration of rhythms: the picture will seem more clear if compared to Terry Riley's compositions, where the sound carpet, build with one or more incessantly repeated notes, is coloured with continuous superimpositions of synth and organ...
After some very strong (and sharable) observations about the Italian music atthat time, Baiata analyzes TEB's second album, described as "the high point of their melodic and modal issue... obsessive, vitalistic, the sublimation of static and monodic music thrown on the lines of highest multiformity, the more charming and medieval rhythmic arcaism ever listened to. For the author, "Earth" is "the mythical canto of joy, of creation's beauty, of human beasts and not, of the horse that neigh, of the rhythm of flower's growth, so misterious, and we have, with the Third Ear Band, an interpretation, an all European translation in harmonic terms - easy, linear, very sweet. Among group's writings, these are the best lines, an absolutely supernatural composition, where also Riley bows...".
About "Macbeth", Baiata states that "it's not the work of ripeness, it's not the logical end of contacts with the band's extrasensorial music, but another little step along the road gotten to exceed the pattern of normal tonality, to destroy criteria of symmetry and geometry in force in England since the age of theBeatles ". He claims the record, born under the soundtrack ambiguity, "has many static moments, even if played by first order musicians". On the band's split, "happened just after "Macbeth" (but we know Sweeney and Minns played until 1975...), Baiata says "Third Ear Band's music existed just time before to be created, it was on the air, into the dreams of who came before, into the nightmares of every clever man, on the artistic measure of Self and on his power of theatrical performance of life's things".
Note for the Italian readers:
if you're interested to read the original Italian article please contact me through my e-mail dopachino@tiscali.it to receive a copy in PDF format.
Titled "Third Ear Band. The Lost Broadcasts" is produced by Gonzo (catalogue number HST069DVD) and it will cost around ten pounds (11-12 euros)...
This is the commercial published on some Web sites: "The Lost Broadcasts are a series of DVDs featuring performances that have rarely been seen since the original transmission on German television, in some cases more than forty years ago. Some of the artists featured within the series are legendary and these “Lost” performances will be a fine addition to any music fans collection. The series covers a number of styles and genres however all of the performances are of a high calibre. (...)
At the time of these performances which were recorded from September 1970, the band consisted of Glen Sweeney, Paul Minns, Denim Bridges and Paul Buckmaster, who would go onto work with Elton John amongst many other high profile artists. Three pieces were filmed on the 11th of September including the unreleased ‘Hyde Park’. The other two tracks were ‘David Grocking’ and ‘In D’, which is thought to be ‘Raga in D’. ‘Druid Grocking’ was played during a John Peel Top Gear session in the summer of 1969 and is an extended workout of the song ‘Druid One’ from the ‘Alchemy’ album. ‘In D’ is a piece originally recorded at the sessions for the debut album ‘Alchemy’.
The band returned to the studio to film once more on the 26th of September and this time performed another slightly shorter version of ‘Hyde Park’. Third Ear Band would go on to record a very famous soundtrack in 1972 for the Roman Polanski film ‘Macbeth’...".
Just a doubt about this project is related to the TEB line-up, because we know that on "Hyde Park Raga" ("Beat Club" TV programme) was involved also Benjamin Cartland...
Thanks to the Italian researcher Daniele Briganti (read him at http://stampamusicale.altervista.org/) we have here a very rare article on the Third Ear Band published on the Italian magazine "Ciao 2001" issue 51 in late 1973 (December 24th). Titled "L'apprendista e lo stregone" ["The apprentice and the sorcerer"] and written by Maurizio Baiata, it feels the effect of the times and the lack of informations press had in those days - between myth and fantasies... but with some brilliant insights. This is the part one of a two-parts file.
For Baiata Third Ear Band's music is "greatly interior", a music that "finds a bigger reason to be in Eastern land, the world of notes and harmonies, and colours, and breaths, and delirious, all Western things that are simply the epidermic semplification of an inconscious and forgotten reality kept in life by the impenetrable Eastern world. But Third Ear Band doesn't play music as like as Quintessence or the Mahavishnu. We are here on a totally different level: where it does exist a preconceived and gratified harmony by epidermic European and American canons, the group reaches to dissolve it in virtue of an approach to that measures of preconceived music in the natural order of life's animated things - plants, men, thoughts or trees".
"The third ear
About the categorization of human psychic opportunities, Western culture shows very far from that Eastern's one: where medical, psychological and introspective techniques can define just a little portion of a very huge and mysterious area of knowledge, Chineses, Japanes, Indians show exactly (with cryptic ways) the contact points with the Known and the Unknown.
The five senses find a total universalization, signification deeply linked with the mind, with religion, with the man's intrinsic spirituality; and spatial and time dimensions loose their basic incomprehensibilityconnected to the scientifically correct study of nature. In the meanwhile the development and evolution of the Eastern sound tecniques show us clearly the opportunity of an interpenetration of art and spirit...(...)"
"First complete example of externalization of these principles about musical studies made in Europe is the Third Ear Band, where the etymology of "third ear" goes to discover an absolutely unknown sound dimension - interior and occult - filtered through the study of the human and the sound expression.
Of course the third ear is that unseen, hidden who knows where, but real and present in us: it is the organ with that we perceive sound vibration, we enjoy the music, we get it, we get inside it, we totally penetrate it; for this reason band's music leaves very few to spectacular and epidermic side, it unrelentingly get inside to meanders of "unknown in music", touching so the vertex of a sound great gestures...".
"(...) Third Ear Band is a group "sui generis" at all. It's beyond comparision, even if related to the English folk revival - an extraordinary brainchild...".
At this point the author analizes TEB records (talking about "Egyptian tablas" about Sweeney's instrument...), quoting the "Alchemy" album notes, and reporting a statement of Paul Buckmaster(with no quotation of the source): "When the band was formed, I was following some specific forms of contemporary music very near to the electro-acoustic TEB's line-up was doing, but at the end I joined the band just as a friend of Sweeney because I didn't like some their things. Music was origined from occult pratices, nowdays very popular in England: of course they wasn't black masses or other kind of oddities, just a deep study of the esoteric and fantastic history of the world, something of serious, almost religious and scientific that the musicians of the band was living in their lifes and into the music, but that I wasn't involved into: most of all I was interested to the monstrous technique of the guys, their furious eagerness of research and experiment, their courage, while to live they was forced to teach and to play often in tiny clubs and for audience full of freaks, spiritualists, disciples of various philosophy of occult".
(end of part one)
Note for the Italian readers:
if you're interested to read the original Italian article please contact me through my e-mail dopachino@tiscali.it to receive a copy in PDF format.
Stefano Giannotti(born 1963) is an Italian composer, author, director, guitarist and performer. He studied composition with Pietro Rigacci and he has been the assistant of the famous Alvin Curran on “Crystal Psalms" and "Tufo Muto". Between 1983 and 1990 he performed in several European countries with the chamber music group Trio Chitarristico Lucchese (an acoustic guitar trio) and formed his first group called Ensemble Il Teatro del Faro. In 1997 he started a collaboration with the Italian choreographer Roberto Castello and between 1998 and 1999 he lived in Berlin. On 2000 he has been guest of the Kuenstlerhaus Schloss Wiepersdorf in Brandeburg and on 2002 he has been invited in Worpswede by the Ministerium of the Niedersachsen. The same year he has won the Karl-Sczuka-Preis (SWR, Baden-Baden) with his work "Il tempo cambia" and on 2007 he has got for the second time the Karl-Sczuka-Preis for his radio-piece "Gealogica".
On the present day he's playing with a new group, OTEME (Osservatorio delle Terre Emerse). His repertoire ranges from performance, radio-art, dance theatre to chamber music, orchestral scores and songs. Landscape, memory, life cycles, voices of people, languages are some of the main themes developed in Giannotti's work. His compositions have been performed in festivals, theatres, museums around the world and his collaborations included works for radios and TVs. With one of his groups, Vaga Orchestra, he played a new arranged version of TEB’s “Water” from their 1970 second studio album. From the Eighties he declares his deep appreciation for the Third Ear Band's music.
We knew 25 years ago at the time of the Ensemble Il Teatro del Faro, when I was involved with the management of the reformed TEB. You declared your great interest for their music: can you tell us how it's happened your encounter with the TEB's music?
"I've known TEB's music when I was 17 at the secondary school. In my classroom there was some friends of mine not studying music so deeply as I did but they had musical knowledge much more than me - they knew bands and artists I didn't know - I never heard about them. At that time I was listening to Genesis, David Bowie, Gong, Tangerine Dream, Van Der Graaf Generator and Mike Oldfield. They told me about Zappa (I didn't love him at the time), Soft Machine (the same), Henry Cow, Hatfield & The North, they made me know Robert Wyatt - a group of depth artists they was probably reading on some music magazines. Among these meetings there was also Brian Eno, Philip Glass and the Third Ear Band. At the beginning, as for all these kind of music, they bored me, but after all through my personal peregrinations I've already bumped into La Monte Young and Igor Stravinski... The Third Ear Band was a great discovering, I liked very much their approach to a kind of music that remembered me the Tangerine Dream and in the same time the popular theatre: I loved much the oboe, the ancestry of their proposal, maybe I was bored by the lenght and the repetitiveness of their compositions, but I got use to it quite soon. Of course I had some disputes with my classroom mates about their music: I loved more "Macbeth", but the critics stated the other two albums was better, so my mates liked more that records. There was also the pleasure for reasearching the records: infact in those days it was very difficult to find their albums in a record shop, and for that reason we did lend ourself one of two of them and we take them for many months..."
OTEME -"I was a mill"/CadutaMassi
Beyond to have included TEB music on some of your repertories, how much of their experience has gone in your music, about the sound research and the art of composition?
"The Third Ear Band has caratherized the sound of many works composed by me between 1991 and 1999. The Ensemble Il Teatro del Faro was made up with oboe/English horn, cello and electric guitar, with some other instruments as Indian organ, pan flute, ocarina, objects and toys. The music we played was quite different from the Third Ear Band's, but sometimes it contained the same spirit of improvisation and the love for that kind of sounds; maybe it was less similar about the hestetics, because, even if it was charaterized by improvisations, the most of my works is composed, not improvised".
Which are your compositions directly influenced by the TEB sound?
"The tune more directly influenced by it could be "La recita" [The play] from the suite titled "Ritratti, pagine e improvvisazioni su Amleto" [Portraits, pages, improvisations on Hamlet]. In this tune, electric guitar and English horn make a rhytmic sequence quite similar to the Sweeney's hand drums, and the cello sounds a melody, on a viola's extention, and at the end it improvises. Maybe it can recall "The Egyptian Book of The Dead", maybe more "Macbeth". Another tune surely is "Tema dei campi" [Fields' theme] that at last, after 20 years and a lot of different versions, this year it'll be recorded on a CD by my new group OTEME. On this composition the teponatzli, a percussion instrument similar to an ethnic marimba, play the continuous rhytmn, the oboe makes the melody, the clarinet does a rhytmic/melodic contracpuntual to the oboe and sometimes piccolo's phrases insert on it; the harmony is build by synth and electric bass. One of the first versions of the track (maybe composed in 1990) sounded as "Achemy", but globally my tune is more complex, because more contrapuntal. There are some influences here and there on other compositions I've written: the last one is from 2010, an experimental video I made in Poland ("The Walbrzych Notebook": see at http://www.stefanogiannotti.com/thewalbrzychnotebook.html): on a sequence of the soundtrack electric guitar is played with a bow, and I remember just before to compose this tune I used for the film the "Abelard & Heloise" soundtrack. I liked so much the combination that I stopped immediately to listen to it to avoid the risk to become prisoner of it and don't be able to compose some of mine. But at the end I composed a tune that remember in some way the Third Ear Band atmosphere."
Stefano Giannotti - "Corali III-IV"
How would you describe TEB music from a composer point of view?
"A music out of time and out of any label. As the music composed by Giacinto Scelsi, John Cage and Morton Feldman. These composers are very up-to-date in any age because they don't belong to a specific time, they are out of format. I've been so impressed to listening the TEB again after a very long time and compare them with other bands using the ethnic element in their work - as the Oregon, for example... TEB is unique, they don't smell of ECM or World Music, their semplicity is so disarming that one cannot apply the same critical categories as to a specific school of thought. It would be as lump everything together. I can't labelled TEB music as psichedelia or etno-music, or minimal, because at the end none of this genres sounds as they play..."
Observing the condition of contemporary music (I mean his level of development), do you think TEB music is still up-to-date? Why?
Surely it's a music still very up-to-date, and it's shame (I'm polemic here!) you can hardly convince some young homo-sapiens to stop just for five minutes and listen to it (generally as for all sophisticated music). Periodically I do workshop about guide to listen to contemporary music and the Third Ear Band has a place of honour there. A lot of contemporary ethno-jazz is so predictable until the first notes... it's not the same with the Third Ear Band, maybe because the musicians wasn't so great virtuous, never rivers of notes as Paco De Lucia, but power of concentration, breath and sound. In some ways, as I stated, I find a parallelism with Feldman, Cage and above all Scelsi.
Giacinto Scelsi - "Trio for strings I-IV"
Sure, if you avoid any labels you bore the societyand fatally you sink into oblivion. Years ago I tried to arrange "Water" for Vaga Orchestra, an ensemble of students of music. The band was composed by two flutes, tenor sax, violin, keyboards, four guitars, Indian organ, bass and drums. Arranging the tune, I decided to round up for semitone every descending or growing note of Ursula Smith's cello. The harmonic result has been very interesting: a continuous stream of consonant and discordant chords perfectly tied to each other, creating a speech with sense in a harmonic point of view, never ordinary, that obliges you to listen the music until the end of the track. I never thought the cello was improvised on "Water", and I'm not still completely persuaded of it".
One of the great things of the Web is that one can discover little music treasures recorded by obscure bands around the world.
Famlende Forsok is a Norwegian band recording avant-garde music from the Eighties, known in the underground for interesting albums related to medieval folk, progressive, kraut rock, industrial... all strictly 'post'.
On a recent interview (read at http://www.lunakafe.com/moon180/no180.php), talking about their tribute album to the works of American gothic witer H.P. Lovecraft ("One night I had a frightful dream", Gurls Records 2003), the musicians quoted Third Ear Band as one of the main influential bands (with Popul Vhu) during the making of the record.
Asks the interviewer: "One night... stands out compared to your other works, not only because of the language and lyrics used, taken from HP's original texts. The music also seems a bit different, at times more old-fashioned with several acoustic instruments and more discreet use of electronics. Why?"
Brt: "We had loose atmosphere in the background, wanting to arrange came from Lump. We wanted a Third Ear Band-feel, or Univers Zero".
Chrisph: "We wanted initially the music to be directly inspired by our subjective understanding of the meaning of the words... This would possibly make it even more like effect-fuelled film music than earlier works. Next, on the other hand, there was also an effort to make more traditional tunes in there. This I guess is much due to the fact that the years before this release, Lump was much into his other band The Smell of Incense, which was/is very much folk/psych oriented. At the start the landscapes were much more ambient and lacking themes based on regular harmonies. So in the end One Night... probably is a bit of this and that. Some radio-theatrical, some film-like and some like the Third Ear Band...".
Famlende Forsok in 2007.
Over the disputable Web/social networks logic of the "if-you-like-this-listen-this", it can be interesting to verify the idea of the group about its music sources because, even on a superficial listening, tracks as "The festival", "The shadow over innsmouth", "Nyarlathotep" or "At the mountains of madness" have unequivocally a TEB's flavour, attesting once more the Band is still influential on contemporary music.
Barry Plummeris a well-known English photographer from the Sixties. He has taken hundred photos of famous and less famous musicians (check it at his Web site at http://barryplummer.moonfruit.com/) and he's an important witness of that age. Because he took some photos of the TEB at the legendary 1969 Isle of Wight festival (read a report at http://www.ukrockfestivals.com/iow1969.html) I've contacted and asked him some questions.
Barry Plummer on 2010 with his wine and winners cup.
1. You have been one of the photographer at the famous 1969 IOW festival. How did you was involved with? What do you remember about the location and the mood of that legendary event? "I was photographing the festival for Disc & Music Magazine, a music weekly, to get the island is about 30 minute ferry ride from the mainland and then a bus ride to the other end of the island for the festival site. I think the mood was everyone waiting for Bob Dylan to play, when it was time for him to go on stage they filled the press area with chairs to seat the VIPS such as John Lennon, Ringo Starr, George Harrison and wives /girl friends. I also saw Keith Richards at sometime in the audience watching Fairport Convention".
2. How many photos of the TEB you took that day? Are still available? Where? How much it costs? "I only took 5 photos B/W. Just in case any one would ask for a picture in the future, I am sending 2 pics for you to use on the website no charge (if you want to send me something maybe a tee shirt or baseball cap something Italian as the cost of cashing small cheques !!)".
Richard Coff on stage (photo: Barry Plummer).
3. Where the picture have been published? "As far as I can remember they have only been recently used on the cd by Mooncrest Records "Hymn to the Sphynx" a few years back 2001. They may have been used before, but out of the thousands publications I have had of all the bands I've photographed...".
4. Do you remember something about the concert the band played?Any particular memories on the band? In the backstage? After the concert? "I
don't have any memories. I just took about 6 photos of all the folk acts
on that afternoon and audience pics outside the arena".
TEB photographed that day by Barry Plummer.
5. Did (do) you like their music? What kind of music did you enjoy at that time? And now? "I have never listened to their music not being a folk type, musical taste would Zepp, Floyd, Free, Fleetwood Mac, Eagles and now still listen to the old 70s music! A modern band I like is Muse...".
"Egyptian Book of the Dead" is one of the most popular TEB tracks. The band played the tune from the very first beginning of its career (the first documented performance is from "Night Ride" BBC radio programme on January 1st, 1969) and it was played constantly through the years until the last Italian tour in 1992 even if with different titles (i.e. "Live Ghosts" on the live from Bergamo or "Necromanticus" in a new studio rendition) and outcomes.
Composed by Sweeney, Coff and Minns almost surely in the second half of 1968, it was included at the beginning of the second side of "Alchemy", the first album published by Harvest Records on May 1969. It lasts 6:48, while on the last period, performed just at the end of the gig as a sort of seal, it could last also around 12:00.
Being so lucky to listening to the band playing live (even if after the '80's), my personal memories bring me to the concert in Gorizia (November 24th, 1989), during the third Italian tour: you can listen to the performance on some records (i.e. "Live", published by Voiceprint in 1996), but if you wasn't there that night you cannot feel on your spine that undescribable hanging atmosphere of gelid, sinister terror. As Italian journalist Piero Bielli wrote on the gig ("Auditorium" n. 4, 1990): "(...) "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".
What kind of power has this incredible track?
From a musical point of view, "Egyptian Book of the Dead" (studio album version) has a simple structure: basically it is a hand drums drone with tonal/atonal improvisations of violin and oboe. One of the last version of the track, "Necromanticus" (as bonus track on "Live Ghosts" CD reissue) is a powerful crescendo, based on a progressive accumulation of instruments (bells - hand drums - oboe - violin - electronic effects) that picks up speed culminating in a very strong cacophony just before to stop abruptly.
SOURCES & INSPIRATION
About the sources of inspiration, we know the band took it from the original ancient "Egyptian book of the dead" (the papirus of Ani, 24o BC), circulating in those years also inside the English undergound culture (an edition of the first version edited by E.A. Wallis Budge in 1895 was published in England also in 1967). The book was not a single text but a compilation of spells and instructionsdesigned to guide the deceased through the dangers of the underworld, ultimately ensuring eternal life, and comprised a collection of hymns, spells to allow the deceased to pass through obstacles in the afterlife. The Book of the Dead was most commonly written on a papyrus scroll and placed in the coffin or burial chamber of the deceased.
It could be considered very superficial and quite semplicistic imagine that Sweeney intended the track as a soundtrack of the main rite included in the book, one of the most terrific sequence of the book: the weighing of the heart. But I think it can be very plausible. If it were so, we'd have an attractive appliance to imagine the atmosphere of the ritual and the structure of the track could be interpreted in a brand new way.
WHAT IT HAPPENS TO THE DECEASED
As Wikipedia states, "the path to the afterlife as laid out in the Book of the Dead was a difficult one. The deceased was required to pass a series of gates, caverns and mounds guarded by supernatural creatures. These terrifying entities were armed with enormous knives and are illustrated in grotesque forms, typically as human figures with the heads of animals or combinations of different ferocious beasts. Their names—for instance, "He who lives on snakes" or "He who dances in blood"—are equally grotesque. These creatures had to be pacified by reciting the appropriate spells included in the Book of the Dead; once pacified they posed no further threat, and could even extend their protection to the dead person. Another breed of supernatural creatures was 'slaughterers' who killed the unrighteous on behalf of Osiris; the Book of the Dead equipped its owner to escape their attentions. As well as these supernatural entities, there were also threats from natural or supernatural animals, including crocodiles, snakes, and beetles".
The TEB's "Experiences" (Harvest 1975) retro cover with clear references to the rite.
THE WEIGHING OF THE HEART Again from Wikipedia: "If all the obstacles of the Duat could be negotiated, the deceased would be judged in the Weighing of the Heartritual, depicted in Spell 125. The deceased was led by the god Anubis into the presence of Osiris. There, the dead person swore that he had not committed any sin from a liste of 42 reciting a text known as the "Negative Confession".
The weighing of the heart.
Then the dead person's heart was weighed on a pair of scales, against the goddess Ma'at, who embodied truth and justice. Ma'at was often represented by an ostrich feather, the hieroglyphic sign for her name. At this point, there was a risk that the deceased's heart would bear witness, owning up to sins committed in life; Spell 30B guarded against this eventuality. If the scales balanced, this meant the deceased had led a good life. Anubis would take them to Osiris and they would find their place in the afterlife, becoming maa-kheru, meaning "vindicated" or "true of voice". If the heart was out of balance with Ma'at, then another fearsome beast called Ammit, the Devourer, stood ready to eat it and put the dead person's afterlife to an early and unpleasant end".
Section of the Book of the Dead depicting the Weighing of the Heart.
AN INTERPRETATION OF THE THIRD EAR BAND'S TRACK
The beginning of the track, a suggestive (Stravinskian) prelude with wind chimes and a dreaming (Debussian) oboe is marked by the violin low notes in an incessant incisive contracpuntual pattern, until the hand drums start to play on a metronomical rhythm never changed. Oboe and violin improvising on the bordone with progression of notes by the violin and oboe scales. Here the deceased is going through the path of the afterlife and you can understand the journey is not so easy for him at all... Around the minute 6:00 violin accords as ghosts flying around and high oboe notes, while at the 8:48 the tracks is stopped with a quiet almost relaxed end (an ironic Paul Minns about the track's coda in 1996: "I remember nothing of the production except that a few unnecessary effects were introduced, the worst at the end of "Egyptian Book of the Dead" sounding like a pyramid's bathroom..."). On "Necromanticus", after the first quite similar part, around 6:00 you can listen to a sort of interlude just before the track has a clear acceleration of the hand drums. Listening to this version, around 7:25, the deceased is in front of Ma'at for the weighting of the heart and the pathos here is at its highest level on awaiting the result.
At 8:49 the music stops but the result is not so clear...
Other versions, as like that played at Gorizia (one of my favourite ever!), are even more direct and powerful because the progression is clear and very speedy and the music stops abruptly leaving the listener absolutely shocked.
There, at 8:55, after a very long sequence of Carter's electronic effects, when Sweeney's hand drums start to beat his invariable pattern, you can listen a wall of sound of noise, electronics, strong electric guitar chords, Dobson's soprano free jazz improvisations build itself before you and you can just see the deceased terrified on awaiting the verdict.
Another excerpt with the weighing of the heart.
Anyway, as in the original studio version, TEB seems doesn't want to tell us what will happen to the deceased: the verdict is open to all interpretations because it seems more important to focalize that specific momentum, the state of consciousness where everyone knows inside himself if he lies or not...
A POSSIBLE MEANING FOR THE BAND
The Weighing of the Heart step is one of the few parts of the Book of the Dead with an explicit moral content. The judgement of the deceased and the Negative Confession were a representation of the conventional moral code which governed Egyptian society. When Sweeney dead, I'm sure it wasn't a simple casuality or just an eccentricity his wife Carolyn decided to read excerpts from the Egyptian ancient text at the funeral. She wrote me on September 2005 about it: "(...) 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".
I'm persuaded "Egyptian Book of the Dead" was the sign the TEB play to advise the people of their responsability into the life. No words, just sounds and emotions. As a pagan, earthly prayer.
"Alchemy" (LP/CD - Harvest Records, UK 1969-2004) "Live Ghosts" (LP/CD - Materiali Sonori, ITA 1987 live) as "Live Ghosts" "Live Ghosts" (LP/CD - Materiali Sonori, ITA 1990 live/studio) as "Live Ghosts" and "Necromanticus" (studio bonus track) "New Forecasts from the third ear almanac" (cassette - ADN Records, ITA 1989 live) "Live"(CD - Voiceprint, UK 1996 live)
"Hymn to the Sphynx" (2CD - Mooncrest Records, UK 2001 live/studio M) "Raga Live" (2LPs - Turning Point, ITA 2002 live)
TEB's "EGYPTIAN BOOK OF THE DEAD" RADIO PERFORMANCES BBC "Night Ride" (January 1st, 1969)
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Third Ear Band 1969: Paul Minns, Glen Sweeney and Richard Coff (photo: Ray Stevenson).
Luca Chino Ferrari (b. 1963) is an Italian music writer. Since 1985 he has written and translated books about folk and rock musicians as Third Ear Band, Robyn Hitchcock, Captain Beefheart, Tim Buckley, Nick Drake, Syd Barrett & the Pink Floyd for the main Italian publishers. He met Syd Barrett in 1986 and did contribute to the reunion of the Third Ear Band during the '80s. His latest books was published in 2020 for English ReR November Books, as a collection of stuff about the Third Ear Band, and in 2024 as a collection of writings about Syd Barrett (in Italian). He runs a personal Web site (in Italian/English) at https://chino6339.wixsite.com/gelatoaicorvi
TEB recording at Abbey Road Sudios in February 1971
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"Third Ear Band music is a reflection of the universe as magic play illusion simply because it could not possibly be anything else. Words cannot describe this ecstatic dance of sound, or explain the alchemical repetiton seeking and sometimes finding archetypal formes, elements and rhythms...".
(Glen Sweeney on "Alchemy", Harvest Records 1969)
Paul Buckmaster at Hyde Park (June 7th, 1969).
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"ALCHEMY"
"Alchemy" (Harvest 1969)
Third Ear Band live at Hyde Park (June 7th,1969)
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Read "Necromancers of the drifting West"!!!
A book on the Third Ear Band edited by Luca Ferrari (published by Stampa Alternativa, Rome 1997). WITH THE FIRST ORIGINAL VERSION OF "ABELARD & HELOISE" SOUNDTRACK!
Third Ear Band at the Roundhouse (London, May 30th 1969).
As alike or unlike as blades of grass or clouds...
"The music is the music of the Druids, released from the unconscious by the alchemical process, orgasmic in its otherness, religious in its oneness communicating beauty and magic via abstract sounds whilst playing without ego enables the musicians to reach a trance-like stage, a "high" in which the music produces itself. Each piece is as alike or unalike as blades of grass or clouds".
(From the 1969 Isle of Wight concert programme)
TEB - "THE LOST BROADCASTS" DVD (Gonzo Multimedia, UK 2011)
Richard Coff at Isle of Wight Festival, August 1969 (photo: Barry Plummer).
Pseudo-mystical...
“The trouble is that you can't be mystical without being called pseudo-mystical, and it's the fault of our previous education. I'm at Glastonbury most of the time, but we're all completely honest about it. We'll even use it honestly to make money, because the ancient Egyptians who were into it all said that you had to be rich because only then can you resist temptation”.
(Glen Sweeney to Richard Williams, “Melody Maker” June 1970)
"Macbeth" by Roman Polanski (Playboy Production, UK 1971)
“I've always felt that music should be pure. If you have lyrics, you are preaching in a way. Somehow words are a block to communication. It's almost impossible for me to explain exactly how I feel about this, that's why I'm a musician. The only way to really understand what I mean, is to firstly listen to a pop group and then listen to us, and then I hope you will know what we're trying to say."
(Glen Sweeney to Muz Murray, 1969)
A Third Ear Band tribute
Roberto Musci - "Mosaic. A tribute to Third Ear Band" (CD - Gonzo Multimedia HST411, 2016)
TEB 1971: Sweeney, Minns, Bridges and Buckmaster (photo: Blackhill Enterprises).
NOTES FROM OVERGROUND
“No announcements, numbers lasting 15 to 20 minutes, art form or con?
This might be valid criticism of (A) Thunderstorm (B) a cricket (C) Third Ear Band.
Their approach to music is different because there is no duality, no conflict between the natural element of chance and the human element of control, did the moon ask to be reflected in the water? If it wasn’t for the trees would the wind know when it was blowing? Paul Minns says there are some very beautiful forests in Hyde Park, trying to put titles to music is rather like trying to answer the question where does my hand when it becomes my fist”.
(From the Al Stewart-Third Ear Band 1970 tour programme)
TEB 1970: Sweeney, Minns, Coff & Smith (photo: Blackhill Enterprises).
"The Centipede was happy, quite, until a Toad in fun said: "Pray, which leg goes after which?". This worked his mind to such a pitch, he lay distracted in a ditch considering how to run". (Third Ear Band, 1970)
TEB at Isle of Wight Festival, August 1969 (photo: Barry Plummer).
"Music from Macbeth" (Harvest 1972)
Third Ear Band - "Experiences" (Harvest 1976)
WEIRD SCENES
“We'd rather people called us a pop group. We do ragas, that aren't really ragas at all, and unless we get a turned on promoter, we get into some weird scenes. At Norwich once, when the promoter saw the audience sitting down and closing their eyes to our music, he accused us of putting them to sleep! Complete paranoia. So I imagine we wouldn't do too well on the Pop Proms”.
(Glen Sweeney interviewed by Chris Welch - “Melody Maker” July 12th, 1969)
Third Ear Band - "Fleance" (Odeon 1972) Japan single edition
Third Ear Band - "Live Ghosts" (Materiali Sonori 1988)
VERY MUCH UNDERGROUND
“It's just a question of advertising. We've stayed very much Underground - no photos - and I think this was necessary so people wouldn't put us in a bag. We'd rather the just came up and heard us without ANY preconceived ideas. I suppose it is a bit shattering to see violins and cellos”.
(Glen Sweeney interviewed by Chris Welch - “Melody Maker” July 12th, 1969)
Third Ear Band at a Druids ceremony in Glastonbury Tor (April 15th, 1970).
OTHER TEB RELEASES/APPEARANCES
"Picnic. A breath of fresh air" (2LPs - Harvest SHSS 1/2, UK 1970) various Harvest artists anthology
"Harvest Heritage. 20 Great" (LP - Harvest , UK 1977) various Harvest artists anthology
"The Harvest Story Vol. 1" (LP - Harvest EG 260097 1, UK 1984) various Harvest artists anthology
"All frontiers" (CD - Materiali Sonori MASO CD 90026, ITA 1991) various artists live compilation
"Sonora 2/91" (CD - Materiali Sonori, ITA 1991) various Materiali Sonori artists compilation
"Radio Session" (CD - Voiceprint VPR017, UK 1994) live album
"Materiali Sonori" (CD - Olis OM 0021, ITA 1996) various Materiali Sonori artists compilation
"Live" (CD - Voiceprint VP157CD, UK 1996) live album
Third Ear Band - "New Forecasts from the Third Ear Almanac" (ADN Records 1989)
90% improvisation...
"I'd say ninety per cent of our music is improvisation. It's not really Indian music, although we use a drone instead of the usual bass line riffs. The music draws from everywhere.
"I think our appeal is that audiences can draw their own thing from us. We make no announcements and none of the numbers have titles. People in colleges we play come up after and say they can get fantastic images in their mind when they listen. We can offer a complete dream. The old Celtic bards used to have the same ability".
(Glen Sweeney interviewed by Chris Welch - “Melody Maker” July 12th, 1969)
“Third Ear Band’s new album “Magic Music” isabout music as pure vibrations, as such it can be linked with colour because colour is vibration. It can even be linked to the music ofthe spheres which states that the vibrations of the planets can be heard with the third ear (silence). The free ragas that we play are modal, each note can be heard as a sound-colour that produces its own mood.Our rhythms come from all overthe world, and we use these ideasand many others to try to make a new world music”.
(Glen Sweeney, notes on the “Magic Music” inner cover, 1990)
SOLOS DISCOGRAPHIES
- GLEN SWEENEY -
Various Artists - "The greetings compact vol. 2" (CD - Materiali Sonori, 1990)
Rolling Stones - "Sticky fingers" (LP/CD - Rolling Stones Records, 1971)
Carly Simon - "Hotcakes" (LP/CD - Elektra, 1974)
Elton John - "Single man" (LP/CD - Rocket, 1978)
- NEIL BLACK (selection) -
UB40 - "Present Arms" (LP/CD - DEP, 1981)
Joan Armatrading - ""Track Record" (LP/CD - A&M, 1983)
Third Ear Band 1969: Minns, Sweeney and Coff at the Kensal Green Cemetery of London (photo: Ray Stevenson).
Third Ear Band - "Brain Waves" (Materiali Sonori 1993)
Eight drunk rugby players
"We once had eight drunk rugby players yelling dirty songs at us. We played quieter and quieter. In the end they seemed ashamed and shut up. But I still don't think they dug the music!".
(Glen Sweeney interviewed by Chris Welch - “Melody Maker” July 12th, 1969)
Third Ear Band, Vinci 1989: Allen, Sweeney, Dobson and Carter (photo: Lucia Baldini).
QUOTATIONS, COVERS, REMIXES, MANIPULATIONS OF THIRD EAR BAND MUSIC
Stone Breath - "A silver thread weave the seasons" (2CDs - Hand/Eye, USA 2008). A 'cover' of "Fleance".
Marco Lucchi - "Baby a" (ITA 1982). A composition with a sampler of "Stone Circle".
Radio Noisz Ensemble - "Yniverze" (CD - Garden of Delights 1982/2009). A 'folky' quotation of "Water".
Fabio Zuffanti - "Third Ear Band demixed" (CD-r - Spirals Records, ITA 2000). The four elements electronically manipulated.
Algarnas Tradgard - "Delayed" (CD - Silence Records, UK 2001). A quotations of "Water" recorded in 1973-1974 (!).
Lady Husk & The Good Ship Neotropic - "A monstrous psychedelic bubble exploding in your mind" (file MP3 - The New Worck, NL 2007). A remake of "No title" (?!).
I Monster - "The Art of Chill vol. 6 - Mixed by I Monster" (2CDs Platipus, UK 2009). A remix of "Fleance".
Vibes and Stuff - guest mix Coby Sey (MP3 - UK, 2010). A remix of "Water".
AA.VV. - "The Fruits de Mer Annual for 2011" (2x7" - Fruits de Mer Records, UK 2011). A cover of "Fleance" by the HI-Fiction Science.
