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The Third Ear Band RR:
"I
ended up getting a call from Glenn 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 of1977 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 Glenn 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 Glenn Sweeney (percussion), Paul Minns (oboe), Mick Carter
(guitar and violin) and ex-Maqic 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instruments has been replaced by more inventive use of conventional rock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 Glenn 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. |