Crate Digging at Home

As a result of our move last summer, my record collection got seriously scrambled. Basically the LPs got filed on the shelves in whatever order they got unpacked. The downside is that it became difficult to find anything, so if I got a notion to play The Revolutionary Ensemble...well, it took some time to locate. On the upside, these searches prompted me to listen to albums that I had not spun in ages. Here's what I've been playing over the last couple of days.

The Third Ear Band still stands as one of the most unusual bands of the progressive rock era. What made them so is the decision to jettison the usual rock instrumentation ( there is an apocryphal tale of their electric instruments being stolen) in favour of oboes, violins, cellos and assorted hand percussion. Hovering somewhere between experimental and folk, TEB performed what could best be described as atmospheric medieval ragas. Their debut Alchemy features eight tracks with titles like "Stone Circle" and "Dragon Lines" which would have made an appropriate soundtrack whilst reading Lord of the Rings. It was the sixties after all. More intense, and probably the best introduction would be their second self-titled LP a.k.a Elements a.k.a. Earth Air Fire and Water.

Here's a film clip of the Third Ear Band recorded in Hyde Park in 1970. The music is quite different from their first two lps as they are performing a vocal folk rock number.




OK, what else? Terry Riley's double lp Persian Surgery Dervishes [Shanti Records] which I bought at some point in the mid-seventies. I remember that I found this record at the most improbable place: a Discus shop (a long-gone record chain) in Pointe Claire, Quebec. How it found it's way there is a mystery. At any rate, this is a dearly loved record of mine. The album features two interpretations of Persian Surgery Dervishes: first from a live recording dated April 18, 1971 in Los Angeles and the second recorded May 24, 1972 in Paris by Riley on 'electric organ + feedback'. I would also like to point out that Terry Riley's tape-delay system pre-dates Robert Fripp's unoriginal "frippertronics" by a comfortable margin. Go for the real thing, accept no self-aggrandizing rockist substitutes.

Today, I've been working through three albums by The Revolutionary Ensemble: Vietnam [ESP Disks], Manhattan Cycles [Indian Navigation] and my personal favourite: The People's Republic [Horizon/A & M] which is pure genius. Leroy Jenkins on violin, Sirone on bass and Jerome Cooper on drums created a series of incredibly evocative and expressive tracks, especially "Ponderous Planets" and "The People's Republic". I'm not sure if any of these are currently available, but you'll discover they are worth their weight in gold if you are at all interested in the outer reaches of free improvisation.