Mike Taylor's albums reissued soon!

Tony Higgings is editing for Decca UK the reissues of Mike Taylor's two LPs for Columbia, "Pendulum" and "Trio". They will be out in June 2025 with sleeve notes including interviews with the late Dave Tomlin, John Mumford and Tony Reeves.

This is a great news and a huge event because as we know the original vinyl albums was very very rare, almost impossible to find, and the 2004 CD edition of "Trio" was in a limited press and run out very soon becoming very very expensive (I got my copy for an impossible price...).

Informing about this great news, Tony wrote me: "(...) You may remember, I put the track "Timewind" on a compilation in 2004, the first ever release from a private Neil Ardley tape, and reissued "Trio" also, the first reissue of that album on CD in 2005. Also, I got Denis Preston's own Lansdowne record collection a few years ago, including some copies of Pendulum and Trio, with Preston's writing on the sleeves!"

Dave Tomlin passed away on November 2nd, 2024! R.I.P. my dear friend!

 

This is a very sad news for all of us!

Sadly Dave passed away today, age 90.

One of a kind will be missed by all who knew him.

With these few words, Dave's brother Tony gave us the sad news in a page of IT-International Times.

I got to know Dave years ago through Steve Pank (cellist Ursula Smith's husband) and I met him in London for some interviews published in this archive. He was a cultured, clever, funny, brilliant person, an inexhaustible source about a lot of countercultural events in the 60's and 70's. His books are unique, fundamental documents for any researchers and lovers of the British underground scene.

"Tales from the Embassy," published from 2002 in three different volumes, was probably his greatest effort to tell the story of his life in the Cambodian embassy occupied by him and a group of friends to create a kind of free university on the legendary model of the London Free School. Thanks to Dave, in 1987 at the Cambodian Embassy Glen Sweeney brought together for rehearsals the first nucleus of the reborn Third Ear Band with Dave's protégé Allen Samuel on violin.

 

Author of countless articles, mainly on the IT web site, he wrote many books. Among them, I love particularly that one he edited on his friend Harry Fainlight, an underrated poet (1935-1982): this book ("Fragments of a Lost Voice," Iconoclast Press, London 2010) is a genial philological-creative reconstruction of two lost fragments of poetry found by chance. Also his autobiographical novel "India Song", published by Iconoclast press in 2005, is a masterpiece of sensitivity and intelligence.

It was Dave who introduced me to the controversial story of piano player Mike Taylor, prompting me to write what to date is the only existing biography ("Out of Nowhere," published by Gonzo Multimedia in 2015). It was only thanks to him and his brother Tony that I succeeded, and I will be forever grateful to them for this extraordinary opportunity.

I will miss him a lot!

PS: Other articles and pieces on Dave are available on Ghettoraga Archive, the official archive of the Third Ear Band at the web site: 

https://ghettoraga.blogspot.com/