TOUCHSTONE – Tarot. Slip & Slide Ltd. 157. German release. FACTORY SEALED NEW CD. Originally issued in 1972 on United Artists Records. This edition issued in 2016. MUSICIANS:  Tom Constanten (keyboards), Paul Dresher (electric, acoustic, 12-string guitars, flute), Gary “Chicken” Hirsch (percussion), Wes Steele (bass, cello), Art Fayer (violin), Jim Byers (classical guitar), and Rubber Duck nee Joe McCord (tambourine). TRACKS:  The Turtle (0:46), Greed (1:37), The Thief Of Cups (1:33), Harlequin (The Fool’s Theme) (3:03), The Maiden’s Waltz (1:18), The Lover’s Walk In Magic Forest (3:43), The Birth Of The Hermit/Mandala Music (3:38), The Mystic Carpenter (1:20), The Chariot Space Voyage/The Star (4:57), The Moon (3:15), The Old Fool’s Reel (1:42), The Devil/The Fight (4:20), Limbo (1:38), and The Turtle (1:15). DESCRIPTION:  Originally presented at the Chelsea Theatre Center, Brooklyn. Conceived by Joe McCord aka Rubber Duck (a San Francisco Bay area mime artist), produced by Richard Fields, and staged by Robert Kalfin, who founded The Chelsea Theater Center as a non-profit group in 1965. Musically this is exceedingly diverse instrumental music that accompanied the play Tarot. Stylistically you get some progressive passages, folk, rock, blues, jazz, and jams featuring electric violin, great guitar work, and the keyboard and compositional work of, then, former Grateful Dead member Tom Constanten along with other Bay area musicians who had also been part of the show band for earlier performances in Berkeley prior to bringing the play to New York. Prior to the coming together of Touchstone and Tarot, Joe would sometimes do his mime thing between Grateful Dead sets with improvisational backing by Tom, Mickey Hart, and Jerry Garcia.

 

For your further reading enjoyment and enlightenment I offer Tom Constanten’s account of Touchstone and Tarot as it appears in Tom’s book Between Rock & Hard Places:

 

“I found myself rehearsing what was to become Tarot with musicians like Peter Rowan, Richard Greene, and Mickey Hart. There were even a few gigs around the Bay Area, playing behind the show’s driving force, mime Joe McCord… Ron Wilson and David Garthwaite (brother of Terry) managed to find time off from the Joy of Cooking to join us a few times. Don Buchla even sat in with us, with his ‘Buchla box’ synthesizer, one night at Mandrake’s in Berkeley. By late fall, 1970, the show was ready to take to New York – there was a commitment from the Chelsea Theater Center in Brooklyn to mount it…  The musicians that went East to do Tarot included Gary ‘Chicken’ Hirsch, of Country Joe & the Fish fame…Paul Dresher, guitarist/flutist/sitarist/and musican extraordinaire - it's been a delight to watch his career unfold since; Wes Steele, bassist…Jim Byers, a Michael Lorimer guitar student; the peripatetic violinist, Art Fayer; and myself on keyboards. The troupe was known as the Rubber Duck Company (as such they opened up for the Grateful Dead as far back as August of 1969), so naturally enough we were the Rubber Band… Village Voice reviewer Carman Moore came to see Tarot during the run in Brooklyn (with Berio, whom I remember faintly applauding) and described the mix as ‘magical’… The run at the Chelsea Theater Center was for a fixed duration, but there was some interest generated in moving the show to Manhattan. What that meant to us was a series of showcase performances (for potential backers), and a few reprises of the mime/music show at the Village Gate… Just when it looked like we were all set to move the show into the Circle in the Square on Bleecker Street…one of the major backers suddenly and inexplicably pulled out. The remaining producer, Richard Fields…got United Artists Records to make up the difference as part of an ‘original cast album’ deal.” The band changed their name to Touchstone, and recorded the Tarot album in April of 1971 at Electric Lady Studios. 





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