- Deborah playing a homemade harp at the Southern California Renaissance Faire. -
(click picture to see full size)
The Golden Toad did a huge (23 performers) and magical Summer Solstice Concert at San Francisco's Grace Cathedral, june 21st 1970. The band played even on Monteray Pop Festival where they met Ravi Shankar. The Fishbachs played on and off with that band for many years. Ernest became also the Band Leader for Jamila Salimpor's belly Dance Troupe, "Balanat"
1971-75. His music for Jamila has been called, "American Tribal".
-"The Golden Toad" pictures-
Miller and Ewing's families, went on to live communally for the next two decades. The interest of some of the members on ethnical origin grew and they became involved in more traditional based music with an interest for various countries origins. They never got back in to the studio to record ever again unfortunately as the music evolved into something pretty incredible.
Ernest has gone on to study and play many other kinds of music, Gypsy Flamenco, Moroccan, and many forms of belly dance music from various middle eastern cultures, as well as French, Portuguese, English, Italian, Greek, and anything else you could probably think of he dabbled in. Charles still plays music but lives too far now to play still together or to see each other more often. Deborah now is director of the Institute for Traditional Studies, a non-profit organization (link beneath)
Ernest and Deborah (living in North California now) have made a CD with new friends (not Charles or Dustin from A Cid Symphony) under the name of "Los Californios Orchestra"; the CD is titled, "Fandango at Sonoma". The daughter of Deborah and Ernest sings on it as well as Ernie (sings and plays mandolin and jaw harp) and Deborah play percussion. They also have a middle eastern band, "Zincali" with mostly the same musicians as Los Californios Orchestra, and they're working on an Ethnic Rock band called "The Global Village Idiots". Neither has recorded yet. Ernie will debut his new band for the revival of "Balanat" (the famous San Francisco Bay area Belly Dance Troupe of the 70's) with Jamila Salimpor's daughter, Suhaila Salimpor. He has become involved in many more instruments, including bagpipes. They should be in the studio this year also ....so maybe some more recordings soon!
The reissue from A Cid Symphony from 1967 first occurred on cd by Gear Fab and then on vinyl by Akarma Records (vinyl sounds so much warmer). The 3 LPs taken from the master tapes were also repressed on yellow, purple, and green vinyl with extra unreleased tracks. Some introduction notes, a poster and several pictures on the album sleeves were added. The LP version is made with most respect for the fluentness of the music. The 2CD has a different mix. It is for completists and with more attention to the ideas behind the project. It has additional tracks with some filosophical literature. I heard both and prefered the LP-mixes much more.
Source for text on this web site : additional notes by Stanton Swihart, Roger Maglio & Dustin Frank Miller, and additional help (trough E-mailing) from Deborah. Thanx.
Dustin Frank Miller, sfo (Br.Maria), El Cid, Tio Loco,El Padrino Bradley, CA 93426
Other bands that had in common was they were all part of the San Francisco sound during the Haight-Ashbury era (1965-1967). Except as noted, all were San Francisco based. The majority of the out of town bands were from Los Angeles or Texas, but there's a few from other places. The term later band used in this list means they didn't get their act together until after the Summer of Love. At http://www.halcyon.com/colinp/bands.htm
(Tribal Folk), Ethno-Acid Folk, Raga/Flamenco/(blues) Guitar Fusion
The style of A-cid Symphony is a bit acid folk with fusions of Middle Eastern influences with yodeling, blues, folk,.. It uses a raga-like slightly droning and flowing effect, with instruments like dulcimer, guitar, ..
Leader was Dustin Mark Miller who was part of the mid-'60s Free Speech Movement at UC Berkeley. This movement galvanized a large segment of American society which formed the basis for even larger movements to come. The Anti-War Movement, Black Power, Women's rights, Gay rights, and other pivotal and historical initiatives drew from the successes and failures of Berkeley.
Tired of selling protest songs for the fund of the movement in 1966 he started with child friend Charles Ewing start a flower child's like folk band with ethnic flavors folk/ethnic along with the existing band The San Francisco Diggers. Charles' school friend Ernie Fischbach played all kinds of string instruments, drum and harmonica. Ewing had studied flamenco and classical guitar in Spain. Ewing and Fischbach had played more often together at the California State University. The trio (now based in Los Angeles) was now called A Cid Symphony, when Ernest invited his new bride (and teenage model) Deborah Cleall to join the group. Ernest and Deborah were married July 14, 1967 in Southern California, and moved to Northern California immediately as Ernest and Charles had already started studying North Indian Music with Ali Akbar Khan in Berkeley. Ernest studied the Sarod and Charles studied on his Flamenco guitar. Deborah played the tamboura for the class, (the drone instrument heard in all N. Indian music). Charles Ewing and Ernest Fischbach had already met while studying social anthropology at Long Beach State, and they had started to play more often together. At that time Ernest was playing blues and folk. Both became also more enamored with East Indian music. The Acid test definitely changed everything at this juncture in their lives, and they began to experiment with other sounds and kinds of music. They played more frequently, usually at colleges, sponsored by friends, Students for a Democratic Society, or whomever would support the music. The band continued to hold free concerts at which they fed everyone that showed up.
-on the concert poster ,from left to right; Ern playing sarod,then Charles
(in white shirt) playing guitar and Deborah playing tamboura on the right.
When the band earned its first write-up in the Sunday Los Angeles Times, they all quit their jobs on the spot and migrated to the San Francisco Bay Area, as a suggestion of their friend to go to Berkeley and record their new kind of fusion style and they did.
San Francisco music columnist Ralph Gleason introduced Miller to Max Weiss of Fantasy Records. Weiss allowed the band to use Fantasy's studios, and they recorded and released their first and only record, a self-titled triple LP, in 1967, published by the Thermal Flash Music label of Denise Kaufman, an original Merry Prankster.
The original issue were three LP's on colored vinyl with separate printed inner sleeves on which photos of the group appeared. The cardboard front cover was mostly pink; or mounted to heavy posterboard, with rounded corners rounded and a gold card attached through a hole at the top for hanging. The colored front cover was done by Les Chipnuck, a crazed 60's artist. The back cover featured a photo of an Afghan turban cap, often described as "The Mandala cover". Some copies also included concert flyers. The record labels were painted by friend Marston Schultz, filmmaker and amateur architect.
The effect of the songs there is psychedelic and quiet. They pressed an album privately of 1000 copies. Instruments now involved included dulcimer, small brass, Hindu bells. Some ethnic explorations into the raga and other territories were held. Combinations of ethnic sources with blues, flamenco and so on occurred.
The musical content of the album could also be described as a reconsideration for a reinvention of the ethnical sources and musical origins they were referring to.
Miller thought the recording would have been much more interesting 6 months later, but they do are very pleasant, warm.
At Berkeley Ewing and Fischbach studied North Indian Classical music at the Ali Akbar College of Music,(AACM) with the great master Ali Akbar Khan, with Ernest on the Sarod, and Charles on the Guitar.
-(from left to right ; Ernest on the dulcimer, Deborah in the middle playing
percussion and Charles on the right also playing a percussion instrument)-
After studying with Ali Akbar Khan the Fischbachs met Bob Thomas at the California Rennaissance Pleasure Faire and joined up with his ethnic folk band "The Golden Toad" (aka The Raggle Taggle Gypsies) one of California's premier folk/ethnic music bands led by bagpiper and musicologist, Bob Thomas and a sister band of sorts to the Grateful Dead (-in fact Bob was friends and artist to that band, but the music of The Golden Toad was acoustic and not electric). They would often join A Cid Symphony at functions such as the Renaissance Pleasure Faire. By the late sixties, after three years together, A Cid Symphony dissolved for the most part as a collective musical entity. They became more like a tribal band with several nomads involved, and performed more often in a beautiful Arab tent (drawing of that tent is on the Beatles' Magical Mystery Tour album booklet, page 19 by the way).Sometimes they performed with Firesign Theatre, a radio comedy act.
