IT IS COMPETITION TIME AGAIN !

As promised here is the new competition. The prize will be a signed copy of 1 o n e which is a CD of four unreleased and re mastered songs by Luke and myself. The songs are ZYDO GAZEBO, SIX WHITE HORSES, CATCH MY BREATH and SAY YOU LOVE ME. Some of you will have heard three of these songs in an MP3 format on Myspace whereas the new CD contains the masters. The CD will be available at all our gigs along with a new EBB CD of previously unreleased demos and tracks called The Ones That Nearly Got Away plus a collection of their own demos called Not A Pretty Sight from Steve and Art. All of these CD s will be available at shows on the upcoming tour. Songs from all of the new CD s can be currently heard on our Myspace though the sleeve pics seem to have temporarily gone walkabout.

Because the last competition was lost I am going to add a copy of SUPERCHIP signed by all of the EBB and a signed T- Shirt.


So what do you have to do to win the competition?
1. In the comments section of this post write a caption for the photo below of the coppers and little girl. By the way she is Steve’s daughter who has her own family now. She is as gorgeous now as then. This photo is one of my all time favourites.
2. List your three favourite EBB songs.

Steve will judge the best caption to the photo and when we return from Germany we will announce the winner who will have to email a postal address to where the prizes can be sent.
This competition will be live until the beginning of the UK Tour so get posting your captions in the comments section of this post. As in the last competition you can enter as many times as you like providing you enter with a different name or anonymously each time.

The EBB finished rehearsals yesterday in preparation for the upcoming European / UK tour. I can tell you we all worked extremely hard as we wanted to build improvements into the show for 2007. We all ended the rehearsals very happy with the results and we have added a new song called Soldiers of the Light to the show. We have also put Poppy in and Green Lights back in along with Last Electioneer which we took out for a while to save my voice for the Live DVD set in Bonn.

Finally, in response to enquiries regarding obtaining copies of photos from The First Supper and Exhibits from A New Museum I have put details on the Exhibits From A New Museum weblog.

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weymouth from the pier - a good place to catch a sea bass

Occasionally you see an advert on E-Bay That goes something like this :
Diawa Multi Section Specialist Sea Bass Fishing Rod for sale. I Love this rod, it’s a real beauty. I’ve been a collector of multi – piece bass rods for years but circumstances have changed and I’m never going to get a chance to use it again. WHY? it goes on - Watch out for my up coming auctions. WHAT COULD HAVE CAUSED THIS CATASTROPHE?

I made a list of some of the possibilities. This person .......

is newly married and they need the cash

has a new born child and it is time to be mature and knuckle down to what is important and to leave that 20 lb sea bass for some one else to catch (me)

is off to fight in a war no one believes in

is injured and or disabled preventing him or her from getting to a fishing mark or using the rod

has a partner who is tired of being a so called fishing widow / widower and has just finished assertive training classes

has become ill in the UK and is saving up for private health care

is a nurse at the Chelsea and Westminster Hospital in London and cannot afford to pay the Congestion Charge. Unlike many of their colleagues who will resign, they are trying to raise enough money to stay working a little longer and give up the occasional fishing trip to Brighton

is having to pay out a large sum every month to support an elderly relative living on a state pension

is so concerned about the lack of progress of his or her daughters literacy skills they have decided to supplement her primary education with private tuition

has promised to take the kids to Florida and that’s the end of it

is tired of spending lots of good money on bait only to go days with out catching any thing big enough for dinner because illogical EEC fishing regulations and greedy trawler crews are emptying the sea

is moving to a bigger house where the loft in the roof can be converted to a flat so the Nanny can live in

I am sure any one reading this could add to the list quite easily, either from personal experience or knowledge of others lives. Some times we have to give up pleasurable pursuits and hobbies for the good of the group whether it is giving up fishing to spend more time with the family or giving up driving a car to save the planet.

On this day I am in the middle of a small crisis which is stressful. The issues raised by this are important both to myself, the band and the people I love which of course, includes the band. What is worst is that the problem is the result of outsiders actions and inaction over which we have no control. The crisis might or might not be resolved. As crises go this is not so terrible but it is one of those times when I am forced to question the wisdom of relentlessly pursuing an aim because it has always been the way. This presents a range of personal concerns and questions around how I am spending my time and living my life. Who needs me and why? What do I really need? What should I give up or give up on? How can I help and really make a difference? What might I begin to to do next? These are big questions. They are questions First Supperists are well acquainted with. I know this from reading your comments and many emails.

As I type the sun is shining beautifully vanquishing the demons if only temporarily. The sun pours in through my window not so many miles from the window I used to look out of in our flat above the rooftops near Finchley Road in North London. It was such a day when the song Evening Over Rooftops first came to mind all those years ago though it was a summers evening not a late winter afternoon. There was a similar light in my room then as now. I am thinking how good life is and how relatively inconsequential and unimportant my problems really are. It is good to know this at times of crisis and disappointment. It doesn't fix problems nor is it an alternative to dealing with them but it can help restore balance and the energy needed to fight on. In this frame of mind I am reflecting on how fortunate I am to be sitting here with food in the fridge and cupboards, to have shelter, to have my people and to know and be known to all of you. It is good to catalogue the good things we take for granted.

My life has been and still is a fascinating journey. I am grateful for my blessings most of the time but some times during crisis I whine and pointlessly ask - why me? I am extremely fortunate to have the luxury of being able to make informed choices with the potential to effect good things as well as make mistakes. There is the distinct possibility that significant change is imminent in my life and possibly overdue. I might have to give up a couple of things. I hope it has nothing to do with having to sell my favourite sea bass rod though.

........................................

The EBB is scheduled to be rehearsing again at the weekend prior to the first leg of the tour in Germany. More on all of this later. I will post THE COMPETITION before we go and leave it running until we return.

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kids recycling garbage- Buenos Aires - photo by Luke Broughton

My old dad often used to say “ Write some thing happy, a pop song. Never mind all this doom and gloom” yet he listened enrapt to Leonard Cohen. I guess I never did write the archetypal pop song but then again I am not saddled with having to sing In the Summer Time for my supper. My dad was the guy who suggested we call ourselves The New Brooms. This was the man who, not unexpectedly given his experiences, would some times espouse extreme Victorian values either to howls of derision or stoney silence. On matters of mental health and a psychologist’s prediction that one in five university students would experience some kind of mental illness, he once exclaimed “ Break downs! In my day you just had to pull your socks up and get on with it”. This was the non-conformist who walked with a sandwich board outside Warwick public school after Steve was expelled for having a non-regulation hair cut. Dad just got up and went out to do what could be done and I have always respected him so much for that. Back then we all sat an exam at the age of eleven or there abouts and Steve had achieved a high pass score which gained him a public scholarship to Warwick school which was paid for by the county. For the record the problem was just that Steve’s hair could not be parted and even when ordered back to the barbers, to have a “short back and sides”, it still had a “Beatle cut” shape in the front. The barber wrote a letter for our parents that stated Steve’s hair could not be parted according to headmaster Martin’s orders. Martin rather bravely told my mom, “ He would expel a boy for having ginger hair if he wished”. At that moment he was probably lucky to keep his head on.
I think this might well have had a far more significant impact on things than any of us could have known at the time, especially for Steve. Martin’s words have rung in my head as a symbol of prejudice and oppression ever since. All this was at a time when Williamson the head teacher at Leamington College which was the grammar school I attended, could and did cane you with complete impunity, until your buttocks were bruised and laced with livid weals. I knew the painful indignity of that all too well. The injustice of it all still rankles and these events are among those that still inspire me to protest and to continue to claim the right to do so.

Times have changed but there are still many offences and much exploitation perpetrated by grown ups on children and young adults. Given the most recent cases of abuse on children one might ask how dare anyone seek to improve any thing before we address the needs and rights of all of the children? Recently Noel Gallagher said a Unicef report ranking the UK bottom on child wellbeing across 21 industrialised countries "kind of makes me angry".
He added: "When the Labour Party got in it was all about children and education and yet 10 years down the line there's people saying that kids are better off in Poland. That's not right."

The EBB supports the NSPCC.

http://www.nspcc.org.uk/html/home/home.htm

copyright e d g a r b r o u g h t o n 2007

crosses that marked the graves of british soldiers who fell during world war one

I saw these crosses in a very small and lovely disused church in Suffolk last weekend. They were used to mark the graves of the fallen in world war 1 and were later replaced by stone crosses. I found the sight of them very moving. I plan to record some of Luke's songs in this church later in the year when the weather is better.Lloyd George, who as Liberal prime minister declared that troops returning from war in 1918 must have "homes fit for heroes". This was the inspiration for the song Homes Fit For Heroes by the EBB. Between the wars, the building of council houses steadily increased. But some of the newly created tenement towns were as ghetto-like as the slums they replaced.We recently heard how the families of British soldiers serving in Iraq and Afghanistan are living in squalid conditions on army bases. Nothing new there. We also know that it is almost impossible for a younger person like Luke to afford any kind of housing in London and rents are prohibitive.

The EBB will be rehearsing again at the weekend for the forth coming tour. The UK leg was recently put at risk of being cancelled due to none payment of monies to Eclectic Records by one of their distributors. I am happy to say this has now been resolved but it shows how precarious our position is in these strange times. Meanwhile I was told by a little bird that the Black Eyed Peas were recently paid a million and a half for a 30 minute spot. For some people money is in plentiful supply while rightly so, we have to cut our cloth accordingly.

I have been mastering some unreleased songs for a EBB compilation CD today. It was quite a nostalgic task as I haven't listened to any of them for some years. We hope this will be ready for the tour but our priority is to rehearse the show. Eclectic tell me the EMI / Eclectic compilation complete with Out Demons Out from the Glastonbury set will be released in April.

The fishing was useless at the weekend as gallons of flood water pushed through the Stour at a frightening rate. We got out for a short session with lures late on Sunday afternoon but didn't catch. Still, there will be other days. Roll on Summer when the pike fight.

Let me apologise once again for the lost competition. It was going so well and I was extremely annoyed by the carelessness of Google resulting in it's loss. Never mind all is well now and I have devised a new competition for the near future so keep looking. I think that is about all for now.

Peace

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Hopefully this coming weekend is going to provide my last opportunity to go fishing again for quite some time. The season ends next month, when we are touring, until the summer. I will take one spinning rod and a few lures on tour with me. The weather has precluded any quality fishing for some time now and time is running. The photo above is one of my favourite spots on the Suffolk Stour. I have had many a good fighting pike out of here as well as the odd good perch. Wish me luck.

The EBB had a very productive weekends rehearsals last weekend and will be rehearsing again in a couple of weeks. I never enjoyed rehearsing in the past as much as I do these days. We are trying to integrate a couple of new things in the show. We've put Poppy in, have put Green lights back as well as The last electioneer. We have been kicking around a new song called Soldiers of the light and with luck it will be included. Some of our projected new plans have had to be curtailed due to time constraints. We have another T-shirt design and will be re printing the Original Rebel shirt. The DVD is out in the UK in March. Luke and I will probably put out a small collection of new songs soon working title The First Course.

As you can see we have fixed the problem with the blogs in as much as there is a current First Supper and the archived 2006 First Supper. I hope you like the new addition in the shape of Exhibits From A New Museum. I wanted to have a space just for pics with out tying them to text.
Steve suggested we might call the new First Supper the Second Supper but as he some times says - "Trust me I am a drummer", so there you go. I have a friend who says - "Trust me I am a Social worker". I am not sure which is the best option. I suppose I should be thankful Steve is our drummer and not our Social worker.(lol)

Steve Boyle aka Shoreham_Steve sent me a link to his photographs which I am putting here http://www.stevejboyle.co.uk/ because in my opinion they are really worth looking at. There are a good few crackers in the collection. Enjoy!

Well back to the grind stone. I have a load of DAT s, cassettes, mini discs and quarter inch tapes to check for the new CD. Still it's better than working for a certain Borough Council which I will be doing again, later this evening. There is an Ofsted inspection of their Youth Service scheduled for October and if you can imagine a rabid dog chasing it's tail that is what is going on. As our good friend Story John Edgar wrote in a recent email to me - "Having also been a performing arts lecturer in FE and HE for several years, I've always had a hard spot for those who hand down edicts from above and then leave those down in the swamps to deliver". Aye!

A new competition will be posted here in the next few days as soon as it seems folk know how to get comments on here so, keep looking. The prize will be the same exclusive songs and a copy of Superchip. So, leave a comment - let us know you still care after the recent IT machinations.

Peace



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Hi every one - It looks as though when transferring The First Supper to it's new home at Google they lost the new bits and left the rest as a cache , which is what you can see if you go through the new links on the weblogs page on theEBB site and select the First Supper Archive 2006. You will see three links.

As you can see here, I have started the the First Supper again. You will be able to view the 2006 archive through the link in Web logs until Google close the cache. If and when they do I will get Lamerie to post the entire 2006 archive on a page on our site so it isn't lost. Mean while I am sorry to say the Competition is gone so I will start another one very soon with a bonus prize to go with the original CD prize. We are very sorry for this but wish to say responsibility for this inconvenience lies entirely with Google who it seems pressured people to move their web logs before they were ready to accomodate us. Watch this space.

Peace

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