The above photo was taken some weeks ago and has the colours of my mood and geography of my heart. Well, the days have rolled around and raced by. I can’t believe how long it has been since the last post here. I seem to have been very occupied with other things lately and I must try harder to keep things rolling off the press as it were. Tomorrow, Monday, we begin the next EBB opus of recorded work. It has been a very long time and in terms of continuity it makes my lack of recent posts a small issue indeed. It has been many years since the EBB made Superchip and although we have recorded bits and pieces since then, including some of the material on what I call the pink album, which is the one called the Ones that nearly got away, none of it constituted a new album. Well enough procrastinating the time has come and it looks to be a very interesting project.
We have the songs and we will start on Six White Horses and Soldiers of the light. Steve has been re-organising his music room and making space for Luke’s keyboards and all. He is good at all that and very handy with tools. That is not my particular forte though I am happy with smaller scale productions. I like the kind of “manufacturing / do it your self projects” to fit on my table top. Larger scale projects i.e. building renovation and general carpentry is not my thing. Luke is a bit like me in that respect but does not hold any technology in awe as I do. He does how ever have solid production values and is the one who reminds me of the good bits in my music that would otherwise be lost in the mists of …. well I’ll leave it at mists. I am the one who will oversee the technical operation as far as the new recordings is concerned while Steve has lots of music production skills and we all have clear ideas of how final mixing should be achieved and what are the most important elements. Art will be the realistic and sensible hand on the wheel when we all get lost in the mire of technical problems. He is usually optimistic and can usually bring reason back when it has temporarily gone absent from the proceedings.
On the subject of technology my beloved DAT recorder / player gave up the ghost and finally broke down last week. That was a blow because all of the pre-production mixes and demos Luke and I have made over years are archived on DAT tapes. We have to find another machine to play them on. This means that production of the CD s for the winners of the last blog competition will be further delayed.
It is extraordinary how attached I become to certain bits of equipment and I hate having to buy again what I already had. Still, to be fair the Sony DAT machine had earned it’s keep over and over so it owed me nothing. I have never been disappointed with any thing Sony made. While packing mine and Luke’s equipment ready for the recording at Steve’s, a beloved valve compressor limiter fell over and is also a dead ‘un. So, last week was not a good equipment week. I was a bit upset by this to put it mildly but the weekend was a tonic in more ways than several and it was a time to remember what a very fortunate person I am.

Recently some one told me of a family member who has been using a well known brand of patches to assist with giving up smoking for four years and continues to smoke. I guess there is a message in that somewhere but what is clear is that Pig Business is making a fortune out of the new societal imperative to give up smoking. I guess they will always try to sell what ever they can and find a way to make us buy what we don’t need. It takes about three weeks to give up any thing except love. At least Pig Business has little to do with that area of our lives but it does have a negative impact on the possibility of us all cherishing each other. Some times it is as though their own values are imbedded in the product.

A few of years ago a large UK county Police Authority decided to train police officers for specialist work around child protection and tacking and arresting padeophiles. They trained for two years to facilitate this work and were recently installed in the offices to be used which housed state of the art IT equipment. They are still waiting to start work but every thing is on hold because the authority can not afford to buy the data retrieval software used to check suspects web sites and computers.

If you want to see the marriage of pointless pomp and dreary litany from old men in skirts combined with glorious choral music go to St Paul’s in London for Evening Matins. Nice gaff is St Paul’s and well worth the visit. If there were no great religious buildings and we had to start to build our nations cathedrals I think the resulting works would be extremely underwhelming due to a lack of funding from the people. Recent statements by church leaders and those going back for many years have shown time and time again that the churches are increasingly out of touch with our reality and in particular, the genuine spiritual aspirations of the young.

Here is a story of a small but significant victory. An elderly deaf woman becomes extremely distressed. A local support worker asks appropriate people for assistance. The fear is that unless some thing can be done to help her she will be sectioned and hospitalised. It turns out that she has had concerns for the two dolls that live with her. Her main concern is that she is no longer able to look after them and cater for their needs. A smart social worker listens, sympathises and suggests that she take the dolls away so that they can be properly taken care of. The woman is immediately calm and happy for this to happen. The social worker takes the dolls away. Result. The woman is not sectioned and is happily still safe in her own home. The moral of the tale? Wake up Gordon before it is too late. Stop the exodus of dedicated and able workers from public service and by the way, if Meals on Wheels is to become the standard issue for people in need make sure it provides food you would eat yourself.

That is about it for now. I will take a photographic diary of the upcoming recording sessions and post them from time to time with a short account of progress made.

Peace


copyright e d g a r b r o u g h t o n 2008