WATCH THIS SPACE - coming soon THE DELIVERANCE

Vintage photo by Peter ( Tufty) Jones > Steve - Barry Crompton - Victor - and me

The album of the Rockpalast DVD is now available on CD and there is a signed copy waiting for the best caption for the photo above. Usual rules. As many entries as you like with different names. Comp will run up to the 12th of August. Luke will be judge for this one.

copyright e d g a r b r o u g h t o n 20 08

a spitting image ?

Last week new labour said they would be announcing new measures to deal with knife crime. From the announcement made re making offenders visit victims in hospital, it seems they cobbled a quick meeting together over a weekend barbecue. The idea has gone down like a lead balloon and today they are backing off from the idea as quickly as they can.
Recently police reported that a mother visited her sons (perpetrators)at the police station where they were detained. Apparently they laughed and joked together while their victim lay dead from stab wounds. Later in court the young men smiled and sniggered as their sentences were announced. The idea of people like that getting any benefit from visiting stabbing victims in hospital is ludicrous. One assumes their own victims, assuming they survived the attack, wouldn’t want see them at visiting time. I imagine hospitals don’t need the extra hassle either.
I don’t believe there is single section of our society that Gordon is “down with” or that any of his cronies have the slightest idea what is going on out here. As long as the boxes are ticked and the paper mountain is expanding exponentially they seem satisfied. They are clueless morons with out the first idea of what is wrong in the streets.
Some time ago I was working with a group of young men and they decided they wanted to have an impromptu quiz. The only problem was that they didn’t have any answers only questions. One thought that the Vietnam war was part of the World war two. Another that there was no difference between the Vietnamese and Japanese and any way – what did it matter? Ask any of them or their younger siblings today – What is the war about in Iraq. They will tell you it is oil. They might only get the headlines in terms of “the news” but the message has seeped into their awareness that the examples set them by “the grown ups” is extremely poor and that governments are like pirates or muggers when they choose to be. On top of this a declining education system has failed many of the young people I know. They feel excluded and dumped on. For years the example set by many “successful” adults has been laced with self serving schemes and a greed and the gap between the poor and well off is expanding at an ever increasing rate. We all remember the so called Thatcher years. Until there is a clear intention by government to address the needs of our young people and to provide opportunities on a level playing field the carnage will continue and the walls surrounding the enclaves of the rich will have to be built higher and higher.

As Gordon battles the slippery slope to political oblivion we are told he and the queen are planning a state funeral for Margaret Thatcher. It would be the first for a prime minister since Winston Churchill. It seems that Gordon’s advisers are total idiots. This is the woman who broke the miners, trashed the unions and flirted with a certain South American dictator. She was unforgettably the author of the poll tax fiasco. Even the middle classes turned against her over time, as did her own cabinet. Unfortunately Tony Blair took enough leaves from her book to cloth a forest and we are reaping the harvest. I don’t expect thousand of Marxist relics to turn out to pelt her hearse with rotten tomatoes though some might think it would be more appropriate than the proposed state funeral. I suggest that when she is good and stiff she be dipped in concrete and displayed outside a colliery or at Millbank, the head quarters of New labour, for all to see. Let the pigeons shit on her while tourists pull up to see who made Britain the place it is today. When the iron lady is finally gone the world will be very slightly more fragrant.


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

I have little to say at this time hence Short story, a tale of few words.

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

Well as it's turned out this post is more like a magazine. Still I haven't posted very regularly lately so there you go- all in one post. Please check Phil Robb's contribution at end after the Shaman calling video.

I know I promised photos and news of EB Band recordings scheduled for the weekend of the 23rd but it was not to be. That being the case I decided to make some thing entirely on my P.C. and with a video camera as an experimental extension of my recent blog videos. I started work on Wed 21st May and the whole thing was intended to take around 10 hours. Ha ha ! Still it only took around 17 hours over a week or two.

At the risk of boring some of you with stuff you don't want or need to know I wanted to tell you about aspects of the process and of the product made on very simple to use equipment. You don't need lots of expensive equipment - ideas are what counts. The microphone I used is available at all computer stores for around £12. The video camera cost £399 and I used the very basic bundled editing software ( see photo above). I used some thing called ACDsee which is a photo viewer that cost about £20 online. It has a very quick slide show down to 5 milliseconds between photos. I used this to make video out of stills. I shot the slide show with a tripod off the screen of my PC.


Some of the samples were re-recorded through my little Fender practise amp via the twelve quid microphone. I planned to record my 5 string bass and guitars through the amp but then decided I would make the piece with out playing a note. So no guitar and no bass. My kind of of techno. I decided I would only use samples I had previously made or those already existing in my library. I re modelled and re-processed almost every thing fairly extensively while trying not to be too precious about things. I made a couple of new samples (the voice and string) for the end part.

I started by moving sampled sounds from my library around the multitrack window of Cool Edit adjusting them as and when required in the editing window. I made a short voice recording which I wanted to be a featured "hook". It is me sneering into the microphone through the wonderful Steinburg Orange vocoder which is one of my many onboard effects. I made some of the drum sounds with my voice and then mangled them into shape and then loops. I would like to make a whole track with just voice but that is another project for another day. The audio was monitored using a pair of £16.00 PC self powered speakers by NTrust and a pair of Sennheiser HD250 head phones. OK they cost £145 but you gotta have some luxuries.

I had planned to make some thing including some yoik and chanting with a little bit of voodoo gris gris. Out Demons Out. At this moment I was just at the point of sticking pins in an effigy when the doorbell rang. It was Ramblin' so I had to hide the sacrificial cockerel as he is a vegetarian. He had arrived to upgrade my PC memory to 2 gigabytes. Other wise my PC is not a specialist music tool in any way. It does work more quickly though. Cheers mate!

Brian Eno had cards which he used to plot musical strategies such as what he would do to begin a piece. I just asked Ramblin' for a sample of his front door bell which he emailed to me. This inspired the title SHAMAN CALLING. Does any one remember the Shaman Lady? Sorry I mean Avon Lady. I later dumped the idea as the track began to take some sort of useful shape. So Ramblin's doorbell is now my text alert on my phone. Waste not want not.

I made and mangled all of the sampling in Cool Edit Pro 2. Sampling is like photographing sound and Cool Edit is a bit like Photo Shop for audio. It is the standard audio editor in Broadcasting and cost around £200. I used it to train young people on a youth radio project I was involved with some time ago. It has now been replaced by Adobe Audition which I have yet to see. The beauty of this software is that you can teach yourself the basics using the excellent manual on disk in a day. Simplicity of use is the main feature for me though it has complex layers of possibilities, some of which I have yet to explore. There are many other affordable software packages that do, more or less, the same job.

I am quite new to making visual material though I have always had images in my mind that fit with songs. I basically want to make video scratch stuff fairly simply that doesn't require huge resources. HD I don't think so, unless it stands for hard drive. The ability of video to be recorded on drive in the camera is manna from heaven as far as I'm concerned and warranted my buying one. I like intentional and some times accidental distortion of sound and visuals that contibutes texture. Some of the video was shot by Ramblin' on my phone while he projected images on me and the wall behind me. All of the sounds and visuals on Shaman calling are in some way distorted.

I have spent years in the pursuit of wringing great sounds out of standard, fairly inexpensive equipment. It can be done. Some times these things are difficult to re-create in a top studio with all the gizmos. I always try to employ a little programming creatively and avoid using instrument factory pre sets , unless they are great and they rarely are. You start to recognise them after a while because musicians working in the advertising industry and pop producers buy all the latest kit, fill the air waves with the best factory preset sounds and then dump the instrument for the newest model. You can make quite presentable stuff if you get to know how to get the best out of what you have, what ever it is. The video is compressed to a third of its original size to fit on here but I think the quality is kinda o.k.

I hope the writing in this post is not too technical and gives some idea of the process involved. Enough chat - I hope you like the video. Peace.

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


LATEST - We reached over 100,000 hits on the EB Band site.

Luke has more than 100 members on his EB Band group on face book.

http://www.facebook.com/ then type Edgar Broughton Band.

This was sent today from Phil Robb -

Thought you might want to sign this petition. I don't normally do this kind of thing, but you probably understand that it is an issue particularly close to my own heart, being very much part of the community this woman has chosen to slate. It doesn't cost anything to sign, just a few seconds of your time. Please lend your support.

Rob, does this warrant a comment on the EBBsite perhaps?

Kind regards,

Phil Robb

Subject: FW: homophobic politician

Subject: Oppose Iris Robinson - petitionIris Robinson is a Democratic Unionist Party MP and wife of Peter Robinson, the leader of the DUP. Mrs Robinson is now the subject of
complaint to the police on account of her recent public announcement that gays are "an abomination", and need psychiatric help to be "turned around". Yesterday she intensified her stance, with a BBC interview in which she announces that "as sinners", gays should be regarded alongside murderers.I'd also note that the DUP is the party whose support enabled the passage through Parliament of legislation to extend to 42 days internment by the police of "terrorist suspects" - legislation which is to apply throughout the UK. DUP spokespersons have already made it evident they expect government favour for their help in passing this legislation, which Amnesty International has described as an affront to civl liberty. As an MP, Mrs Robinson was among those who voted to carry this bill. In other words, to view Mrs Robinson and the DUP as influential solely in Northern Ireland is to disregard the role they are now taking in the wider sphere of UK politics.

Please add your name to the petition, to join in voicing opposition > against these developments.

> Petition link http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/Robinson-Gay/

>> Iris Robinson interviewed yesterday http://www.youtube.com/watch?

> Belfast Telegraph report http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/

> local-national/article3785912.ece>> Iris Robinson's opening salvo

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/ > northern_ireland/7439661.stm

i wonder what it says in their job descriptions

Over 4000 lesbians and gay men have been executed since the Ayatollahs seized power in 1979.
One wonders why the Dutch authorities could not grant asylum to Iranian Mehdi Kazemi, a 19 year old gay teenager and why the UK authorities had already refused him. While studying in the UK Mehdi discovered his boy friend had been charged with sodomy in Iran and hanged.
Mehdi appealed to the UK authorities to grant him asylum on the basis that he would also be hanged if he were deported. His appeal failed. He fled to Holland. The UK authorities granted him asylum when the Dutch sent him back here.

Why did Mehdi have to endure all that before being allowed a place of safety in the UK? Homophobia is rife in our society but there is law enough to protect gay men or lesbians from homophobic abuse. We should value peoples differences and embrace them. Ok so he is safe now but why the deliberation? How long should it take to establish the truth of his claim? Finally, the UK stepped in to do the right thing and while I complain a great deal about the machinations of our system I am very proud that this has happened.
A spokesperson for the UK Border Authority said – “The UK Border Agency considers each case on its individual merits and will continue to provide refuge for those asylum seekers with a genuine need for protection”. I hope they get it right.
In my work with young people I have encountered homophobic attitudes on a regular basis. The level of aggression in the expression of this prejudice, even in the very young is extremely disturbing at times. When challenged to explain some foundation for some of the most outrageous assertions of homophobic young people I was never surprised with the answer that most often comes back – “it’s in the Bible”.

Sadly Leviticus and other books were interpreted to suit the church and leaders of the day. Often translations misrepresented the original meanings. Recently scholars of the old writings have asserted there are fundamental errors in later translations. In one manuscript they discovered the real commandment known by many as – Thou shall not commit adultery was only referring to infidelity between married people of either gender. So if a married woman slept with an unmarried man this was not adultery. If you examine what might have been the intent behind this it might lead you to consider many things from a new perspective. The commandment – Thou shall not steal was originally written as -Though shall not kidnap.

In writings pertinent to the birth of Christ it is written that the angel foretold the son of man would be born to a young girl. The all-important word virgin is not written anywhere. Still, as it was to turn out Christ was a jumped up, left wing, trouble maker with ideas above his station so if people translated major commandments and sacred prophesy to suit their own ends then perhaps the catholic church decided to bestow some of the attributes of deity to his mother while bestowing on her the honour of immaculate conception. I always struggled with that one. Please don’t misunderstand. I have nothing against the Catholic church that I don’t have against all established churches. I believe the established churches are empty because they are irrelevant and have deceived us all throughout history.
The problem of homophobia is a problem that can only be resolved by education and we have been there before with clause 28. Still, we must oppose this and all similar kinds of prejudice and begin to strengthen our ability to be inclusive. If we do otherwise I think it will be to our long-term detriment.
It isn’t always possible to be safe or effective when challenging poor behaviour and this should always be considered. How ever, we should challenge prejudice whenever we feel able.

For me the past couple of days have been difficult to say the least. I commend the following to those who know and love me best.

The warrior doesn't care if he's called a beast or a dog; the main thing is winning.
Asakura Norikage (Soteki) (1474-1552)

Peace

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

On my way to High Barnet for rehearsals at the weekend I noticed the sign pictured above. It is attached by scaffolding to the roof of the Victorian built walk way over the platforms at the station. It has two staircases leading down to the platforms.
I wondered what avoiding action I might be able to take to avoid any danger in this area. Was there some thing I should do to not add to the danger? Is it just to inform workers they must not run over the roof? If so it's a bit like the ladder with a stop sign three rungs from the top.
The fact is the iron work structure is red rusty and unless it is renovated it will one day be replaced by some thing ugly and expedient. These things are our heritage. They are clues to our past and reminders of a time when people went to extraordinary lengths to manufacture high quality products that were made to last. You can see examples of this kind of neglect in many places, especially where profit rules over common sense in the privatised area of transport.
Actually Barnet is generally looking a bit like a tired and run down British sea side town with out the pier. I should know. I visit Felixstowe in Suffolk quite often.

Well folks Art ( who had his 30th birthday on Thursday ) has decided the winner of the competition wrote the caption > Help! I'm slowly being strangled by a snake pretending to be a scarf! Oz wrote this so, if Oz will email me at edgar.broughton@btinternet.com with mailing details I will send the CD.

The EB Band spent last weekend rehearsing. We looked at a range of songs for a revised set including Death of an electric citizen which wasn’t all that, There’s no Vibrations which was very cool, Night Hogs from Superchip, also very cool, Side by Side ( the whole saga ) from Inside Out which was an unexpected high light for me. We also looked at The Bloom which progressed quite well. It takes time to get the subtleties down. We looked at Ice on Fire which was a bit disappointing. The song does present a challenge as to who will do what. I am sure it will be worth the effort. I had intended to get photos and possibly video from the sessions but couldn’t be arsed in the end. Sorry!

Saturday was slow. My throat wouldn’t relax properly and Steve had a touch of food poisoning. Oh! the things we have to endure. But Sunday was very enjoyable and also very productive.
Steve recently wrote in his blog “It’s funny isn’t it, you can go for weeks bored out of your skull and then all of a sudden, loads of experiences all come at once! Well in some ways the last few weeks or so have been like that in terms of the EB band though it’s probably more to do with opportunities than experiences this time. We have had enquiries about licensing albums in the US, we have begun, at last, to tie up some of the loose ends around publishing and royalties. Some one wants to write my biography ( I don’t really want to) and we have had talks with Tony H and crew about handling our merchandising. We are going to set up a remote page linked to our site where folks will be able to buy our stuff via pay pal etc. We are also discussing ideas for a video for Six White Horses.
Some one has begun work on the new EB Band logo which is some thing none of us have quite got a handle on. It will be nice to look at some elses design ideas. If any of you out there have an idea for a logo please send it to us.
The EMI / Esoteric formerly eclectic ANTHOLOGY set is still in the pipe line so there a re a few irons in the fire.
Ah! nearly forgot some one has volunteered to put a list of 6os - 70s EBB gigs together for the main site.

Next weekend we will be recording and I will get some photos from the sessions.

Re Govt tax revisions - nice one Gordon but will it be enough?


Peace




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