"It's no secret anymore that for every nine barrels of oil we consume, we are only discovering one."-The BP Statistical Review of World Energy - January 9th, 2008
The world is addicted to oil. In just 8 years, it's projected the world will be consuming nearly 50,000 gallons of oil every second.
By that time, the world won't be able to meet the projected demand... for one simple reason: We're using up oil at breakneck speed.
Governments control 80% of the world's oil, and governments go to war".

While evaluating the significance of the text above consider how nations and multi national corporations have been able to manoeuvre their way into owning huge stocks of one of the worlds greatest assets and one which is vital to all human beings – water. Unlike oil, water has no known substitutes. Increasingly conflict arises out of the need for water, especially in areas where water is in short supply such as the Middle East, Asia and sub- Saharan Africa.
Surely then it is entirely realistic to consider that it in the not too distant future another terrible war will be waged ostensibly for western style democracy but in reality as a cloak for the control of water. "Whisky is for drinking, water is for fighting over," Mark Twain

The face of war has changed. At this time we no longer fear invasion. The island mentality has probably helped us to develop a false sense of security based on experience of past war. During the Second World War the area I live in was continually bombed during the Blitz on London. For most of us war is a long way away from our hearths and homes but surely the War for oil is beginning to take effect on all our lives. Perhaps it begins with shock at the number of “our boys” coming home in body bags, some of them killed by so called "friendly fire". It gets worse when we find that “ our boys” do not have adequate equipment for the job. It gets still worse when we hear of the atrocities committed by “our boys” in the name of democratic principles. Finally the penny drops that the perpetrators of this war and the sponsors of institutional oppression are virtually untouchable and care nothing at all for “our boys”. Even people who ummed and ah’d about this in the hope that things could not be as bad as that and regard people like me as pinko pessimists have realised this system of government is ruinous.

Our enemies in the world have multiplied and the duplicity of the UK government along with that of the USA and others has resulted in a massively underestimated drain on our resources and an increased lack of security. Our collective responsibility is coming home to roost. We consume at a greater rate than the rest of the world put together and we consume huge amounts of oil. Few of us can still have any illusions regarding the imperialism around the control of oil. So much UK/US foreign policy suggests and fosters the idea that the people of who won't give up their oil and their sovereignty are less than us. They are less valuable than us and some of them are expendable. They grieve for their loved ones like us and yet we wonder why they want to bomb us . They count even less now because basically they ( terrorists ) want to behave in a way extremely different from the way we profess to. Once this is mooted it seems we can do what we like. The evidential images are every where to be seen. We flout international conventions on human rights. We murder and torture people until we get what we want. Is this not also part of the mentality of the street thug? After Ashley Cole’s most recent disgraceful tackle a well known and respected football manager asked "how can there not be a link between this kind of violence on the football field and the problems in our society?”? So what kind of link exists between Governmental violence and that in the streets and among the people? What ever this government says the violent crime figures are soaring and the culprits get younger. We are in steep decline. There is no social work though there are social workers, hospitals are filthy and no one can spell. It seems the main assertion of this government is that most of the time we can all do with out. As long as the boxes are ticked eh ? Right Gordon?

As carefully government managed, pseudo prosperity begins to fail in a fractured society a burgeoning underclass, with out leader ship and unified organisation, may turn in on itself and make victims of it’s own. The victims are already identified as immigrants, gypsies, travellers. and any one different including all minorities. Some groups are often portrayed in our free democratic press in such a way that makes them seem unworthy and less than us. Ring a bell? A domestic version of UK foreign policy? Once this is achieved it can seem normal that people live as second class citizens. Still you can hear the cry "They should think themslves lucky to be here". People who should be standing together are divided.
Perhaps we will have to wait until major recession gets us off our bums to moan and grumble a lot about some thing other than lending rates and other delusional trivia. Hopefully we will wake up in time to instigate or agitate the changes. There has to be fundamental change to the way the whole thing works and the way we interact with rest of the world including our new neighbours from Europe. With out a usable set of principled values we will be lost. We are at war with half of the world. This is not sustainable. We just can’t quite see it yet.

Much that is happening to people today was projected in writings up to sixty or more years ago. You have probably read some of it. Back then people laughed it off as science fiction. Entertaining but “ it couldn't ever happen”. Super Chip? Who would want to believe it?

Fifty years ago the symbol for the anti nuclear protest movement was born. The designer Gerald Holtom was a former World War II conscientious objector. The design was meant to symbolise a human being in despair with arms outstretched downwards. Since the “ ban the bomb” symbol came to being it has become a world symbol for peace. On Easter Monday next the fiftieth CND demo will be held at Aldermaston. http://www.cnduk.org/ We are still allowed to protest in some areas of the UK you know.

Still on the general subject of change and protest, some one recently suggested I change the back drop of this blog from black to a more cheery hue. Bollocks !

Any one for a nice, cooling glass of gourmet rated (shhhh!) London tap water ?




Peace in Tibet


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

The EBB went back to Bergen last weekend. The town nestles between mountains. It has grown since I was last there but has retained its character and the familiar aspects are still present. It rained hard and cold most of the time we were there. The average annual rain fall in Bergen is always high.
The harbour is still an evocative place for me. I always think of all the many sailors who set sail from there down the centuries. The clipper in the photo is the one on the Bandages sleeve.
The harbour fish market is stunning and the fare is as good as you will find anywhere I have been.


While I was walking around with Steve we came across a pro Life demo. No one took any notice at all. There was no anti protest. No one shouted opposing views at them and I thought what a great strategy this might be in respect of that particular group of self declared guardians of morality. Ignore them.

The people look well and affluent. Norway is a very wealthy country and appears to have retained its individual character with out losing its connection with the rest of Europe. We flew out on the Friday evening and arrived at around 11 oclock. We settled in to our hotel rooms and stayed up quite late doing what the EBB does at such times. Later we walked down to The Garage to check things out. It was obviously a well appointed venue and the list of people having played there is quite a who’s who of contemporary stars.

You might have read about the truck crash and subsequent theft of some of my gear in the previous blog. While at the club our old friend Dennis showed me an old Marshall speaker cabinet ( pictured above on the left ) that I had lost in that crash. It had the legend Eb 1 on the back which Steve remembered painting. I must admit I felt a bit odd when next day, as we set up equipment, it was wheeled out as part of my back line. It did sound nice though. I have decided to appeal to The Garage to return it to me so we will have to wait to see what happens. Watch this space.
Poor Luke had problems with a supplied keyboard with a broken key. After sound checking with a stand in keyboard the main keyboard was quickly repaired and the last task on the pre gig list was completed. Luke was calm again and we settled in at the club for the long night. I was disappointed they had no V8 vegetable juice on the rider but I swallowed that or rather did not. We are not a picky band but we do like to have what we need and in every other respect the service and hospitality at the Garage was excellent.

Mills Caviar paste is one of my addictions

Dennis worked tirelessly all day dealing with every thing thrown at him by the band and local crew. The sound engineer Runne ( hope I spelt that right ) was very professional and achieved a good out front sound with out any fuss. Some of the onstage monitoring wasn’t to every ones liking but it was great for me.
After meeting lots of old friends and in some instances meeting their children for the first time, we walked out into the club and onstage at around 11-15. the show went very well. People sang the songs from the first verse of Evening Over Rooftops on to the end. The new songs went down very well and it seemed that the female members of the audience especially liked Six White Horses. Interestingly many people said we are better now than we were when they first saw us. I was very pleased about that.

My thanks to Vemund Grimstad for the three photos above taken during the show.

After the show a large contingent of fans and friends joined up with us in the dressing rooms for an impromptu party. Fifty people had come from a small town on the west coast to see us and it was very enjoyable to meet with them all. We might be doing a show in their town in August but nothing has been fixed. It does look certain that we will be returning to Norway at end of July / August for three or four shows including one in Oslo.
So after rehearsing for three days and travelling out with all the organisational tasks to be achieved we were all very satisfied with our return to Bergen which will always have a place in our hearts. Thank you Bergen for a very enjoyable weekend. Special thanks to Arne and Boogie who met us at the airport. It was great to see you. Thanks to all of the people who travelled to see us and to all of the crew and staff at The Garage.

above the cloud on the way back home

Peace

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

ready to rock with the Norgers after I have shaved

The EBB spent three days over the weekend rehearsing for the Norway show at the Garage in Bergen. We worked with new and old songs and have put a couple of old favourites back in the set. I guess the set we will be playing is more or less the show we did at the Gagarin in Athens last year.
We are all looking forward to going back to Bergen. Norway is a beautiful country and the people are very warm and generous. It has been a long time since we were all there together. Andrew was with us when we last played in Norway on The Six wasted Days Tour with Roy Harper, Strawbs and Tony Mcphee's groundhogs. Gentlemen every one of them. Luke was with me and his mom as a toddler years before that. In between sledging trips in the hills with Luke and exploring the snowy streets, I was producing a record for a Bergen based band called Electric Rain a very unusual and original line up of local guys. That was a challenging and some times surreal experience with long hours hunched over a mixing desk in a small studio just outside town. I remember that in the early stages the studio owner, engineer and house producer was annoyed that a local band was importing help from the UK. He used to change the patch bay of connected equipment so that it was different when I returned for work in the mornings. I laugh about it now but it was tough at the time. I remember recording a bass part that required me to punch in the bass every time the bass player made a mistake to re record over the mistake. It has to be done very precisely in between the last played note you want to keep and the notes you want to re record. Aaaargh ! There were more than twenty punch ins made to get through the whole piece. I think my skill with the record button was well noted and respected and it was a bit like earning my colours. On a particularly exhausting day I did record an over dubbed guitar solo on the wrong version of one of the songs. Fortunately the guitarist who was a very nice guy decided to do it again the next morning for his own reasons for which I was extremely grateful. I didn’t even have to own up to my mistake. We finished the album in England for which I was again, extremely grateful. We were working on tape then and with out a computer in sight. Happy days and fun people.

photo by steve broughton

Touring in Norway has not always been a fun time. We once lost half our gear down a mountain side after our truck crashed into an avalanche on a mountain. One of our crew spent time in hospital. Many years later a guy called Terry from Bergen, who was co-promoter with the late Ziggy Bardsen on the tour, admitted he had stolen and sold two of my prized Marshall amplifiers from the crash site. We always thought he was as dodgy as a West End hot dog but it was a shock all the same. While professing to be our friend he turned out to be just another talentless low life and thief. We once crashed our Range Rover into a railway bridge on our way from Oslo to Bergen on a sheet of ice inches thick. We drove hundreds of miles with a great v shaped dent in the bonnet. The engineers at the factory in Solihull were as amazed as we were that our beloved chariot had made it home to the UK.

We have made many friends in Norway down the years and many of them have gone to great lengths to help us and lend support. It will be very good to catch up with some of them. The show is already sold out so it should be a great night. I remember a show in Kristiansund when the good local council had decided that the show could only go on if I promised not to include "the masturbation sequence in the song The Phsycopath" as reported in the local paper. The first thing I did when I walked on stage was, well you can guess. The whole place went crazy. No one had the courage to pull the power on the EBB ( it is still a risky idea ) and we all had a ball. We've trekked through blizzards and played in far away northern venues where the kids all had earplugs because the local papers had told them we were the loudest band they had yet seen and we were. A great country. I still have to travel to the lands of the Sami. Perhaps it is only another of my romantic notions but I believe this land to be a spiritual home for me and it is the land of my star sign ( man).

Steve, who was in Bergen on holiday recently, says there is great Vietnamese restaurant in town so I shall try to make a pilgrimage there at some juncture. Other than that I don’t suppose we will have very much time to do the tourist thing. We rarely do. It’s usually a mad dash to get a bit of shopping and that’s about it. Norway is a great fishing venue but I almost never get the chance to cast a line while on the road. Its tough at the top.
We don’t have any shows planned for a while so it will be back to recording when we return as soon as we can all get organised to get back to it. There is much to do this year if we are to keep to the plan. It should be fun. Mean while back to the now and the Norway expedition. Roll on. I’m already packed. I'll see you there and as always come up and say hello. We don’t bite ( unless you like it).

P.S. I’ll give you your CD at the gig Jarle. Yours will be in the post Tony.

Peace to all



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

The EBB got together last monday to begin work on the new recordings. We spent two days setting up our collective equipment and began programming parts for the song Soldiers of the Light which some of you will know from live shows last year. For technophiles the screen shot above is of an old Atari system running Cubase. The machine is rock solid and still meets all our our midi sequencing needs. The sequence shown is the first click track for the song Six white horses. Luke spent most of last week working on the drum track and checking with Steve while Art and I played bass and acoustic guitar to assist the programming and check the feel and groove. The first job is to establish the arrangement that we will settle on and the the general speed and groove. We spend quite a long time deciding such things.

Long hours sitting in front of screens refining parts and the feel of the song

After setting up for two days we were amazed that everything worked. We had a few problems after Steve rigged a new patch bay but he quickly sorted things out and we got down to work in earnest. There is always something to adjust after the initial setting up but this was about it. We managed to crash the old Atari computer on only two occasions during the whole week and that was down to me being a bit quick with buttons on our main digital recorder that the Atari is synchronised with. Luke managed his key board and sampler sounds with a cool head and hands. It has been a long time since Luke and I have recorded together so to combine all the equipment with out hassle in one set up, away from our base, was a joy. As we re familiarised ourselves with the process and procedures Steve was quick to begin to get to grips with new technical possibilities and after a day or so we were well under way. Art had a long, knackering wait to put down a bass for real but we got a decent backing track for Soldiers of the Light and a groove for Six White horses which was mixed to a PC and sent as MP3 s to our home computers for evaluation. We will all spend time now working on parts and ideas at home.

Tea is an essential ritual in ebb world

I am sure I didn't play that

What ? ? ?

Me with Art's lovely nylon strung classical guitar. It is very easy to play and has a piezo pick up. It is very much like the guitar I write most of my material on and I expect this instrument will be featured quite often on the finished recordings as we work our way through the new songs .

Last week was a valuable time for us to concentrate on the work but we also spent a lot of the time in discussions and chats about most every thing. We took turns cooking food and stayed up long hours and laughed a lot. It was a lot of fun and I am looking forward to stage two.

Next weekend we will be rehearsing for the show in Bergen at The Garage on the following weekend. It looks like this will be a special night. We have had an invite to return to Athens for a show at the Gagarin in Athens. That was a special night for us and we look forward to a repeat performance. I know every one is shattered after the work last week though happy to have finally made a start.

Peace

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

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

Dearest Beloved,

Soon after all this time I will be home. I dream of meeting you at the small jetty on the edge of the Wide Meldings. My heart beat races. I am filled with anticipation and longing to see you on the shore, still waiting. How long has it been? When I look in the glass I fear you might not recognise me my love. My age is showing now. In all these long years we lived with out a thought of fading. I am cold. I must see you soon so your sweet love might warm me when we are joined. I am well though exhausted. My tiredness seems of little account when I look around at some of my comrades.
Going as far as the Tanial Spur was a mistake. No one on this expedition believes we were right to go or to do what was done. I am afraid to think of it. We are loaded with fantastic specimens. We have brought back riches of great value and knowledge beyond understanding. Our heads are full of new things that none can comprehend. The ship groans with over load and all are weary.
So many times I have thought of you beneath the star field of Sway. Do you remember when we hand lined for crabs from the jetty as children, when Iceni was young? How I long to climb upon it again and meet my sweet heart once again. I am not who I was when we first set forth. No one here is. We are so changed and some are ill with mental confusion and hearing the voices. How I long to feel the quickness of my youth and to run with you through thunders crack laughing at the lightning dancing at our skipping feet. You serious and concentrated and me laughing, leading, racing through the low-pressure ridges of The Wide Meldings. Do you remember when we paused to hang in the wind and looked down from the beacon upon the stricken phalanxes of the Praetorians? Ah! My love I do not wish to distress you but this expedition has seemed to be the greatest folly. Still if I can but be with you for one more age I will never leave your side and will be restored in your arms and in your bed. I would lie with you for eternity, still and calm in the quiet, just to have you beside me in the dark. When our demons rise we shall hold on together and give to each other, what ever we can for loves sake.
Bam says familiaries talked to him last night telling him terrible lies to make him do dreadful things. He has to be tied during the moons according to custom and for all our sakes. Some of the men are worse and endlessly gabble nonsense with out ever sleeping, so afraid are they of the dark sadness that seems to inveigle it’s way into every one of us and every thing. Many have succumbed from the strain.
I know you must feel the slowing and it is this that will allow our assignation bringing us together again, in time. I swear I will love you forever and never let you go or leave you ever again. Those that cannot support us in our union must find their way with out us. I will not be thwarted in my pursuit of our happiness together unless you should choose other wise. I come to you with much to tell and bearing special things. We will laugh and talk. We will play sweet games all day long until the sun sets. I will hold you safe against the night until dawn when we both shall fall deeply, into a dreamless sleep.

What did I do to have someone like you, fill my love with life?
How did I, somebody like me, get it so right?
What a lovely day, watching children playing feel like I must be dreaming
What did I say to make things go so much my way?
I don't think I'll ever know the answer.

If all goes well with us we shall arrive as dusk falls. Wait for me by the waters edge my love.

Your devoted servant.



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