April | 2010 | Lonely Joe Parker

ello

just a quick note to say what’s going on at the moment…

recording-wise, i’m meant to be finishing leila, brooklyn and shanty to go on this split EP for Oxjam with Dave Miatt. unfortunately we’re doing it all on tick, and its going really frustratingly slowly.. hence the shitty demos on myspace at the moment, sorry about that. the idea is to do some more tracking of the current sessions (produced by Izaak Bullen a.k.a. The Scarlet Letter Union) very soon. we’ll see.

longer term at least we’ve got round to putting this page up which took longer to sit down and do than you might imagine.. “will people fan me?” “should it be just me editing it or should i let someone else do it?” “why am i such a massive cunt?” etc.. but we figured it was better to have these pages up and going rather than spend ages waiting for some mythical ‘jump off’ moment. so there you go.

in the summer months lots of fun happening – will be doing another bike tour like last summer, but this time it’ll be longer and (hopefully) a few bigger venues. also the legs will be shorter and planned longer in advance – this time i REALLY want loads more people to come along for the ride!

then sometime towards the end of the summer, depending on everyone’s commitments, we’re spending a few weeks at Furnace Studios – a residential studios in Bulgaria – to jam out an LP proper for an autumn release on Sotones. Also all the back catalogue is getting slowly re-issued on digital too – stay posted for that.

in the meantime, take care of each other xxx
joe

ps: don’t put tipex on the keys of your computer to tell black notes from white ones in garageband.. really bad idea…

Tweet this Digg Post to LinkedIn Slashdot Stumble This

I found a book I thought I’d lost for ages. :

“A small boy, about nine years old, was following his goats as they grazed in the mountains. His name is not known. He was probably playing a little, throwing stones maybe, or he would have noticed the small green mine that blew his foot off at the ankle. From what we know of how people react, from the memories of those who have survived, the little shepherd boy probably hopped or dragged himself to where his foot lay – it would have been quite close to him. He would have cried, or maybe just sat lonely and quiet and helpless and slipped into unconsciousness. His goats must have stayed until after he died, probably until the wild dogs arrived at the scene. We have no way of knowing exactly what happened; the dogs found him days before we did. He was certainly [to use the arms industry’s preferred terminology] a ‘soft target’.

McGrath, Rae (2000) Landmines and Unexploded Ordinance: A Resource Book. Pluto, London.

So, the book’s about landmines and cluster bombs, both manufactured, promoted and used by US / EU countries, including the UK. The author isn’t some hippie but a former British Army (REME) soldier who heads up one of the most respected demining NGOs and was nominated for the Nobel Prize. Landmines and cluster bombs cause massive death and misery long after a conflict’s end, as well as economic hardship once the TV cameras go home – how does a country like Somalia, Afghanistan or Rwanda deal with thousands of amputees? With unusable roads? With crops and fields peppered randomly with metallic seeds of death?

Because unlike the Hollywood depiction, there are no barbed-wire boundaries, no handy skull-and-crossbones, no ‘Achtung Minen!’ notices; that would defeat the point. Mines and cluster bombs are hidden killers. That is their grisly role.

When your prospective MP comes a-knocking in the next few weeks, ask him if his party will commit the UK to an outright ban on the manufacture, promotion, sale and use of cluster bombs as they promised when they signed (but have not yet implemented) the 2008 Convention on Cluster Munitions.

Happy Friday. Good times.

Tweet this Digg Post to LinkedIn Slashdot Stumble This