EBD starred in a national music magazine for over 2 years
I really loved EBD, and so it seemed did many that I met around the world. The rave scene was something new, girls and boys came together and went far beyond the usual interactions of those two species. To capture the spirit of the strange new dance floor came EBD. Everything I went through became the inspiration for each episode, and many who also experienced the 2 or three day marathons of drums and loss of mind found EBD acting out the spirit of their own experiences too. This was a time of experimentation leading to massive highs and of course the inevitable opposite of this, which also had a culture to it. Many sharing that time together listening to chill out music, smoking and drinking their way to as pleasant a landing as they could muster together. It was a time of a great coming together of the many, something the system was very suspicious of. I went to many raves where the police took trucks and turned them over to block us, confiscated musical equipment, the government even tried to ban repetitive beats! all to stop us coming together and finding out we really were profoundly connected and had nothing to fear from each other , at least whilst remaining aware of this truth. Indeed we found we loved and even cared for each other, while the government was blowing people to bits around the world in the name of corporate greed. It was a strange and beautiful time, as we awoke to greater realms of being and to the shock that we were ruled by the insane.
It was quiet a thing to go to a rave, sometimes I would get filled with revelations I could barely contain, sometimes I could barely hold onto a thought before it burst like a bubble leaving a fine spray of mystery. Sometimes revelation was shared in the quick look of an eye with another and time deepened sweetly. As raves went on, fashion and habit would conspire to keep some from the vulnerability of this open state. Some people seemed to develope a way of speaking without really saying anything.
The above was my first strip for 'Muzik' magazine, it was so exciting to see it in mass print. I was expecting some kind of response, but this was in the age before tweeting and facebooking and ravers really posted letters. I was in the band 'Loop Guru' at the time and did get a building response from people over the years. This one massive skinheaded tatooted and pierced guy in Glasgow was heard shouting outside the dressing room "Is tha wee mad jym in there?" He broke in through some nervous people not sure about really trying to stop him, he came right up to me and bellowed "you the one wot done that f&*kin alien in muzik mag?" I wasn't sure if I should fess up to it, but I muttered a vauge 'yes'. He pointed a finger right in my face and yelled (muscles and peircings bulging on his neck and forehead) "Cause that wee f*&ker is f%*king funny!!! Another time a cute couple spent several hours waiting for us to finish sound checking before asking to met me, it wasn't because of the band, but because of EBD! It was so great people were getting EBD's angle.
A true rave for me and many others was not so much something to do of a weekend, but an ecstatic ritual of transcending my limited sense of self and joining in with that which was greater than and beyond any of us, it was all of us together. Something the system tried to stop, making laws that people could not gather in groups of over 10.
A panel re- worked from EBD
Raves seemed to carry imagery from outer space, from inner mind, from the great unknown. People accepted there was so much more to the universe than they had previously presumed. A simple talk with some one could be felt as whole worlds and realms reaching out through the two people as part of a galaxy sized communication that involved synchronicity as a language in itself. In short, it was magical and mysterious beyond words, and yet as it became 'assimilated' into the everyday reality of the system, it became strangely 'normalized'. My own magazine as much a part of this as any other media. Dj's, who started as part of a crew and had no 'status' above any other became guitar type hero's in the media, and dressed very normally, beer boy types and suited well manicured yuppie types. No one in the media talked of the strangeness, the creativeness, my own cartoon was hated by the sub editor who always wanted me to just do a little panel that would cause people to have a slight smile as they breezed through the mag. "Stop making it to hard to follow, too weird".
To those who actually did rave, raves where like a visit from or into a strange new realm, the rules were completely different. Girls became other beings in their own right, you could spend a whole night hanging out with someone else and only at the end of the night even think that she was a girl and all the game playing stuff that pre-exists between the sexes was understood to be something we did not have to give energy to. In the media, more and more half dressed and skinny girls were used to advertise raves, or 'club nights' as they became in time. Once the rave was 'tamed' and held within the confines of 'the club', the sexual side of clubbing was pushed to the max along with the old fashioned and highly addictive drug 'alcohol'. Drink hardly featured in the early raves, maybe a beer for breakfast, but in the night it was other drugs and water. People often talked at raves about the fact that each very rare death from E was headline news, but the daily death toll of death and misery related to alcohol seemed almost completely ignored by the media
To those who actually did rave, raves where like a visit from or into a strange new realm, the rules were completely different. Girls became other beings in their own right, you could spend a whole night hanging out with someone else and only at the end of the night even think that she was a girl and all the game playing stuff that pre-exists between the sexes was understood to be something we did not have to give energy to. In the media, more and more half dressed and skinny girls were used to advertise raves, or 'club nights' as they became in time. Once the rave was 'tamed' and held within the confines of 'the club', the sexual side of clubbing was pushed to the max along with the old fashioned and highly addictive drug 'alcohol'. Drink hardly featured in the early raves, maybe a beer for breakfast, but in the night it was other drugs and water. People often talked at raves about the fact that each very rare death from E was headline news, but the daily death toll of death and misery related to alcohol seemed almost completely ignored by the media
Who remembers battling the freak outs and trying to face the dance floor again? the guy in the white gloves hand dancing on the speakers, the football horns and whistles? the paranoia before or after the ecstatic smerging with the whole crowd and even the universe itself? Ah what a wild and glorious ride it was.
Ah 'John Peel', a god amongst music lovers. I was picking up on the tiredness I witnessed in myself and many of my friends who made dance music, how so many of them had fantastic eclectic record collections, but were held in by the increasingly ridged format of dance floor music. I imagined EBB as one of those middle of the road crooners I grew up with on tv of a Saturday night, going on in that overblown way about what dancefloor music maybe missing. Good ole John sets him back on course, what a man, such wide and open taste, and of course was still very active then.
EBD meets Carl Cox
It was the first dance floor celeb that arrived into EBD's strip. I was backstage with the rest of the band when I spotted Carl in the green room, I was a genuine fan , so I wanted to know if he had seen the cartoon. I introduced myself as the artist who created the strip, he laughed and said, 'that was you!! oh man that strip is hanging up in my toilet!"
As we were talking his manager arrived and threw me out, I don't know if Carl had a panic button hidden on him somewhere or if the manager was just an asshole, either way Ebd bringing in the emerging celebs of the dance world was leading to some fun.
It is said its not good to meet your hero's, but I have found most of them to be even more interesting having met them. The only person I decided not to put in an EBD strip from the dance world was Moby, Our band was on tour with him and his crew were slowly deserting his bus when ever they could and ended up on ours a lot. I decided not to make my mind up about him, but after witnessing a wildly overblown sense of self importance for over 2 months of touring, I thought any cartoon involving him would be negative and I was keeping up the more positive and accepting nature of the rave scene.
As we were talking his manager arrived and threw me out, I don't know if Carl had a panic button hidden on him somewhere or if the manager was just an asshole, either way Ebd bringing in the emerging celebs of the dance world was leading to some fun.
It is said its not good to meet your hero's, but I have found most of them to be even more interesting having met them. The only person I decided not to put in an EBD strip from the dance world was Moby, Our band was on tour with him and his crew were slowly deserting his bus when ever they could and ended up on ours a lot. I decided not to make my mind up about him, but after witnessing a wildly overblown sense of self importance for over 2 months of touring, I thought any cartoon involving him would be negative and I was keeping up the more positive and accepting nature of the rave scene.
Touring with Alex Patterson of the orb was such a highlight, 'little fluffy clouds' was such an anthem of the age of rave. When he heard I was going to do an EBD with him in, he was so paranoid, "don't make me look bad, please" he pleaded with me. I couldn't believe it, why would anyone want to be bad to him? I did notice his eccentricity and ability to lurch from one train of thought to another with no visible pathway between them. I remember him trying to tell me and Bob something, looking about and deciding that 'no this is not the place to tell us', over here, no over there, we ended up all three huddled in a wardrobe him telling us something about the knights of the round table. I loved him for it and the cartoon became a portrait of him really, and indeed many couldn't understand how suddenly he is on a train?, but of course here, we are in his mind, where anything is possible!
As you probably notice, the concerns then are not far from concerns now, and people are still largely unable to follow through on their lofty ideals. I remember seeing copies of 'Oz' (early yippie underground mag) and was impressed with how they put in real concerns and real observations, and again many of them are the same as those we have today. The contrast with mainstream mags was stark, they were and largely remain fixated on the the surface of things, glamor and gossip, maybe there is a link there to why we cannot change, without self reflection, there is no self understanding.
EBD, of love and humans.
Of course many who knew me saw EBD as an extension of me, in many ways everything an artist does is some kind of reflection of themselves. When I met my wonderful wife Chantal, EBD also bumped into lovely girl who looked remarkably like Chantal. Looking back, the large head of EBD could easily represent how I tend to fly off into my head, into my fantasies and escape from the very real and uncontrollable realm of love and relationship.
The rave scene had many of the same aspects of love itself for most participants, uncontrollable, wonderful, scary, maddening and instilled a fire in people that never really went out, just maybe moved into the background for a bit. I know most of it was fueled by drugs, but the revelation of love is real no matter how you got there. Besides, why should the drug of choice of one country make all others and their effects invalid? Is a great book that brings revelation, entertainment and insight suddenly 'not real' because you find out the author was drinking and smoking his way through out the writing process?
There was the feeling that for governments trying to control the masses, steering them away from mind expanding drugs and pushing drugs that kept them at a low level of contentment (alcohol and tobacco) would make them far more 'Managable' and predictable then drugs that opened and expanded them.
The rave scene had many of the same aspects of love itself for most participants, uncontrollable, wonderful, scary, maddening and instilled a fire in people that never really went out, just maybe moved into the background for a bit. I know most of it was fueled by drugs, but the revelation of love is real no matter how you got there. Besides, why should the drug of choice of one country make all others and their effects invalid? Is a great book that brings revelation, entertainment and insight suddenly 'not real' because you find out the author was drinking and smoking his way through out the writing process?
There was the feeling that for governments trying to control the masses, steering them away from mind expanding drugs and pushing drugs that kept them at a low level of contentment (alcohol and tobacco) would make them far more 'Managable' and predictable then drugs that opened and expanded them.
I was on the tour bus in Spain drawing this one, the rest of the band were on the beach, I was sweltering both because of the sun and because of the deadline, I had to finish this and post it back to London for printing asap. Hearing them having fun outside I just put everything 'fun' from the rave scene into it and it did get a lot of people loving the details from the special 'spew' to the misheard cry of the times 'make some fucking noise!' As an aside, later that day we celebrated getting it done by downing rather a lot of booze, making a James Bond type silly raid on a local hotel to 'liberate' a plastic table. Ten minutes later there was a banging on the door, I opened to see the bus surrounded by uniformed police with machine guns pointed at us. As I tried, drunkenly, to get out of the skylight and give them a taste of my plastic fluorescnt gun, with the rest of the band holding onto my legs, some guy on a moped, who was in a simular state to us, drove headlong into one of the police cars that was stopped right across the road, landing with a big bang on the bonnet. The police all ran and surrounded him, pointing their guns and everything, meanwhile our wonderful bus driver, who had been woken by the noise of the events, had crept into the cab and quickly exited us from the scene.
There was a lot of talk about weed become legalised in the 90's, I imagined what the adverts might look like like, maybe they would use EBD? I lived in Portabella road at the time, where