P, C & C rockin' the plumber's crack (VII): children and iPods

In the same marvelous personal interview by Jan Gradvall translated by Thomas Evensson for TDR's readers, Per Gessle speaks about iPods and children. You have to read it.

By the way, the Son of a Plumber website reveals that the European release of the album is planned for March 6, 2006. Per writes on Son of a Plumber.com that the next Swedish single will be “Hey Mr DJ (Won’t You Play Another Love Song)” with an anticipated radio date of mid-January. The b-side is a “rehearsal medley” so to speak, called “Plumber in Progress #1.”

LJdM

My first iPod was the all-black U2 iPod, but I filled that in a minute. During 2004 I started uploading my entire CD collection onto iTunes. More often than not I was so absorbed in it that when I checked the time it was 5 a.m. I get to hear a lot that I’m so meticulous. That my albums are sorted alphabetically and things like that. Sure, they are. But in the middle of that I also have a totally different side to me. I can’t handle when my time is expected to be in order. The worst thing I know is schedules. I don’t like deadlines. I don’t like when I know in advance what will happen. I don’t understand people who write songs 9-5. To sit there for six hours, sometimes you write something, sometimes you don’t. I refuse to work like that. Instead I sit in front of the TV with my guitar in my lap. If it’s a semi-crap movie I turn down the volume and strum the guitar. I read the subtitles, don’t concentrate on what I do and then suddenly a melody can appear. Damn, what was that?

When I uploaded his record collection into iTunes I rediscovered a lot of old music. Things I had listened to on my headphones in my old bedroom. In the old days on the radio you could hear Chicory Tip followed by Harry Belafonte and then Deep Purple. It’s so damn boring with this format-thinking these days. Who likes just one thing? Who wants to eat the same thing the rest of his life? The old monopoly radio! At the same time I believe that the Internet and digital music can turn things around. On the web you can find, like radio in the olden days, random new songs and music. It’s too bad that iTunes Music Store still has so little older music. I don’t understand why companies like EMI or Warner don’t open their own versions of iTunes Music Store. They should upload exactly everything. Imagine if everyone got a possibility to click around there, go through the entire catalogue, discover all the music that’s hidden in the archives.

I have an eight-year-old son, Gabriel. It’s very fun to see what music he finds and why he likes it. On Cartoon Network they apparently have some music. He can come to me and ask about for instance The Rembrandts. A while ago I played “Smoke On the Water” for him. He had never heard it before. The live version from Japan. Duh-duh-duh… It was amazing to witness someone hearing that riff for the very first time in his life. I saw his eyes light up. Because what is it really that makes you stick to different songs? What was it I liked in different songs when I was eight. That feedback loop in “I Feel Fine.” What’s cool with that?

The b-side of next single, Hey Mr. DJ, is a “rehearsal medley” so to speak, called “Plumber in Progress #1.” This will feature Gabriel and me jamming on ’Substitute,’ lousy guide lyrics beyond belief to several songs, etc etc.

Per Gessle

P, C & C rockin' the plumber's crack (VI): Kurt, the fastest plumber

Per Gessle, the son of a plumber, remembers his father Kurt and his mother Elisabeth, his childhood and adolescence, in a personal interview by Jan Gradvall translated by Thomas Evensson for TDR's readers. Just read it. It is the most personal interview with Per we have ever read.

LJdM

I found the drawings made with watercolors and pencil at my mom’s house. I was looking in an old photo album and when I opened it a stack of old drawings fell out. I drew a lot when I was little. This, for instance, is a hockey game. Brynäs scoring against Teg. Kjell Rune Milton played with them. He went to MoDo later, but started in Teg. I was around 7 years. I collected hockey cards aswell. I made lists of everything. I even wrote down who scored in “TV-pucken”. Brynäs was my favorite team. I remember when they lost the Swedish Championship gold in a game against Leksand. I was devastated, I couldn’t go to school. I’ve always been a sore loser.

We were three siblings but we were seven years apart. When I was born my sister (Gunilla) was 14 years old. She disappeared from home rather early of course. It was mostly me and my brother (Bengt). But I remember that my sister had her room at the top of the stairs and that she always played “Lipstick On My Collar” by Connie Francis. A fantastic era. Many of those songs sound exactly the same, but you can’t help liking them. And Joe Mick, the guy who did “Telstar” with The Tornadoes. All his productions are amazing. Almost everything on this collection is great. Screaming Lord Sutch & The Savages, “I Ain’t Mad At You.” Unparalleled. Damned great. My brother had this single. My brother is born 1951. I started out borrowing records from him before I built my own collection. My first favorites were the Hep Stars. My parents drove me to see the Hep Stars on stage. They said the exact same things between the songs as on the live album “On Stage.” I asked my mom about this recently, but she couldn’t remember anything about it. She’s 81. I liked the Hep Stars so much I forced my friends to pretend we were a band. We stood there with couronne cues as guitars and lip synced “Sunny Girl” and “It’s My Life” by The Animals. But my friends were totally uninterested in music. They thought I was weird.


We lived by the Folkpark in Halmstad, but moved 20 km up country. We lived there maybe five years, when I was about 9 to 13. Then we moved again, to Vilshärad, where we built a house. That was when my dad got sick. He got prostate cancer. He couldn’t work and laid at home for a year.

I played soccer too, but it wasn’t my thing. I was pretty technical, I could kick the ball in the air 100 times. But I was kind of fat back then and a bad runner. The thing that settled it was when I turned 15. I got to choose between a used moped and a used stereo. I picked the stereo. I’ve always been a loner and became even more so when I decided against the moped. Maybe it’s my personality, but it’s also due to us moving so frequently. You never rooted, didn’t get any close friends. I stayed at home instead, with my headphones. I listened to records, listened a lot to the radio and wrote down statistics.

At the same age, when I was 14-15, I started writing my own songs. We had a piano at home that I never used. I took a few lessons, but I could never connect the thing about musical notes. I never understood how the notes became music. So when I wrote songs it was just lyrics. I had the melodies in my head. I had hundreds of songs in my head. Not the way Mozart did (laughs), they weren’t symphonies where I could hear every single instrument. But I had pop songs all finished in my head; beat, verse, bridge and chorus. It was there, inside my head, where I lived my life. We moved and moved. Junior high school was a damned painful time for me. I felt totally out of place. I was kind of bullied and felt worthless. Plus I was rather fat. To get away from school I decided to take a sabbatical and start working at Bingo-Livs, an ICA [grocery] store. I’m born in January 1959. When I took the school maturity test at the age of six I got to choose if I wanted to start school a year early. We chose that alternative and I started school as early as six. I was therefore always the youngest in the class during my youth. Taking a sabbatical was a way to start over in a new class, with persons of my own age. Mom and all were unanimous that a sabbatical was a good idea. I worked at Bingo-Livs unpacking milk and things like that. I got to drive a moped after all, one with a platform even, picking up groceries. When I stood there packing milk one day one of my teachers at the disgusting school came by and said “Oh, so this is where you would end up after all.” Goddam what an ass. But to me it was a chance to start over. During the sabbatical I managed to lose some weight. I lived on chicken and crisp bread for a year. Everything was at the end of the line. I was determined to start over from scratch. New house, new school, new friends. I was looking for a year zero.

Parallel with this punk rock arrives. I bought Patti Smith’s “Horses” and the Ramomes first. I got a kind of abstract self confidence from this. Punk rock said it was OK to not be especially great. In the spirit of the times that had been before, marked by “Brain Salad Surgery” and “Dark Side of the Moon,” everybody were so damned good. When I came back to school, where I finally ended up in a new class, I found a friend. A great friend named Peter, Peter Nilsson. It was 1977 and he played the bass in a band called Audiovisuellt Angrepp. The band rehearsed in Harplinge, 15 km away. We went there as soon as we could and stayed all day long there. Among the other members of Audiovisuellt Angrepp were MP (Mats Persson, Gyllene Tider) who played the drums. That’s how I got to know him. In the band was also Martin Sternhufvud who later started MaMas Barn together with Marie (Fredriksson). After a while MP and I started a band on the side, but in the beginning I sat there, with my back to the wall, and listened to them play. The room they used to rehearse was small, a lot smaller than this room. And it was so damned loud. I sat there thinking, wow, this is exactly what I want to do with my life.

At the end of my father’s illness period we couldn’t afford keeping the house so we moved again. It was in that house I wrote “När alla vännerna gått hem”. It was at Hamilton’s Väg 1978. I remember it vividly. My dad died in 1978. He only heard us once. It was when Grape Rock was on the radio show “Bandet går” (“The Tape’s Running”). We were supposed to be a punk band, but the song, “En av dom där,” was over six minutes long. It was built on an eternal riff that probably had more in common with Led Zeppelin. But my dad didn’t like it at all. Above all he thought my singing was terrible.

Per Gessle

P, C & C rockin' the plumber's crack (V): SOAP success in Sweden and TV time

P, C & C go straight to #1 on the Swedish album chart with his Son of a Plumber project beating Madonna! The new album already sold platinum (60,000 copies) in Sweden the first day.

On November 27th, 2005, Per Gessle was interviewed at TV Huset. The band also play (not live) the song Jo-Anna says, with Clarence Öfwerman, Helena Josefsson, Jens Jansson and Magnus Börjeson. We missed Christoffer Lundquist, but he was working at AGM studio.

Per Gessle and Marie Fredriksson (Roxette) were on a stage at the Dorchester Hotel in London last 29th November 2005 to receive two BMI awards for “Listen to Your Heart” which has been played 2 million times (and is also the “Dance Song of the Year”) and “It Must Have Been Love” which has been played over 4 million times on US radio.

Per Gessle and his Son of a Plumber project were guests at TV4’s Nyhetsmorgon this morning. Son of a Plumber performed “Hey Mr DJ” live in an acoustic version and “I Have a Party in My Head” lipsynced.

Son of a Plumber has been nominated for a Grammis - Best Male Pop Artist. The Grammis gala will be held February 7. In our opinion, the great work of all the band (C&C, Helena, Jens, Magnus) is worth more than a solo momination.

We have read many comments about Son of a Plumber. For those who think that "Son of a Plumber" is not just another sideproject to keep Per Gessle busy, there is a new forum nicely moderated by ""The nice Kai", from Berlin" and others. Please, visit the SOAP forum.

By the way, we have read many comments about the role of Helena Josefsson, a big role that some fans of Roxette do not like at all. Three German girls created some time ago a good web dedicated tot he singer, http://www.helena-josefsson.com (Updated 2008: This web is deleted).

LJdM

Yesterday, New David vistited Malmö and met up with Metro Jets/Brainpool David (David Birde), nowadays often referred to as “Old David”. The two of them went to the gay club Tomboy, where Jens played with Monkeystrikes. Some hours later, Brainpool-Christoffer, Metro-Magnus and Helena from Sandy Mouche flew to Stockholm to play with Son of a Plumber on morning tv. Old & New David probably slept at that time. I sure did & missed all of it. But you can watch it on the web. Go here to watch.

Anders Mildner - Junk Musik

P, C & C rockin' the plumber's crack (IV): Son of a Plumber released today

LJdM wants to review the new album of Per Gessle with Clarence Öfwerman and Christoffer Lundquist. P, C & C team rocks again. "Son of a Plumber" is made with the same musicians as Per Gessle’s Swedish album “Mazarin,” but now in English and as a double-CD. Per Gessle wanted this album to feel like an old-time LP where you had to switch the side in the middle. With 2 CDs, it brings the vinyl experience back a bit. And we really enjoy it!

LP 1:
1. Drowning In Wonderful Thoughts About Her

LJdM: Hurry yea! This wonderful album starter begins the travel to the late '60s and early '70s. And it's alright! Very positive lyrics although "to kick the cryin’ has taken forever".

2. Jo-Anna Says

Per Gessle: "It’s a sort of a McCartney-song. We’ve had long discussions about what to really think about him. I’m more of a Lennon man myself, but like his early solo stuff."
LJdM: Catchy single. Very McCartney and the Beatles. Yes, Gessle is not "like the other guys". And the lyrics are sad and funny at the same time.

3. I Have A Party In My Head (I Hope It Never Ends)

Per Gessle: “My favorite from the album. It turned out just the way I imagined it. It feels very special.”
LJdM: Pleasantly surprised. Someone called this song "neo-folk music". Is it Gessle? Wow! Maybe too much time listening to Simon and Garfunkel then! This is our favourite as well. We wanna come by and hope the party never ends.

4. C’mon

Per Gessle: "You can’t tell it’s me. So people can get a feel for it, regardless of their relationship to me. I sing in falsetto for the first time. It happened that way when I wrote it… and it was fun to sing it that way."
LJdM: We are looking for the 'lite'. No, we can't tell it's Per Gessle singing. Not one of our favourite, although we love the rythmic melody.

5. Week With Four Thursdays

LJdM: The first instrumental, ambient music with nice '70s keyboards. It seems the soundtrack of a film.

6. Hey Mr DJ (Won’t You Play Another Love Song)

Per Gessle: “A country pastiche. Sounds like Chicago, no? These songs very easily turn into parodies and we were in bad shape for a while there, but I think we got through it. It sounds very lovely. Well, I just wanted to write an old-fashioned country song for Helena and me. I never expected Clare & Chris to like it but they really did… I was so surprised. And, of course, it turned out to be one my fave songs on the album.”

LJdM: No DJ here. We love the beginning with only Helena singing. An absolutely brilliant country ballad or a wonderful Burt Bacharach duet? Helena Josefsson an Per Gessle's voices go together and complete each other so perfectly. Some TDR editors call this "one of the best duets Per has written ever". At least, we believe in every word Gessle and Josefsson laid on us.

7. Late, Later On

LJdM: We got lucky to meet this song. Acoustic instuments and beautiful lyrics. Another young love story.

8. Ronnie Lane

LJdM: The second instrumental on the album, with Helena's voice as one of the instruments. It could suit a film very well.

The Junior Suite (9-13):
9. Are You An Old Hippie, Sir?

LJdM: Happy, stupid lyrics. Just the way we love it. Yes, we think Gessle is the old hippie he sings about. We can listen to the nice ba-da-ba-ba-ba theme that runs through the entire album.

10. Double-headed Elvis

LJdM: A strange falsetto blues. Don't ask us about the meaning of the lyrics. Who knows!

11. Something In The System

PG: "“Something in the system” was a slight mistake so I didn’t want to use it at all. I recorded it at Tit&Ass in Januray 2002 for Roxette. I never really liked it, dunno why. But when the medley-idea came up (I guess it was Clarence’ brilliant brain at work!!) I thought it would fit quite well. Shorter, more in-your-face, like a nice little bridge between “Double-headed Elvis” and “Speed boat to Cuba”. This is how it sounded when it was born."
LJdM: It was written for Roxette but P, C & C got to give the sound of the 60's to it. And now it's inside our mind too.

12. Speed Boat To Cuba

LJdM: Jo-Anna is back and tells him that he's still not the one. Speed kills in this rocker song. The main theme is back at the end, a very nice touch like all the production.

13. Come Back Tomorrow (And We Do It Again)

LJdM: It's a remake of Gyllene Tider’s old bonus track from “Puls” - “Bara vara nära" ... 23 years ago! Modern arragement for closing the first half of an album.

LP 2:

1. Kurt - The Fastest Plumber In The West

Per Gessle: “An instrumental, with film score touches. It’s a little spaghetti western-ish. And Kurt, the plumber, that’s of course my dad. Thought he needed a tune.”
LJdM: Wow! We remember Sergio Leone's spaghetti western films. Kurt was Gessle's father.

2. I Never Quite Got Over The Fact That The Beatles Broke Up

LJdM: We didn't get it either. Per and Helena sing in circles around each other. No real chorus in this one, but it’s got a beautiful airy sound to it.

3. Substitute (For The Real Deal)

LJdM: It should be a substitute for "C'mon" as real single. Great music. It is Gyllene-Tider-and-Tom Petty-Per.

4. Waltz For Woody

Per Gessle: “Another instrumental, dedicated to Åsa. She’s called Woody. I really don’t know why. It’s just the way it is.”
LJdM: One of the few pieces Per plays the keyboards. Lovely!


5. Carousel

LJdM: History repeat itself at the beginning with Per and Helena voices. According to Visa from TDR, "you can hear the touch of Christoffer Lundquist on this one as well. I could swear the sound of the seagulls on the background is the same sample as in “High” by Brainpool". After a song like this, you can go home and listen to it again.

6. I Like It Like That

Per Gessle: “The strongest chorus on the album. Maybe it is the one that sounds the most like ’classical’ Gessle. I started working on “I like it like that” with some, quite annoying, drum-loop in mind. It all put me in a somewhat bad mood. Drum-grooves usually do! However I really adored the song and did an acoustic version the very same day at the Tits&Ass studio in January 2002 (it was made for Roxette). Here it is! I think I’ve changed the lyrics a bit along the way."
LJdM: The song makes you feel in love. This is Roxette-Per in a mid-tempo power pop ballad. A happy lovesong with one of the most beautiful phrases: "To be with you is all I have, all I am".

7. Something Happened Today

LJdM: Very personal, straight-to-the-heart song, almost entirely acoustic with an organ in the backgound. It's a big song because it's small at the same time. As Visa from TDR says, we can imagine "Per and Helena sitting by the fire, Per playing his guitar and Helena singing like an angel, far away from any worries." After SOAP, Gessle will never sound the same again.

8. Brilliant Career

LJdM: More tea anyone? Yes, please, with lots of sugar. Sweet song. Very simple lyrics that keep repeating over and over in an airy beatiful melody.

9. Burned Out Heart

LJdM: I deal with it the best I can. Gessle could be thinking about Pink Floyd.

10. Drowning In Wonderful Thoughts About Her (Reprise)

LJdM: Back to the beginning! Just like The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper the album starts and ends with a reprise of the same song. More wonderful thoughts abut her in a traffic jam.

11. Making Love Or Expecting Rain

LJdM: Finally, a Bob Dylan quote and Per en Français. Childhood memories to tell to your lover. It's time for candles and wine.

(12-hidden track) Jo-Anna Says Farewell

LJdM: Just a pun of an old Gessle song “Jo-Anna farväl” which was released by Gyllene Tider under the name Pers Garage back in 1989. It scares you a bit after almost ten minutes of silence on the last track.

(13-LP bonus trak) Keep The Radio On (This Is The Perfect Song)
Per Gessle: “The song itself was written for Gyllene Tider back in 1980 (called ’Gå hem innan du lägger dej’ which means something like ’Go Home Before You Go to Bed’…) but GT never used it. Mainly because of the terrible Swedish lyrics if I remember the history right. However, it was recorded by the Lonely Boys for the LB album but I’m sure y’all heard that! And just recently it became rejected once more when we mixed the SOAP album. That version didn’t really make me tick!”
LJdM: Very Buddy Holly. It is taken from “The Lonely Boys”’ album from 1995, and it’s been re-recorded with slightly, insignificant, changes to the lyrics. It is a nice song but it doesn’t fit the album.


Yes, Son of a Plumber is much more and better than just Per Gessle. The die-hard Roxette fan probably will not love the concept of this album, this is not for sure what they expected. Gessle and C & C are back to their roots with the vocals of a "childish girl", Helena. Helena Josefsson sings here better than ever.

LJdM

P, C & C rockin' the plumber's crack (III): Brainpool's anthology of failure

We started to record the world’s longest krautsong & kept working on it for an eternity. We tried a lot of different things, but ended up with just a few instruments. Usually, we don’t edit our music, but this time we let the computer play a part. It is rather dull to sit and look at a screen though…. At first we had the idea that this would be an instrumental. But I think we have abandoned that idea. When it was time to record the vocals, we got stuck and started to talk and listen to other people’s music instead. We will continue to record this week and will probably be able to finish it in the next couple of days. Its fun to work this way: not knowing exactly what you want to do, even if it takes somewhat longer time. If we are lucky, this record will be fantastic. If we’re not lucky, it will just be great. One thing is for sure: it will not sound anything like the rock opera.

Jens Jansson - Junk Musik

After having spent four days in the studio, we are forced to admit that we have failed this time. This is what happened. We started to work with the Kraut-ballet (which we by the way called “The Anthology of Failure” – now isn’t that ironic?). The process was enormously creative. We worked like animals & played instruments we didn’t even know the names of (we couldn’t play them either). The song ended up being nearly ten minutes long. We edited it down to five. When we listened to the result, it stood clear that this was THE WORST SONG EVER RECORDED. After a while, we realised that this actually is the way we get things done. Both “You Are Here” and “Junk” were preceded by a number of grave errors before we found our way into the material. And since we persist in constantly reinventing ourselves, we will just have to accept that this is going to happen now and then. We have saved some clips from the recordings. We will post one of them tomorrow, so you can listen to the rubbish!

David Birde - Junk Musik

Picture by Emelia Olofsson, sydsvenskan.se - November 2005

What happens when a band decides to do a ten minute long kraut-ballet-song? Listen to a clip of Brainpool’s “The Anthology of Failure” and you will know. No, it will not be released. We will add this music to our loops section. Use it – make a kraut ballet of your own! Anyone who decides to make a ten minute kraut ballet has A LOT of guts to start with. It actually sounds like a theme song to a childrens show on tv. And a fun one too! Maybe we could try to pitch it?

Brainpool has got great musicians, great singers, great songs & words and a great producer.
So why is it so much fun to listen to something that didn’t work out, something that normally never would leave the studio? Personally, I would love to hear more failures. There is a common thought that music turns out exactly the way the musicians have in mind. This is seldom – or never – the case. Music goes its own way. Sometimes it goes wrong. Terrible wrong. Deadly wrong. One one man can save it…oh, hang on, this isn’t a movie trailer. But sometimes – or very often– it goes wrong. If people could hear the wrongs a little more often, I think they would understand the right ones better.

Anders Mildner - Junk Musik

There is something beautiful in “wrongs” for sure. The concept of the ballet “The anthology of failure” is partly about that. It’s a big hooray to those who invest their lives in something that in the end turns out to be not such a good idea after all. (Painfully autobiographical, a cynic would comment. :-)) It would be great to hear other bands’ “failures”. On Beatles Anthology, are a few examples of early versions of songs that sound quite ridiculous. Tomorrow Never Knows, for instance.

David Birde - Junk Musik

This is one of the best posts on this blog ever! A true success!!! There are plenty of failures already. “The Anthology of Failure” showed lots of potential…the first 3 bars :-) Well actually I quite like the rythm section!

Magnus Börjeson - Junk Musik

P, C & C rockin' the plumber's crack (II): Chris, Mom & Dad, Magnus & Per, Anders ...

More news about Christoffer Lundquist and friends' record company.

According to Anders from Junk Musik and the newspaper Sydsvenskan, David Birde and Jens Jansson of Brainpool are going duo. David and Jens have a new project called Mom & Dad. The Austrian artist Florian Horwath will guest on some of the songs.

David and Jens have been backing Florian Horwath this fall on a big tour in Germany, Austria and Schwitzerland. Florian is much younger (he's "the son") and David and Jens feel they are mom and dad.

Florian Horwath Tour

• 20.09.05 AUT – Vienna, Chelsea
• 21.09.05 AUT – Graz, PPC
• 22.09.05 AUT – Klagenfurt, Kamot
• 23.09.05 AUT – Lustenau, Carini Saal
• 24.09.05 AUT – Weyer, Bertold Saal
• 27.09.05 GER – Karlsruhe, Die Stadtmitte
• 28.09.05 GER – München, Zerwirk
• 29.09.05 GER – Konstanz, Kulturladen
• 30.09.05 GER – Würzburg, Pleierhof
• 01.10.05 SWZ – Zürich, tba.
• 02.10.05 GER – Neu-Ulm, Salon Hansen
• 03.10.05 GER – Köln, Blue Shell
• 04.10.05 GER – Darmstadt, Oettinger Villa
• 06.10.05 GER – Jena, Kassablanca
• 07.10.05 GER – Berlin, 103
• 08.10.05 GER – Halle, Objekt 5
• 09.10.05 GER – Hamburg, Schilleroper

Brainpool’s Christoffer Lundquist recently released a great solo EP. It is supposed that Jens (Mom) & David (Dad) will record new material under the name “Mom & Dad” this winter.

Jens Jansson (Mom) says:

It will be based on drums, guitar and harmonica, Florian Horwath will be Mom & Dad’s guest on some of the songs. – We have completed a couple of songs. They are called “Gutenmorgen Alexanderplatz”, “Was ist mehr pop?” and “Servus Motherfuckers". What will Mom & Dad sound like? It will be kind of minimalistic. Here are some keywords: Kraut, white blues, rock.

According to Junk Musik, it is not the end of Brainpool. Brainpool is still active and actually has plans to record new material soon, perhaps this autumn.

By the way, Anders Mildner also writes about the recordings with a "secret artist": this secret artist is no other than Per Gessle himself. Anders gives some important advices that Per could consider in his forthcoming album

LJdM

Magnus Börjeson (Metro Jets) & our secret artist completed the recordings yesterday. They did an amazing amount of work in just one day. (I thought it would take three days!)

Worried that crazy suburbia gangs would rob him, Magnus took a taxi to the city & met me outside Mondo, where New David played with Bo Sundström. Later, it turned out that they were only a support act. After some Sundström songs, Sundström, New david & A LOT of other people went on stage to celebrate that Neil Young now turns 60. We got an hour of Neil Young songs, had a nice evening and celebrated a day of good work.

I was thinking about the things I hate in music.

1) Cover versions of well known songs, featuring an actor reading the lyrics.
This was, of course, an actor’s idea the first time around, but now it it is just an easy way out for lazy people with too many gigs: “Let’s make something completely different!” Yeah, right. Let’s be honest. Everyone hates this: the audience, the musicians – probably even the actor. A strange example is found HERE.Please stop it now.

2) Songs that are called the same things as the genres they are trying to be.
Example: In the last Eurovision Song Contest, Sweden had a really disturbing song (it didn’t win, thank you God) called “Tango, Tango”, which, of course, was a tango. We would have guessed this anyway, but just in case somebody would miss it (despite the in-your-face tango-choreography), the words in the chorus was “TANGO TANGO”. You can name every genre – there will be a song for you. Sang in a jazzy-ish, reggae-ish (etc) way. As if we would’nt get it anyway. Everyone, please stop calling songs the same things as the genres they are trying to be. It doesn’t work, and it will not make the songs sound like they actually belonged in those genres. Even a guy like Neil Young, who – you must admit it – knows how to rock, sounds like he doesn’t have a clue when he sings “Keep on rockin´ in the free world”. Oh? You meant “rock”? I thought you meant tango!

3) People performing in long shorts and bare chests.
This is so hard to relate to. I can’t relate to it at all. No pop bands are doing this. Only tattooed “harder” rock bands. But what’s the idea here? Are these guys coming directly from the beach? And is that “hard”?

Anders Mildner

Junk Musik