Come and celebrate the release of Brainpool’s greatest hits album “We Aimed to Please” with us! Location: KB, Malmö. Time: 18-01. Also: free cigarettes are handed out, to those who want to smoke for the last time, before smoking is banned in Swedish restaurants.
Anders Mildner
It was actually Per Gessle who initiated the compilation. Apparently he was at home, listening to our albums and was once again struck by how good we were. He started to mail us, coming up with a running order for the album. Eventually he wore us down and we said: ’OK, you’ll get your compilation if you write the sleeve notes'. Per agreed and so the album, titled “We Aimed To Please,” will have an introduction written by him.
It will also contain the horrible ’Bandstarter’ demo recorded in a hotel room in Stuttgart during the Roxette tour and much more. The actual CD contains all our singles, plus the songs that would have been singles if we had released more. The compilation will be sold at the price of a regular CD. All songs are commented by Janne Kask and me and the artwork by John the Fisherman is an orgy of Brainpool nostalgia.
The two new songs, “A Different Life” and “Let Me Win,” were originally written for Belinda Carlisle in 1995 but never made it to her album. They have been hidden away in Jimmy Fun’s vaults until now, so they are very exclusive.
If we wanted Brainpool to be just like in the old days we would definately need Janne, but I think that we are equally uninterested in reliving the past in that way. Those days were great fun, but we are older and there are other bands now that are much better at doing what we were so good at for a couple of years in the mid-nineties. There is a time for everything… Right now we are pleased to have completed the compilation.
Junk Musik embraces the new technology that makes it possible for each and everyone to spread their music all over the world. The major labels have themselves to blame when they shout about illegal downloading. Instead of holding back, they should have jumped on the train years ago.
We will do a couple of interviews in Stockholm all four of us and hopefully we’ll go out in the night, get really drunk and remember our heydays!. After that - it’s time for Janne to write some hits, and for us to go home to Skåne and dream up next bizarre concept album!
David Birde - Junk Musik
I’VE ALWAYS THOUGHT THAT BRAINPOOL WAS THE BEST SWEDISH POP GROUP OF THE 90’s. Their records seemed to capture the mood of the day
, while recapturing a lost innocence -which made them sound both timeless and contemporary. “Soda” was an irresistible debut, a pop album that sounds just as fresh today as it did in 1994. A year later the confident follow-up “Painkiller” rightfully took them to the upper region of the charts. “Invisible to her” is still out of this world (who’ll be the first to cover it?). and who can forget “Bandstarter”? such a great song.
They were equally convincing on stage. I saw them live at the tiny Tre Backar in the beginning of time, and they gave us a brillant cocktail of The Who meets The Jam - all served with nice splashes of bubblegum, power pop and just the right measures of surf. We all love that!
Every band/artist stand or fall with their songs. Janne and David were - and still are - exceptionally good songwriters. But that’s just half the story. Brainpool was also a band of inspired musicians, all playing with the combination of energy and creativity that makes you want to press the “repeat” button.
Now that I’ve had the opportunity to work with Christoffer and Jens, both with Roxette and on my solo album “Mazarin”, I realise what a complete unit they were. Brainpool truly was a band without any weak link - even Christoffer’s peculiar glasses seemed to make sense.
Brainpool was the first band that arrived in the safe harbour of my music publishing company, Jimmy Fun. I was over the moon after hearing their cheeky demos, and one sunny day Ben Mariene, who was in charge at the time, signed them up. I then managed to make two humble achievements apart from shouting encouraging “yeah yeah yeahs”:
, while recapturing a lost innocence -which made them sound both timeless and contemporary. “Soda” was an irresistible debut, a pop album that sounds just as fresh today as it did in 1994. A year later the confident follow-up “Painkiller” rightfully took them to the upper region of the charts. “Invisible to her” is still out of this world (who’ll be the first to cover it?). and who can forget “Bandstarter”? such a great song.They were equally convincing on stage. I saw them live at the tiny Tre Backar in the beginning of time, and they gave us a brillant cocktail of The Who meets The Jam - all served with nice splashes of bubblegum, power pop and just the right measures of surf. We all love that!
Every band/artist stand or fall with their songs. Janne and David were - and still are - exceptionally good songwriters. But that’s just half the story. Brainpool was also a band of inspired musicians, all playing with the combination of energy and creativity that makes you want to press the “repeat” button.
Now that I’ve had the opportunity to work with Christoffer and Jens, both with Roxette and on my solo album “Mazarin”, I realise what a complete unit they were. Brainpool truly was a band without any weak link - even Christoffer’s peculiar glasses seemed to make sense.
Brainpool was the first band that arrived in the safe harbour of my music publishing company, Jimmy Fun. I was over the moon after hearing their cheeky demos, and one sunny day Ben Mariene, who was in charge at the time, signed them up. I then managed to make two humble achievements apart from shouting encouraging “yeah yeah yeahs”:
1. Tip them about producer Michael Ilbert.It’s been eleven years since the opening track on “Soda”, “That’s my charm”, rocked my little world for a while. This terrific compilation picks out the highlights from a pop group that’s gone from loved and influential to slightly overlooked and definitely underrated. So just listen and marvel: they actually were this good. Gold dust!
2. Decide the running order on the “Soda” album, since the band had four different suggestions and couldn’t agree...
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