A long time ago…

Okay! Long time, no see!

I was busy for a while and then I forgot about the blog.. But I’m back. But I will not blog evvery day. Maybe once every week for a start.

I know I’ve written alot about the Siesta!-festival, and I will write some more today, because the festival was last week!

There were some great artists:

Plain White T’s, The Kooks, Slagsmålsklubben, Wolfmother, bob hund, Håkan Hällström, Henrik Berggren, The Sounds, Hercules & Love Affair and many more…

The best live performence at the festival, and probably top ten I’ve ever seen was Hercules & Love Affair.They danced from the start and got the visitors to dance at that same moment. No breaks at all, it was one long non-stop dancing inferno! I loved it!!! Check them out!!

Slagsmålsklubben was as usual the funniest act. They had a big water bottle-war with the audience, and their live show will as usual be remembered.

The Kooks made the crowd wild. There was alot of people pushing and trying to dance. Alot of people fell (including me an my girlfriend), bur they were great. One of the bands I came for!

Plain White T’s made the crowd sing along. During Het There Delailah, I could barely hear Tom Higgenson.

There were also many nice activities there! In a library-tent, you could make your own pins, t-shirts(or other clothes) and borrow books(you could even take one home!
In another tent you could relax and play pingis and table football.

I don’t like the camping though.. It’s far away from the festival area and it’s to much nasty people that almost crushes the tents… At least I didn’t hear any stories of people who cut the tents open and steal everything this year!

My girlfriend got sick 2 of the 4 nights.. That wasn’t fun at all… We stayed up those nights, walking around the camping and the rest of Hässleholm.. I got really tired, and we stopped at some places to rest, but as soon as she relaxed, she started to shake as feel nauseuos… We went to a doctor to find out if it was anything to worry about. At one of he concerts everyone fell over her and she was completely covered of people for a long time, so we were a little worried that it could come from damages from that accident. He said that it probably wasn’t anything wrong, everything seemed to be normal! :D

Overall, I’m pleased wih the festival. But it wasn’t as good as I hoped it would be.. No camping next year, is the plan!

It’s cold, but I can feel the spring running closer

If you’ve followed this blog, you already know that I’ve written alot about the SiESTA! festival, or more correctly, the bands and who have been performing there, or will be performing there. Every year I look around to see what festivals I want to go to, and every year it changes. But SiESTA is one of the festivals that always stay on the list.

They have great music, a nice camping(although there’s allways room for improvement), great food and merch and of course a very competitive price.

The artists I want to see this year are so far:

BROTHER [UK]
Håkan Hellström [SE]
Crookers [IT]
The Sounds [SE]
Daniel Adams-Ray [SE]
Slagsmålsklubben [SE]
Adam Tensta [SE]
Oskar Linnros [SE]
Den Svenska Björnstammen [SE]
Billie the Vision & the Dancers [SE]

You can read my posts about some of these if you want.

Brother

This is a fresh band for me. I began to listen to them today acctually. You really should keep your eyes on these guys, I think that they will be quite big!

They are a britpop band, and are really good from what I’ve heard so far! I don’t know much more about them, but I’m sure I will get back to these guys soon.

Festival: Siesta!

Yesterday, Siesta! released five new acts for the festival early this summer. Håkan Hellström, Crookers, Graveyard, Oddysey and Brother are welcomed into the already good troop of artists. It’s atleast worth the price, and I’m certain that there will be many more great bands and artists released soon.

I will surely make the most out of this festival. I won’t walk home with clean clothes. I will crawl home in my own dirt.

The Tough Alliance

Today, a quick view on The Tough Alliance. They are an Electropop duo from Gothenburg, Sweden, consisting of Henning Fürst and Eric Berglund. They have made 3 albums during their active years 2001-2009. The second album, Escaping Your Ambitions , stads out compared to the other two, A New Chance and The New School. There’s for example no singing. But you can hear their sound in the music, even though I wouldn’t have recognized it to be TTA just by listening.

Their music is perfect for when you walk or riding a bus, well, when you’re traveling! It doesn’t matter what the weather is outside, TTA fits to everything. At least for me. The only times I can’t listen to TTA, is when I can’t listen to music at all.

This is another band I missed seeing live. I’ve had my chances but didn’t take them. Well, you learn by your mistakes! I really hope that they can reunite and make a little tour or something some day!

Listen to at least one of these songs. They are very much worth it.

 

Placebo

>>>>>NOTE: God damnit! Finally got a comment, and it was spam. GRRRR<<<<<

The special voice of Brian Molko and the sweet, distinguishing music makes Placebo easy to like, if you’re in to alternative music. I found out about them around 2007, which appearently is the year I found most of the band I listen to today. It was my brother who played one of their albums, and I borrowed the CD very often when he didn’t listen to it.

They only had conserts far away, so I had to watch them on the TV or on the internet, and pretend to be there. In 2009 I didn’t need to pretend anymore. But sadly, I wasn’t really in the mood for a consert. But I saw them, and I’m happy for that, it’s a memory that can’t be wiped away easy, even though it would be nice with another consert when I’m in the mood.

And a little note is that Stefan Olsdal, the bassist in the band, is from Sweden.

Familjen

Finally I’ve come to Familjen(translates to The Family). Familjen is Johan T Karlsson‘s one man band, with Andreas Tilliander(another big Swedish electro-artist, but sadly not given as much attention as Familjen) as sidekick at the live shows. Familjen got a strong fanbase from the start, especially in his home town, Hässleholm. He released the big hit Det snurrar i min skalle in 2006, but it was named Ivanhoe & Rebecka until 2007 when he made a more live-friendly version of the song.

I lived in Kristianstad at the time, the neighbour city, so I was there from the beginning. It’s pretty cool to see this happen, a guy playing at the local concert-house and then spreading like a fire to become one of the big artists in Sweden. I wass there at one of his first shows, and I’ve followed him pretty close, going to his shows when playing in the neighbourhood.
In these four, soon five years, I’ve seen Familjen live at least 10 times, not being disappointed once! It might be the Scanian, but I think it is the beat that makes us all dance and the melody that’s so tempting to sing to!

In his newest album, he has a song called It began in Hässleholm, it’s insprired from the song It began in Africa by The Chemical Brothers.

If you’ve never heard of this man, go check him out! A Scanian man is hard to say no thanks to.

Familjen, Johan T Karlsson, with his companion Andreas Tilliander.

Familjen – Det snurrar i min skalle

Familjen – Det var jag

Familjen – Huvudet i sanden(Was my personal favourite since I heard it for the first time)

Carl Norén

Carl Norén, singer in Sugarplum Fairy and brother of Sugarplum Fairy’s Victor Norén and Mando Diao’s Gustaf Norén, are now making a name in a solo-career. He made his solo-debute last year with the single The Anger. It made it in to the Tracks-list in Sweden. A very nice song, I’ve been playing it alot the last few days. I didn’t start to listen as soon as I heard of him, but when I saw that he will be playing live in Lund in March, I had to give some attention to see if he’s worth a visit. He definatly is. It will be a 3 hour train trip, but that doesn’t matter, I have waited 12 hours sitting on a bench in the hot sun for one song by Johnossi, so this won’t be a problem!

The Norén brothers, Victor, Carl and Gustaf.

Sugarplum Fairy has been a favourite band for a long time, and I hope that Carl will continue as he’s begun, so he’s solo-career will be in the top with his band!

Listen to this, You won’t regret it!

Joakim Thåström(+”Ebba Grön”, “Imperiet” and “Peace, Love and Pitbulls”)

Joakim Thåström‘s music has always been played in the background through my whole life. He was the singer of the two bands Imperiet and Ebba Grön during the 80s. Both of the band were very successful in Sweden, most people know about the bands, escpecially Ebba Grön. In my younger years, my parents played Ebba Grön’s music every now and then, and I liked it. They also played some songs from Imperiet, but I can’t recall them ever playing anything from his solo-music. I discovered that music just a couple of years ago. I’ve almost always known his name and that he was the singer of Imperiet and Ebba Grön, but that was about all.

The lyrics are often critical about the society and religion. For example, Die Mauer is a critical song about the Berlin wall in Germany. I separated familys and friends.
The song Mamma pappa barn on the other hand, is about the relations in a family, especially between a man and his parents. They say “In the house where I live, noone knows eachother. In the house where I live, it’s quiet as in a grave”.

During the later years, people have said that he is very boring live. But I can say that he didn’t make me disappointed at all!! He is not the youngest man in the buisness, but he still got the spark! And one of the funniest things is that his voice almost haven’t changed a bit!

When I “researched” (I checked his birthyear and such, even though I didn’t used it) I found out about a band he had in the 90s. They were called Peace, Love and Pitbulls. Appearently, they played Industrial Rock, quite different from Thåström’s earlier and current work. This band did not get any big response in Sweden, but they made a name in France and some other European countries. Marilyn Manson have said that PLP had a part in inspiering his music. That something I didn’t know before!
Here are some music from Thåström’s career!

Thåström – Alla vill till himmelen

Thåström playing the Ebba Grön song Häng Gud(Hang God) in a church.

Imperiet – Du ska va’ president

Peter Doherty

Peter Daniell Doherty was born 1979 in Hexham, England. This man is one of those people that have affected my taste in music the most. I first got in touch with Doherty by listening to a song by his band The Libertines. This was around 2004-05, I belive, I’m can’t remember exactly, but it feels like a good guess! I learned all the lyrics, and walked around, singing their songs. I’ve forgotten most of the lyrics now though, I’m not very good in remembering stuff like that…
Shortly after, I started to listen to Peter’s second band, Babyshambles. The bands are similar in many ways, but the differences makes them two totally different bands. I prefer The Libertines, because that’s what I got in touch with first, simple as that. But Babyshambles are still one of the favourite bands, and Peter as solo-artist are also high on the list(not meant to be a pun!).

When talking about Peter, you often end up with the discution of his drug abuse. I wont go deep on this, I’ll just say: It’s a shame that he takes/took drugs, but it wont affect my view on his music. The Music was the thing I fell for, I didn’t know until pretty late that he took drugs..
Fact is, I was pretty late with most of the information about Pete. I didn’t know about him dating Kate Moss, I didn’t even know who Kate Moss was.

 

In December 2009, I would finally see Pete live. I bought a ticket very early and had the date booked in. I also had decided to meet someone there(who later became my girlfriend)! But of course  he had to cancel the show..
He booked a new date, but of course it was on a date I couldn’t go.. So, my bad luck again! But I’m sure I’ll get a new chance to see him, and if I’m lucky it will be with The Libertines, who have reunited!

 

Peter Doherty – Last of the English Roses