The Daily Madman

Better late than early, I’ve added a preliminary time schedule and additional bands for the show on show onBroder Tuck. Not much more to say about it. We play as the last band, hopefully people don’t expect to much from that.

Also rehearsed last night. Not sure we should have. Played from “ok” to “awful”. Let’s hope for a better perfomance tonight!

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This sunday evening, we had an extra rehearsal, just to guarantee ourselfs that we really know the songs we are going to play on saturday. Maybe we shouldn’t… Suddenly all of us started to play wrong at places where we never ever played wrong before. And I really mean _ever_. When we rehearse a song for the first time, the songs are usually completed in a manner which makes it possible to play them from beginning to the end without any problems. Espacially when everyone made their homework, which also usually everyone does.

Thought we all where comfortably relaxed after the saturday, to supine to being nervous about our first gig. But no.

And the saturday… Pekka and me went to Pub Anchor just to eat dinner. Maybe a movie afterwards. But instead of that we stayed until the beer garded closed, and then we continued the night inside the club. A really good cover band played, called Heavy Duty. But I haven’t been able to find out anything about them, anyone who knows who they are?

A bunch of intresting people sat by our table during that night. One girl asked me where I came from, considering my dialect. When I suggested that she should guess, she answered “it sounds like you are from the countryside, _somewhere_”. “Yeah, and you are undubitably from Stockholm”, I didn’t answer, even if that was my first thought. .

Also met an ex-neighbour from my hometown Uddevalla (somewhere on the countryside… ) who used to be my baby sitter. I’m not sure I’ve seen her since, but nowadays we are almost neighbours again.

Well, time for me to play through the songs I composed and then rehearsed a couple of hundred times before. That’s obviously not enough when you start to get a little bit nervous.

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Except from providing the world with some music which turn people into a good mood, I recently found something that hopefully will make your every-day life much easier.

I’m not sure if everyone gets tears in their eyes while they are cutting onions, I am at least among those who get it. Have tried several ways to avoid this, with different levels of success.

• Swimming googles works very well, but I haven’t owned any for several years. And you will look pretty funny.
• Ski googles doesn’t work that well, since they have ventilation slots to avoid condensation. Whatever it is that makes you “cry”, it seem to take this way.
• Putting the chopping-board on the stove, under the kitchen fan. Works ok, but if you already are using the stove for something, you can’t put it there.

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The Rockford toaster

Can’t say that I ever done any really innovative guitarplaying. On the other hand, I got some complimaints about it, which probably is just all about being creative more than playing technically well. Tend to work with guitar solos just as with anything else involved in songwriting/composing.

Anyway, here is a picture of the most recent part of my guitar rig. It was added from my motto, “if the stomach is happy, so will the guitar player be”. But the actual sandwiches on the picture were actually meant for our drummer. Sometimes I am nice to drummers, not just telling jokes about them.

But now when we mentioned it. How many drummers do you need to replace a light bulb which is positioned so high that you will need a ladder to reach it?

Only one. But only if he have a roadie who bring and carry the ladder, place it under the light bulb and the climbs up and replace the light bulb.

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Jonas

This tuesday I suddenly found myself at the VIP section of the very popular swedish TV show “Allsång på Skansen” (some kind of sing-along show). I can’t say I’m very used to sing in public, but as soon as my first embarrassment was gone, I really enjoyed it. Not that I recognized much of the songs in, but since we arrived already during the rehearsals, you learned most of them. Along with that, I did one of my famous ninja jumps over two older ladies (“deskmates”) when I went away to buy something to drink (obs; in-joke between my younger brother and me).

Then there was a after-party. I can say that I totally had to change my preconceptions about how members of a symphony orchestra behave on a party. One word, “rock’n'roll”.

Also met the host of the show, Måns Zelmerlöv. Have to admit that he was way better in real life than on TV. This might have to do with how positive I felt about the whole thing than I used to feel. But than I asked him if he could give me his ex-gf Marie Serneholt‘s phone number. I mean, she is available now. But he didn’t thought that was a good idea at all. Sort of disobliging if you ask me…

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Just updated the presentation for the members of The Rockford Heroes. To be honest, I’m not sure if this is more intresting to read than the random generated latin which were there before. But it’s my intention…

From one thing to another, saw that Century Media decided to remove all their music from Spotify. Of course, they are buisness men, but I still think it’s somewhat sad that they just remove the music without any ideas of how they will sell their music in the future. Their motivation behind this decision was that they thought it was clear that the album sales decreased in countries where Spotify is available.

This is probably true, even though I think it might not be analyzed well enough. Put the winning times in Tour de France in a graph, along with the rainfall of some city in the world. It you analyze some years, you might come up with a result like, “much rain in Tokyo -> good winning times in Tour de France”. Or whatever. But this doesn’t prove a connection between those to numbers at all.

Anyway, does someone really, I mean really, believe that people would start to buy CD albums again just because the music aren’t available on Spotify?

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Finally, we will play our very first gig on /Broder Tuck, here in Stockholm on september 3:rd. Playing scheme and other bands aren’t set so far, but some information is standard on Klubb Dislocated:

• Ticket price: 100 Skr there, 80 Skr in advance
• Admission: 8:00 p.m.
• First band on stage 8:30 p.m.
• Address: Broder Tuck, Götgatan 85 (Skanstull metro station)

Will keep adding more information.
Update august 15:th: Created a . Invite anyone you like!
Update august 20:th: Klubb Dislocated also created a . Use that one!
Update september 2:nd: Added running order for all bands and time schedule

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Since a few days, I started to notice that when I’ve been in the room which I use as a studio in my apartment, and then walk away, I sometimes think (for a very quick moment) that I’ve been in another room. Not another room in this apartment, but a room in another apartment, and thus feel somewhat suprised when I walk from the studio into my living room.

It’s a fugitive and elusive feeling and I haven’t found out where I think I am. Even though I think I recognize the place.

It might be my very first apartment. It happened to be exactly the same size as this one, but with 2 rooms instead of 3 and a completly different plan arrangement. But the room that I used as a studio in that apartment looks very much like the room I have now, almost the same size and shape and with the door and windows at the same place. I also have my main desk in the same way, in a corner close to a window. But it’s 7-8 years ago since I left that apartment and I’ve been living in four other apartments since I got this one.

Ok, this is probably useless knowledge. But it isn’t always that easy to find useful stuff to update with. The psychological aspect of it is a little bit intresting to me though…

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Just came home from a concert with swedish punk/rock/metal legends Dia Psalma. New attendance record for the stage called “Lilla scenen” on Gröna Lund (swedish amusement park). They started concert by playing their debut album “Gryningstid” from the beginning to the end, and then added some songs from their other albums. Just awesome. Dia Psalma was one of the first “hard” bands I started to listen to, almost 20 years ago, but the music is still up to date. Which you can’t say about a lot of the other music from the 90s…

But the sound level… If you go to a rock concert, you shouldn’t feel that you are disturbing the audience closest to you (within a radius of 5 meters or so) just because you say something to a friend. And if someone nearby started to sing, it was almost impossible to hear the band at all.

On the other hand, I’ve been to a lot of concerts where the sound been so loud so it’s impossible to hear something for that reason. But if the sound level is low, they have to compensate by placing speakers around the whole concert hall, instead of only at the stage. Then the sound level could be kept at a good level, and it would still be possible to hear the band in a good way.

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Vacation. Resting.

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