NICE – DE LILLOS NIGHT

COME ON IN !

 

THE TRUE MAGIC OF A WITCH…

Go HOME and read !

AND MARI BOINE CAME BACK …

 

Dew on a tired lily, snow and a Swedish voice on the wire.

WE ARE MOVING BACK TO OUR OWN SITE.
PLEASE BE WELCOME !
Read the latest from Trondheim !

 

YOUNG GIRLS FULL OF COME !

This was indeed a special weekend. Great things have happened !
A celebration, a big Great Hurra !
My son-in-law, The Balkan Painter, finally got his permit to stay in Sweden !!
As the husband of my daughters he have been now for four years.
As the beloved son, brother and familymember he has been since the moment for six years ago when he met my daughter.
The battle of waiting, trying, failing, with endless of even more waiting has been hard.
Extremely hard.
I won´t talk about it anymore.
But I promise you, I will do my best to get those people off their chairs, those people who is building this wall around Scandinavia !
Tear it down !

The other, more amusing and relieving thing that happened was, that I am out of my year of “fame” !
I am not longer the award-winning-bastard-of-some-fuckin-rock-act anymore !!
A new winner was elected last night.
I am much more comfortable with this, as a has-been.
So let us sum up what this award brought me.
1. A check for two days in a professional studio. Which was not a check at all, only a rebate coupon if I spend a couple of thousand dollars worth in that studio.
2. Five gigs in Trondheim in top places. Which cooked down to one  proper gig with a stage and good sound, but no audience. The other gigs I fixed myself, on places I had to go around with a hat, begging for the cover charge afterwards. ( a usual standard in Trondheim, sick- !)
3.A gig at Norway’s third biggest festival, Storås. When everything came clear, I was suppose to play for free, supporting a festival that has more to do with getting pissed than music or rock.
4. Attention and a little fame. Well, the same people in the only paper in Trondheim, who did not like my music back in the 80`s, still don`t. Now in their high positions, knowing as little about music as they did back then, they kept me far away from any headline or even between.

The great thing with the award was my decision to play street music ! It was a long summer and the good audience in the street of Trondheim kept me from going insane. From waiting for my son-in-law`s permit to stay with us. They applied at the Swedish embassy in march and it was told to be a wait for three months.
It took nine.

Another good thing is MORMORS STUE in Trondheim ! A cafe and a pub where they sell the cheapest beer in Trondheim. Not only that, but with a fantastic nice staff.Young people who can stand other young people, and other trash, with not enough money to waste on expensive bars in Trondheim !
A salute for  MORMORS STUE ! I played in their street and frequented the place often for one beer after my gigs. I love you !

The best ! Mormors Stue, Trondheim

Finally, for all Norwegian boys, and girls with their hands on the cover, Ida and Maren have written a book how girls should fuck girls ! A handbook in stimulation of the female body by people who really cares and know. I will be a success and soon, I hope, translated into many languages. Soon all prude girls can find their clitoris and start enjoying life !
(source, Dagbladet, the main evening press in Oslo and Norway)

Ida & Maren ! Photo: LARS MYHREN HOLAND, manipualated with english translation text by the Spy

So everything is good.
New times, new beats.
Time to get up and fight back again !

 

LAST RIDE IN TRONDHEIM (almost..)

BLAEST is the place in Trondheim !
Never have I been treated better or respected more on a dance floor in Trondheim ( except for the girl who was desperately looking for a father figure to fuck her all night)
But never have I been more surprised by the total lack of taste, what comes to DJ’s this Saturday !!
Who ever put those three clowns on the DJ stand Saturday the 25 of October ???!!
Have they been picked randomly from a lobotomy institute ?!

Don’t mind me, I can even dance to Abba if I am desperate. I am just the old geezer.
I know a lot about dance music, though.
I might have had been to the places, maybe.
I might just be crazy.
But you have to keep up the beat, you dum Dj’s ! Not break it up all the time, you sorry fucks.
Go find a casetteplayer in the salvation army to play with !

I am sorry, so sorry. This should be a happy ending, with words about the fantastic
shop in Trondheim ! The Hat shop !
In the alley, opposite the kings residence.
Cross the street from Bunnpris, the supermarket with the cheap five pack of excellent noodles.
Past the festival pub, left around the corner.
Opposite the good, small brewery in Trondheim. (David makes better beer though. Sorry.)
Yes ! Here it is, the fantastic Hat shop.
A sweet woman makes, and sell hats, of all sorts for a good price.
Stetson hats of brilliant quality too !
I wish I was a man who could wear a hat.
I would be king.
But just to be there ! In that shop. Feel the atmosphere, meet the woman who owns it.
And imagining you are a Hat person !
Only to see such devotion as a shop like that, makes you a Hat person for a while, and you  feel good when you leave.
This is my Trondheim.  That little shop.
And my little last gig by the square Saturday noon. With kind passers by, and the sun, slowly lifting it’s smiling face over the rooftops. Saying goodbye to the last street musician.

 

TO BE GAY IN TRONDHEIM AND SAVED BY THE NIGHTINGGALE

I have come back to my home town and lived here for 7 months now.
I have tried hard to be as gay as possible for a boring heterosexual.
But Trondheim and Norway is a far more boring heterosexual country than me even, and it often brings me down.
The jolliest night I have had so far is again BLAEST, where I have been allowed to dance my blues away to good music, without any harassment of any kind.
A very nice atmosphere. Gooood beats, mmm

I'm wondering

But of course, my few friends are, when everything comes around, the reason for surviving.
They can make me laugh and I love them !
I am however, curious to find out what is happening in Norway and in my town.
Under the surface.
The system and the politics.
Such boring things that I find very amusing.
It makes me kind of a loner. Everyone in my age group are to busy working and defending their own material status and I don’t blame them collectively.
I have been there and it is easy to understand.

So I wander about alone, looking curiously around and it suits me.
Being a poet and writer, I need to hear myself think. I don’t want to talk to anyone.

For some week ago I wanted to attend a meeting where the major in Trondheim were supposed to take part.
Or here they call it Chairman, and it is a woman, Rita Ottervik, from the social democratic party. Monday the 8′th she was to be part of a discussion on a meeting during the Gay Week of Trondheim.
Yes, I thought ! A gay week ! Just something for me !
Checking out the gay community in Trondheim and the two-faced social democratic bitch at the same night !
That couldn’t be wrong !
I have been to gay discos in Manchester, seen the Pride parades.
I like gay people, they are funny and they can really throw a party !
And always play good music !
I have always been treated nice.
But you know, I am a strange kind of male person.
I have noticed at a distance that there where some gay bars I wanted to check out eventually.
I thought they where doing fine here in Trondheim and like in Sweden had a growing acceptance.
But what a chock to come to the ONLY GAY bar !!
Outside the city centre. Anonymously like a AA place.
This is 2008 for god sakes !
The second largest town of Norway.
A depressing meeting about how to be old and gay..???
How can you be old and gay in a town where you are not allowed to be young and gay..??

And the chairman bitch had cancelled of course.
For what excuse I wonder ? Has she got a splinter in her finger itching her head..?
Was her hamster telling her to stay home…?
She probably knew that the gay “community” in Trondheim was nothing to bother about.
In control by the Norwegian racism and prejudices, hidden under a rock and with no threat for her political career.
She could concentrate of doing nothing for Trondheim as usual.
As selling out the public transport to private owners.
Who would care even less about the transported public.
Some of them gay.
I pitty the gay in Trondheim. So many nice people at that meeting:
They have had a gay parade the previous Saturday and now a gay week.
I want them to have a big Pride Festival.

bring it on !

Want Trondheim to get invaded by transsexual, gays and lesbians.
Walking down the street, holding hands, kissing each other in public !
This town needs to be shaken. Seriously shaken.
To be afraid to walk in the city of a town in Norway on a weekend night, is so horrendous that I can’t really start to explain my anger about it.
I went downhearted from that place. I wish I could do something.
I could play there of course.
But what could my grave music do other than dig them deeper down ..:)
I might go there and have a beer and dance some night.

No I walked through the city alone.  Kind of sad.
But I had a meeting with a friend at the Nightingale, NATTERGALEN !
A young peoples place with Monday jazz. This night three young men where playing.

saved by jazz...

Electric jazz guitar, played brilliantly by guitarist Espen Bjarnar,
drummer Tollef Østvang and my favorite, the bassplayer, Jon Rune Strøm.
At this homely cafè in the centre, they have jazz concerts every monday, and a DJ fridays and saturdays. Quiz on wednesday….??
And the serve very good food and have, not unimportantly, a good price for beer.
Not the lowest price, but acceptable.
Just what I needed, some jazz, and only the fact that three young guys are devoted to jazz makes me happy !
They all come from the music academy. They are very skilled, very good.
The guitarist should move more, though, he most soften up. Meet the bass player half way at least. He is on it, climbing his bass, wanting to let go and the drummer just want to hit it as well and the groove is good, but not lifting.
It is not a place for ecstatic convulsions, though. But as I said, the guitarist should move more.
He got the looks like the other two and the audience would love it !
He is a bit too brilliant sometimes. Fuck some of those perfect notes.
And one more thing.
If a band can’t speak out the name of the song clearly so everyone can hear, or keep joking about their own, good tunes, don’t speak at all !

I liked  the fourth song best, of the 8 in their set.
A cover.  Their own songs, by the guitarist, are good too. Nothing to diminish by jokes.
One of them makes us all wander about in our mind a little extra.
The place is not packed, but I am surprised that so many young people are out for jazz, digging into the music.
But then again, Trondheim is The Jazz city of Norway, don’t forget.
Molde has the jazz festival. Trondheim has the real thing, the teachers, the academy, the best breeding conditions for jazz in this strange land !

I met my new found friend, Geir Skavern, at the Monday jazz.
A coming collaborator I hope.
(When is he taken me to the parties with the young, beautiful Trondheim girls….?)
With his camera he is giving you visuals to my scribbling.
Lucky you, readers. We might spoil you !
And we have a secret agenda, you know, at the Scandinavian Spy.
So look out Trondheim, there are great things coming up your river

But for crissakes, start bringing in more gay people to Trondheim !

“GAY
→ adjective (gayer, gayest)
1. (of a person, especially a man) homosexual.
• relating to or used by homosexuals: a gay bar.
2. (dated) light-hearted and carefree:
“Nan” had a gay disposition and a very pretty face.
3. (dated) brightly coloured; showy: a gay profusion of purple and pink sweet peas.
The centuries-old other senses of gay meaning either ‘carefree’ or ‘bright and showy’ have more or less dropped out of natural use. The word gay cannot be readily used unselfconsciously today in these older senses without arousing a sense of double entendre”

 

FROM ST.OLAV TO NEIL YOUNG AND BACK AGAIN

Trondheim_photo:Sylvie

I got our media accreditation for the cultural, important festival, the St. Olav Festival for the last days. It was nothing I needed, but I was stopped, trying to enter a small concert in the fashionable, stuffy hotel, where Bengalo was having a gig.
But I where allowed after promising to get a accreditation the next day.
The band, Bengalo, is always a ravelling experience. They are a must if you want to know anything about what happening on the music scene in Trondheim.
Yes, because they all live in this town, bringing with them good influences from Greece, Balkan and world music. Jovan Pavlovic, accordion, vocal, Oluf Dimitri Røe on violin, vocal,
Christian Haug, guitar, Anne Fossen, with a ravishing vocal and Mattis Kleppen,  bass will never disappoint you and can make the most stale person wanna dance.
This time they where supported by a six piece brass band led by Srdjan Azirovic,playing traditional East-European gypsy music from Balkan og Bulgaria.
I remembered the fantastic first meeting with Black Cat/White Cat by Emir Kusturica, brought to me by my new family member from Balkan, my son in law.
Many years ago now and he is my Balkan and this music means a lot to me.
The terrible thing and the reason I don´t stay long, is that the concert is held in this terrible hotel, a too warm room with no windows. it is a shame that the festival have to use this hotel and not the St. Olavs hall.
A community hall who priced them self out of the competition and came out with a unacceptable rent for the festival budget. Two community “enterprises” who have to change “money” with each other like a children’s pity business game.

The river_photo: Sylvie

Believe it or not, but this is a market economy gone terrible wrong.
We have earlier complimented the festival, a quiet and a good thing for the summer tourists and the ones interested in a church and cultural festival. The atmosphere in town changed, it was nice to stroll along the city streets at night and we could stop and listen to a jazz jam in a bar.
But there where this other thing, the church and cultural festival had a rock alibi and I was curious about the band Madrugada who was having an extra concert because of so many people wanted tickets. 8000 tickets for a Norwegian band must be something.
I liked their radio hit, a very good production and listened to the rest of their last record and the impression faded a bit by some weak lyrics. After their guitarist and songwriter died they got a extra hype and lot of press around the new release.
I went there Wednesday and Friday and tried, but I could not find anything special about them, quite boring rock actually, I must say.
But again, the setting, which means a lot to music, doesn´t it..?
In Borggården, a closed yard behind the cathedral, cobble stone floor, stone walls, how can you possibly get a foot for any music in such environment..?!
Especially when just behind this place, there is a big, green area facing the river which should be the perfect place for outdoor concerts.
As I walked trough town I could see posters for the Pstereo festival, starting the 23 of august just at that place behind the cathedral, in the green park area.

But first I travelled all the way to Oslo with friends for the Neil Young concert.
Impossible to get a media accreditation of course, without applying in advance, but I get in with my press card the last half hour. Not very interested because I know what I will find. A big fuckin warehouse and the volume far to low of course and there like a fly on the wall, this Neil they are talking about, but not so many enough to make it look like anything else than a warehouse. This is not the man I know.
The artist who I held as the most political artist with his very poetic lyrics just fades away. I can understand him playing at outdoor festivals as Roskilde, all right, but here ??
Doesn´t he have any advisers who knows anything about the places he is going to play ? Is it only how many people you can pack into a place that matters…? Is he trying to beat the Rolling Stones or something..?
Well, I don´t know anything and I don`t shout, it just irritates me and I walk out with a sigh. I played in the subwaystation earlier the same day, and it was nice, I made good money the hour before the guards came and chased me away. I played some songs by Neil Young.

Neil Young, not playing any of my songs photo:Miro

He didn´t play any of mine
And for sure, he did not play Don´t be denied, how could he ever in that place !
Went back Sunday, after playing Saturday on the streets in the sunshine.

Now, weeks later, the summer is going.
Students back for university, the town gets busy in a different way.
I get a media accreditation for the Pstereo festival in Trondheim, after an annoying debate and waiting.
This time I have brought my own photographer who I also needed accreditation for.
A double trouble for the people in charge…(sick…!)
When a middle age man and woman comes with a press card what do they suspect…?
Is it a problem with thousands of middle age people with a press cards trying to sneak in for free or what is the problem..??
Get a fuckin grip, this is not New York or Glastonbury, but a small town who needs all the writing it can get.
And what if my photographer is not professional, what has that to do with anything..?
I could hire a monkey if I wanted, to paint impressions from the festival, the main thing is the article and the way we work to get a serious product for the readers.
We have as a fact a lot of readers all over the world.
Of course it is confusing with a paper that has only a Internet issue and seems to be a blog, but it is actually a link from the original Swedish paper, established back in 1996.
And why shouldn´t we have a blog like every other Scandinavian paper

It was a good festival though, this Pstereo, but they should call it something else, that name is impossible.
The settings was really, really nice, but people didn´t arrive till late in the night, a real shame, because the weather was sunny, in spite of the chill at night.
Between 6 and 10000 people attended during the two days.
What we could not understand is why they fenced in a lot of the grass and made the area smaller than it really is.
Are they afraid people will sit down or maybe fall asleep…:)
The sound system was excellent, but as you know of my very limited taste of music I leave it to other ambitious reporters to review the music. I would have liked a bit more happy people like in Roskilde and Glastonbury and a lot of dance music.
I wanted to see DumDum Boys, but there was this far more interesting music going on somewhere else in town, unfortunately, for the Boys.
In a small apartment, the core of CMS records came together in a studio after 23 years.
The great pianist Jon Matre, The Christian Schreiner, one of Norway’s absolute best studio engineers and composers. And Papafahr, the man me.
I recorded songs for my new CD and Jon played some piano on one of Christians big productions.
For me a highlight of this century, as I played with Jon again for the first time for 23 years. He is just my kind of piano player and I always choose him first, but our schedules makes it hard to get together. Hopefully it will be more often and on a stage somewhere !

Rehearsing in the best of environment_photo: Sylvie

This recording is also a thank you for my reward earlier, as every reward should be taken seriously and also a thanks to all the good people who stood up with my busking this summer.
But from the best things you fall hard,  I thought, as a woman left my room in the early sunday morning without saying goodbye. My music makes me a difficult and a almost impossible man to be around in times of such recording events.
So again I sit here alone, but very rich indeed from a week with a super-nice person I would have liked to get to know much better.
But I know very little about women and music, too much about me and my own struggling company and bubbling notes. So get over it.

Photo: Sylvie

P.s: No photos from the festival, the people in charge made my photographer feel really bad about her not being professional with their silly suspicious “minds” and she decided not to publish them. I pity it, because there where some good pictures taken.

 

THE TRONDHEIM CATHEDRAL CRUMBLES TO THE SKY

St. Olav Festival logo

In Trondheim it is the St. Olavs Festival.
The beautiful sunclock built square in the middle of the city is blocked off from traffic and there are events going on all over town.
St. Olav, the king who brutally forced us out of pagan days and into christianity, stands on a huge erected pedestal in the square center with his sword and shield.
Looking out the fjord for enemy ships.
Little do he know about what is going to happen behind his back.
In “his” cathedral up the street.
The program says:
“Under the same sky – a musical meeting of different cultures in the Trondheim cathedral Nidarosdomen
Soweto Gospel Choir consists of the best singers from churches and religious societies in and surrounding Soweto in South Africa. The choir has toured the world and is one of the most exciting groups within World Music today.

Mari Boine is one of Norway’s world class artists. She creates music on the border between Sámi and other kinds of folk music, rock and jazz. She tours the world and has achieved great success abroad.

Moscow Male Chamber Choir of St. Basil Cathedral are great ambassadors for the powerful Russian church music tradition.

Ståle Storløkken is a Norwegian jazz musician and composer.”

I was doubtful if I should go or not.
This is my hometown, my Agnar Mykle hometown.The town I left with the lasso around the moon, never to come back.
But still, here I am, back again after many years with my wandering wilderness.
When I was a child, my older brother became a member of the boy choir of the same cathedral. They had ugly monk cloak with a cross on and sang in the church at Sundays and whenever needed for shows like that.
I remember the cathedral as dark, cold and unfriendly.
A place I was dragged by my parents, and because of my brother the short period of time he could stand being a choir member.
But I remember the choir song was quite beautiful and the organ music so powerful.
There was this story about a monk living in the cathedral, whisking about like a ghost.
They had the monster of Loch Ness in Scotland and the Great Lake Monster in Storsjön, Östersund in Sweden. We had this monk.
But in this perfect cultural town, I guess they have cleared him out years ago.
I remember looking a bit scared around and up to the passages high up on the sides to see if he was there. There where a lot of stories about him, the organist of that time Ludvig Nilsen had some stories to tell, if I not remember wrong.
He was a genious at the organ, I understood, though I was only a boy and he had a reputation of being unfriendly in his artistic arrogance, but a devil at the church organ.

So it was with mixed emotions I went there. Also I was sceptical about Mari Boine, who was my reason for going to the concert at all.
For what purpose would she sell a performance to a church show like this..?
She would not leave me in my trust for her, would she..?
From the day I “met” her back in the seventies she has been one of the few artist that I have always trusted blind. She have drifted past me every now and then, always making me smile. Like a good power in the world, always there, moving people.
I only have one old vinyl of her, one of her first. But being a composer myself, I never listen to music if no one else puts anything on.
To much going on in my head as it is. And I might have been to one of her concerts sometime, or was it in a dream..?
The Sowetho Choir I knew all about, to boring for me and not any truthful ambassadors for South Africa any more.These days are gone, Mandela is a peace icon, while South Africa is a soon exploding kettle of poverty, desperation and the beggars of Romania are better images of the terrible times there.
I fear what will happen when Mandela dies one day.

The Trondheim cathedral, Nidarosdomen

By the door I was met by one of the cathedrals choir boys, or this was one of the older members. They still had those ugly, red brownish cloak who looks like they shrunken in the wash, ending unfashionably up the ankle.
He tried to stop me when I showed him my press card, asking me if I had any press cred from the festival. I said no, why should I, is this a secret party or something, and don´t you want some good writings if it´s just a concert..?
So he had to let me in of course. What´s the big deal, a small festival at the end of nowhere, whatever is wrong with you I thought.
But I knew those people can smell a pagan blindfolded and I could see he very much wanted to rip off his cloak and reveal his securitas uniform.

So into the christian womb again, dark, not so cold, thank god, thanks to summer, not him so much I guess.and Stepping in from the north wing, Mari Boine was standing in a native costume right across in the south wing.
The concert just started.
The cathedral has it´s ship going east to west, in the west end, to the right where I came in, is the church organ and the main mass area and the Sowetho Choir was placed there. The church was packed to the last chair and I was bewildered about where to sit.
It was no place to walk around or stand up and there where no places in front of where Mari Boine was performing with her five piece band.
I headed to the east part of the ship. Here a woman came up to me, also wearing a cathedral choir cloak, also to short, asking me to sit down. Pointed to the upper east end of the cathedral where there should be some vacant seats. I obeyed. It was dark, I was confused, I started to have some regrets by coming.
Found a seat and tried to calm down. The music chanced over to the Sowetho choir. The sound of them was not powerful as gospel can be, but instead a bit distorted in this big church. Then the organ took over and suddenly the Moscow Male Chamber Choir of St. Basil Cathedral came in, just close to where I sat and took over from the organ.
The organ with the mission of linking the other three acts together and it was a nice kind of fade in an out, I must say.
The first song was by a female singer and yes, it was quite powerful, sounded Italian to me the first song.Then a male soprano for a second song, it sounded more right for the small, but very powerful 13 voices choir.
There was no names of the members or the soloists in the, the conductor´s name is Sergei Krivobokov. They all where dressed in black cloak.
Organ again and then Mari Boine.

This is when it happens. Mari Boine is absolutely not letting me down, she grows and grows. On me. On everyone in that cathedral. I can feel the mix of astonishment, shock and amazement, tears and anger from the audience.
But nothing matters now. Nothing can stop her as she moves and moves and every ghost of this cathedral have to escape. The cathedral crumbles to the sky with the beating of a drum, her song that comes from cultures far older than this cathedral, her musicians is gathering around her mind and song and are doing the impossible to follow her all the way and they do !
This is not song, not music, this is not a performance.
This is a pagan religious delivery ! So wonderfully touching every heart and soul in this place.
It is not a cathedral anymore. All my dark memories vanishes from this place and again I know something about music after all.
I will never set foot in that cathedral again without her.

The rest of the show is just desperately trying to grasp, to bring it down to a place of order. People are looking very confused. A bit anxious.
The Sowhetho Choir sounds like muffled.
Only the organ secretly laughing, with that sharp sensed guy playing, maybe one of the few who know what was going to happen.
A brilliant jazz pianist he is. Now in disguise…

When the Russian Choir comes in again they look as taken as everyone else, moved the power of Mari Boine. As if they humbly fall down and prey from what just happened, gathering around their next song.
A light soprano, or is tenor…? sings a Russian song so beautifully so I can`t believe my ears and it is like he will comfort us all and tell us that we should not be afraid for what we have experienced. A unbelievable voice !
After him the tenor again, he can´t really follow up, but he tries and they are really a wonderful choir indeed !
The rest is not much to talk about, Mari singing a English song, which she shouldn`t have, after my opinion, but then again, she knows very well what she is doing. She is a smart girl.
Of course they have to end it with a unison Amazing Grace. Have they no fantasy, no respect. What a terrible thing to do. Bastards !
But then again, it doesn´t matter.
It´s not their cathedral anymore.
It`s Mari Boine´s!

P.s: I never went to Mari Boine´s concert in the festival area behind the church the following night. I had seen her now, once, and that once is enough for the rest of my lifetime. And it was not a dream

 

THE ALMOST IMPOSSIBLE BALKAN DANCEFLOOR

Mostly in Scandinavia it is impossible to go to a disco with good, serious, repetetive music for a man in my age.
We have been too engaged in revealing sex crimes involving old men abusing young girls and you are a pig, wherever you go. Not to forget and I certainly don´t, because I am.

Now a dancing pig, wiggling and willing.
But then again,no. More like therapy, dancing.
So nice to move to music, to get it all out to hammering beats.
Balkan music this night. A Balkan DJ, here on BLÆST in Trondheim was something I just rejected when I saw the add.
I won`t go there. But Trondheim is a very boring place when you don`t want to drink yourself reckless or be with friends in a cabin or on a boat on the fjords.
Not a place for the mind.

The dancer of the thousand floors...

And I must admit, it took a beer to enter the young peoples place.
I feel old these days. Rejected and ready for the bin liner.
(”Just put me in a bin liner and straight in the crematorium”. Quote Bim, a great English thinker:))
I hate Balkan music, the way they stole it and made it popular and give the fuck about the people who live there who can`t enjoy life, most of them.
But I am grumpy, political pig as well.
To many hard rules to follow.
Just wait and see when I become president of Sweden.

But in the night, the beat was on and finally the DJ found some more genuine like music to pump up, nice bodies moving carefully on the dance floor, I was off !
I missed Manchester of course, getting lost on my own in that downtown, high and holy light footed, dancing the night away.
Scandinavia is a another planet, you gotta have a clear mind here to navigate. So I navigated on the dance floor, in my corner as usual.
Trying to get high on the old fashioned dancing way, and it worked good like a substitute.

I used my press card to get in and was granted. I asked if I could dance without being harassed and I got a big smile. And he was right.
No pushy, white T-shirt, muscle bulging young fucker came to squeeze me off my invisible pedestal. Somewhat of a miracle, I felt good, just thinking the dancing days where over her in my terrible hometown. Later the dancefloor was packed, but my space was respected and the dancers friendly. And I didn`t have to talk to anyone.

So why a Balkan Dj night, are they celebrating Karadic arrest..?
Little do they know about the poet dancing on their floors, with such a evil mind that easily could start up a Balkan war all over again.
Little do they know how a old poet with all the right moves is dancing off a small world war here, coming up for air from too much street music, too many lonely nights and far too little sex.
But of course, sex is highly overrated by the poets and loneliness and street music comes with a terrorists territory, so get over it.
And the sulking Shiva. Well, I`m on my knees here.
No wonder they are so sinew and strong.

With the never fainting promise from the Tantra goddess and all my heathen gods, I dance Trondheim out of a terrible catastrophe. No innocent young girls was lured home to my little box and gruesomely abused with sex and drugs and rock and roll.
I saw no girls. The dancing people where only daughters and sons this night and I wish them a happy dancing life.
With less alcohol, far more books and poetry.
Me I walked home in the night to my alter of symbolicness, where I with words of peace and love try to turn sulking queens around.

And Balkan music for a dance floor…?
Whatever happened to Chemical Brothers, Fat Boy Slim, Leftfield and the real people who know how to make proper dance music..?!
Give the poor (Balkan) their dignity back and stop fooling around with their music !
You can`t beat the Balkans, you know !

No, you can`t beat my Balkan !

 

THE MOST IMPORTANT NORWEGIAN FESTIVAL !

Yes, it´s beautiful to be here.
Here, under steep mountains, on winding roads 1600 kilometers from Trondheim, the beggars paradise, I have found a real festival !
An important festival !

pictures from rock mot ras 2004-2008

It is the Rock Mot Ras-festival !

The title so playfully funny to translate, in both my second languages, English and Swedish ! But I have already told you, earlier in the ongoing chronicle of mine, so you have to read it to find our, haven´t you !
The scenery is stunning, with the mountains, the creek and the perfect surroundings for a small festival stage.
In this little place, with only 15 regular all year round inhabitants and some 50 in summer, is now being ” invaded” by a 1000 souls.
The spirit is good, the weather nice enough for outdoor pleasures and the mix of music is brave and the mojo working ! Next year, I bet you, there will be far more and the challenge much bigger !
I think of two other festivals in Sweden that is also concentrating on music and atmosphere, bravely started as this one.

One is Urkult, which has been going on for years and kept it´s small profile in folk and world music. The same stunning scenery. Almost…
The other is just starting up, Baluns, Östersund, with excellent local musicians, which Östersund is famous for and their profile is reggae in all kinds of ways, dj`s, bands, in English, Swedish and the local dialect. Also in beautiful surroundings just outside the little town.
So why is this so important ? Are`nt there hundreds of little festivals all over Scandinavia started by idealistic people..?

No, not with those kind of people who is behind these festivals. People with some insight of more than music, with a eye for the heart and soul and with a far away look, dreamy, but with a sharp look ahead. Inside and outside themselves.
Not political obsessed as me, who must turn everything into politics and weave every thread of life into a complicated pattern of coming future.
Luckily, I must say, we don`t have to uniform ourselves for festivals anymore and have to know quotes from the right -ism to enjoy music. No, I never liked that, politics have never been narrow to me as an anarchist since youth.
This small festival is a flag of futures, a broader non-consuming kind of protest, where everyone, especially in Norway, can join in.
I see it also like a new chance of opening up the mid-Norway belt, going from the coast of Norway to the coast of Sweden. Once upon a time border-less and with good communications.
Now the lying Norwegian government is playing big time on it´s wealth, and have been doing so for years. Claiming to be special and outside of Europe, putting up high walls on the border to Sweden, harassing people of darker skin who want to cross the border.
But most of all, again my analyse here, it is a protest against the consuming of this planet, the ridiculous growth politicians use like a mantra, in the lack of any ideology or -ism.
The big festival is over, if you ask me. It is gone.
Maybe Roskilde, like the big, but smooth machine it is will survive some more years and keep it´s message of peace, music, dope and love. It is still the biggest and most important festival of the massive proportions in Scandinavia. But people are getting bored.
And admit it, people; It has become far to expensive.
Why should poor people pay million dollar musicians to cover their loss of record sales, desperately hunting for bigger stages and better pay.
Take a break, step down, get real. It´s not music anymore, it´s just a machine.
Just like the middle age politicians, blocking every view to new horizons, those multimillion dollar musicians should pull back. Play for less or do something that matters for the future ! Leave the decadence and the big stage, encourage and tutor young people with your once so burning engagement ! Which is just as needed now as way back then.
I pitty Neil Young, not longer able to play the small festivals.
This is my thoughts while lying in a grass field in the middle of some wonderful nowhere with a new, hungry Neil Youngish kind of band playing on the stage.
They are called El Cuero and they are brilliant. But too screamy in this early night, I guess they are just as much baffled and bewildered over this festival and don`t dare to slow down. But they are good.
The more I enjoy the magic whisper of the next band, Adjagas, a Samish group singing in their beautiful native language. They are so just in tune with the place and the environment of this festival, it sends chills down my spine.
I want to hug them, I want to praise them.
I want to run over to the sound engineers and scream; turn, it up, turn it up !
But I am paralyzed with their whisper and it would be wrong.

There where only a hundred when me and Miro played around three o`clock, my  young brave bass player. More and more people are arriving now, as the night thickens, no one seems to know yet, what big thing is developing here.
We leave after Adjagas for other appointments. I wish my new soul friend from London, the french angel alien in England, could see this. She really would have loved this place. She couldn´t come this year, but time is not always ready when you think it is.
Even on my way back to Trondheim, I am still stunned and chocked over this festival. The bravery of all the local people, from young to old, who is heartly engaged in it.
Do they really know how big it must not become…because it will grow fast from now and what will they do…?
I travel back on winding roads again and think back.

Some months ago I met the crazy founders of that festival, the young burning idealists, arranging a literature festival i Trondheim, where I came to play.
They are students in Trondheim and probably sick of having to fuck everyone in the ass to start anything incoherent to the mainstream flow.
So they start up a magazine called PJUSK and a small literature festival around it !
As anyone cares in that snobbish, semi cultural town, where the main newspaper Adressa lays like a drunken whore on the centerstage, babbling something about nothing.
Word about art sounds like adds and culture running like old mascara down her face.
This is how I meet them, very, very off stage from the cultural scene in Trondheim.
There are no people around, but the sound is marvelous and their eyes glittering.
Totally ignored by the press.Yes, I recognize the feeling and I laugh !
When they invite me to a festival in the middle of nowhere, I say yes immediately !
This must be good and as you can see, it is !
They got a band as well, these guys, called Ella Guru, opening the festival. So nice !

Can you now understand why I said No, thank you, to the biggest festival in Trondheim, Storåsfestivalen ?
Can you now understand why I can`t support festivals trying desperately to be bigger and bigger, like some copy of Roskilde or maybe they are aiming at Woodstock, what do I know..?
There must be more to it than big. (Even the girls in Sex in the City know that:))
There must be more to it than having young bands to play for free and sell the concept with half naked burlesque artist and decadence.
There must be more to it than coked up cultural freaks, who gives the shit about artists in the marginal, stepping over bodies to get to the highest top.
My feelings again, don`t worry, I am just a whisper.
I am just a beggar, as street musician to late for my times.
And who cares anyhow, about anything, these days…

Imagine you are trying to convince yourself, everything is gonna be all right….and believing in the odds…

Next year, you will there !

P.S:….and yes, I still think that Russia won the UEFA football cup….:)