Hometown shows are always a little
special, but add to that playing with a brand new band, playing songs
most people have never heard before, with the crowd containing a fair
contingent of friends and band mates and you've got a recipe that
will make your ring-piece quiver. By the time the night came around
I was just looking forward to having it over and done with. I tried
to shake the nerves from my system, telling myself to get a grip,
that this isn't like me, but it was no good. The butterflies
continued to flutter...
I started this band with Viktor the day
after Andy told me that he and Kristin were having another baby and
Victims would have to scratch plans for a west coast States tour we
had in the pipeline. As happy as I was for Andy and Kristin, I had
an overwhelming feeling of panic, a panic that was screaming my
touring days were numbered. Of course, sense would soon prevail and
I'd realise I was being stupid, that Andy would still want to tour
when things had settled down, albeit with a smidge more planning, but
at that time I knew I had to get in touch with Viktor and ask him to
play in a band with me. Besides, playing in bands with good friends
is far too much fun to restrict yourself to just the one.
I'd been thinking about asking Viktor
to start a band with me for a while anyway, since he'd become a good
friend and is a great drummer. Of course he was still playing in
Nitad as well as Pig Eyes, but I had a feeling he might be up for
starting a straight up hardcore band with me anyway. When Viktor
told me he was in, I then thought of Bloody Kev, since we'd promised
ourselves upon leaving Raging Speedhorn that we'd get another band
together one day. Although he still lived in London and practising
would take some organising, I knew he was just looking for an excuse
to visit Stockholm on a more regular basis. So a simple text message
back and forth and Kev was in too. With the three of us sorted, all
we needed was a bassist. I had a couple of ideas but Viktor had
already made his mind up. Our Brazilian friend Lucas was living here
and hadn't been in a band since Avalanche back home had split up.
He'd always been a guitarist but Viktor knew he'd jump at the chance
to play, bass or whatever it was, it wouldn't matter. Weirdly
enough, Lucas told us later on that he'd actually been thinking of
asking me and Viktor about a band but we'd beaten him to it. So
Lucas was in too..
When I started writing songs I was just
wanting to come up with some simple, straight up hardcore somewhere
along the lines of Totalitär mixed with a bit of old UKHC stuff,
thinking that when Lucas began to write we'd get a good mix of
things. So I wrote a couple of songs along that line but Viktor had
other ideas. From the start he began playing the songs about three
times as fast as I'd planned and it kind of stuck. When Kev turned
up and started screaming on them we'd become something completely
different to what I'd first thought we'd be.. but I was chuffed all
the same.
From that first practice things moved
along pretty quickly and within four months we'd recorded our first
seven inch with a couple of labels in place to release it and we'd
booked our first show, with P.R.O.B.L.E.M.S. and Kvoteringen.
Ironically, Jen was now expecting our baby and all of a sudden my
life was going at two hundred miles an hour... Still, Jen plays in
Black Whitesnake and although we're both delighted about having a
kid, neither of us intend to stop playing music. So now, I'm in
three bands with a baby on the way. Funny the left turns life
continues to take.
So before we head to the gig, we
squeeze in a quick run through of the set at the practice room. The
set is only twelve minutes so it's not a problem. We turn up at Kafe
44 and hang out with Bengtsson who is at his usual piss taking best.
He puts me at immediate ease with his gibing. Sikas is with us,
who's decided he's selling our merch at every single show we play.
He's up for selling some “blouses” as he puts it and partying
with us. He's travelled up from Göteborg just for tonight, the
crazy bastard. Another friend, Grind Ove who works at Trash Palace
record shop, is also hanging out. Sikas and Ove are discussing the
haul of records Sikas purchased at Trash Palace earlier, a usual
occurrence when Sikas is in town. It's said that Sikas owns
something like sixteen different versions of Scum by
Napalm Death...And
that he owns nothing by them after From Enslavement...
We sit down at one
of the tables in the café and ease ourselves into the night with a
couple of medium strength beers, mellanöl as it's called in Sweden.
I don't dare get too drunk before the show... Another friend hanging
out is Christoffer, who used to play in Sonic Ritual with Viktor and
now plays in AC4. Of course, the punk scene being the incestuous
merry-go-round it is, Christoffer also played in a band with Kelly
from P.R.O.B.L.E.M.S. and Andy from Victims, but those guys haven't
seen Kelly for a long time since he moved back to Portland from
Germany. Unfortunately, Christoffer's in a bit of a sorry state
since he's broken his toe, or foot or something and won't be able to
hang around for the show tonight. Good to see him all the same.
It's funny, I remember the first time that Kev set eyes on
Christoffer was at Punk Illegal a few years ago. He was wearing this
black pin striped suit and some ridiculous Kim Jong Il/Paris Hilton
sunglasses. I have to say, I've always admired the cut of
Christoffer's jib, he's not afraid to “go there” if you know what
I mean... I could see the look on Kev's face though and I knew he
was thinking, “Who's this posing cunt?”. But before he could
express his thoughts Christoffer had turned around and there, sitting
proudly, covering the entire back of his suit jacket was a Gauze
patch. Gauze being Kev's all time favourite band, the look on his
face was priceless. They seem to have gotten on well ever since.
It's only an hour
until doors and there is no sign of either Kvoteringen or
P.R.O.B.L.E.M.S. so it's up to us to sound check. I was only too
happy for the chance since I was hoping it would settle my stomach.
It didn't start well though. At Kafé 44 you never know who you're
going to have doing the in-house sound for you since it's a DIY
schooling ground for young people finding their way around a sound
board. I know a few people who worked here early on in their
sound-engineer careers, Johan Victims being a prime example. It
really is a great thing that the institution that is the Kafé exists
and young punks get the chance at a self supervised apprenticeship,
doing sound for all types of DIY bands that come through. That said,
I don't know if it was this particular guy's first punk gig or what,
but when Viktor started checking his snare drum and the guy asked,
“Are you really going to hit it that hard during the gig?” I had
a sinking feeling we were in for a rough time...
Not like I'm a
fucking expert or anything... The Kafé's guitar cab I was using had
no ohm indicator by the speaker input. Now I couldn't even tell to
you what a fucking ohm is, it doesn't matter how many times Johan has
tried to explain it to me..so I asked the sound guy if he knew how
many ohms the cab was at, but he told me he had no clue about such
things. Well that makes two of us.. I actually had to call Johan
whilst bent over the fucking thing, contorting my torso into the
slither of space between the back of the amp and the wall, hoping he
could help me out. He told me that if the cab doesn't have a marker
on it then sixteen ohms from the amp is always safe. He went through
the whole explanation of how ohms work, again, but he may as well
have been talking Chinese to me. I thought to myself that the next
time I get a tattoo done I'll get a 16 written on my arm somewhere...
We eventually went
through a couple of songs. Sikas, and another friend; Jamie, who
plays in I LIKE BUGS with Kev and had flown in from London to hang
out for the show, listened in while we played. The sound guy had
been having a bit of a struggle with the P.A. but things seemed to be
progressing ... I guess it didn't really help that the speakers in
the P.A. were pretty shagged.. He asked us to play through a song
once we'd eventually got the different sounds up. He was pretty
thrown though when the song was done after thirty seconds.. After
pissing about with another couple of songs we finally arrived at
what Sikas and Jamie though was a decent enough sound. We packed
down the gear and went off to meet Jen and grab some food at La Neta.
It was Saturday
night and it was one of Kafé 44's party nights, meaning they had
beer for sale. It's usually an all-ages place where they sell
coffee, soda and vegan food. There are both positives and negatives
to them selling booze on these occasions. Obviously, they're selling
beer and the atmosphere is in that case a lot looser and people tend
to hang out at the venue and party a lot more, but of course they
can only do this by making it over eighteens, which is a shame. The
problem being when they don't sell booze all the older punks fuck off
to the pubs around the block between bands, leaving the place
desolate for long periods of time which kills the atmosphere
completely. And it usually means that you start playing to nobody
and hope that the room slowly filters in people as you play through
the set. Still, without doubt, Kafé 44 is still my favourite place
to play in Stockholm. When you play a packed show here there is no
beating it.
Anyway, when we get
back, having filled ourselves on great Mexican food, the Kafé is
indeed starting to fill out. Sikas is sat at the merch table where
we're selling all of one t-shirt design and a badge, with a huge grin
on his face. He's surrounded by a gang on young, blonde girls and
he's lapping it up, sat there looking like a right slick bastard!
“What the fuck is going on ére!?” exasperates Kev, “Fuck
bringing Sikas along to every show if this is the crack!” Me and
Viktor piss ourselves laughing.
There are a large
amount of friends here tonight and I'm beginning to feel more
settled, the nerves finally starting to subside. There are some work
mates that have come along to the show too, which is always fun
because they come from a completely different scene and it's always
interesting to see their reaction to this music we play. There are
even a couple of old boys who regularly hang out at Snotty who no
doubt tagged along when they heard that the beer was only twenty
kronors here...
Before I know it
the clock says eight-fifteen and the time for the first DB set has
arrived. On in fifteen minutes. It's time to play the first “first
show” in a long time. I'm now back to shitting myself! So nervous
my legs are like fucking jelly. I fucking hate this. I haven't felt
like this since I was a kid treading the stage for the first time at
Channel 2 in Corby with Sect. I forgot.. It is so much worse
when you're playing to a room full or friends. As soon as I'm on
stage and plugged in the feeling subsides again though. Well almost.
I can tell Lucas is nervous as well since he's pacing back and forth
across the stage checking that everything is in place. The room
slowly begins to fill. Here they come.. Ok, let's get this thing
going. Just twelve minutes and then we're out of here.
We're all set,
ready to go. But... No sound from Lucas' amp. My amp actually, my
Marshall JMP . Got Lucas going Lemmy style. I see him on the other
side of Kev, banging away at his strings, confused as to the lack of
sound coming from the amp, a look of mild panic on his coupon. I
have a feeling I know what's up though. I walk over to him and my
suspicions are confirmed. I turn the standby switch to “on” and
voilà. We give each other a nervous laugh. Ok, let's fucking do
this!
Fuck me, the songs
feel fast. The first block of three are all connected so that there
is no pause in between them and by the time we get to the end of it
my forearms are cramping with tension. There was one little sloppy
exchange between the first and second song, something we all notice
but hopefully nobody watching could tell. How could they? They've
never heard any of this shit before. I look down at Jen, who is
stood at the front, protecting her pregnant belly by hiding away in
the doorway to the corridor that runs along the other side of the
wall from the gig room, smiling away as we play, but I can tell she
can't really make out much of what is going on. She's heard me
jangling about with some of these riffs at home but now everything is
all going so fast that it's a bit of a blurrrrrrr. It hits me then
that, to the rest of the crowd this must sound like utter chaos. Of
course, that's kind of what it's supposed to sound like, but maybe
the choice we made of linking the songs together when no one has ever
heard them before wasn't the best idea.. The idea was that since most
of the songs are less than fifty seconds it would be better to do it
that way, so the set wouldn't just be a load of gaps filled out with
some noisy music, but now I just see a look of total confusion on
most people's faces.. Thankfully there are some smiles around too..
Thankfully they're not of the piss taking kind either..
Fuck it. By about
half way through, around about six minutes later, I feel myself truly
beginning to loosen up and I'm even starting to enjoy it. The couple
of breaks there are in the set are met with generous applause and
cheering and the songs are tight enough, despite the nervous strain
on my muscles. Everything is still way fast, but it always is live.
I learnt that pretty quick when I joined Victims. Record speed.
Practice room speed. Live speed. Three completely different
things..
On the other side
of things there is a guy who is talking to Kev out in the café,
somewhat in awe of the fact that Kev was the Hard To Swallow
vocalist. He actually can't believe it for a while and stands there
looking at Kev, jaw dropped in amazement. Sikas joins in, being that
he's also a fan of HTS. It's all going well until the guy makes the
mistake of labelling Hard To Swallow as an Iron Monkey side project..
Kev hastily puts him straight.
I see Viktor
hanging out with our buddy Modde, the Nitad singer and Jenny's
girlfriend, who's steamboats and telling Vic that he loved the show,
slurring into his ear a couple of bands who he thought we sounded
like a mixture of. Vic is chuffed with the assessment what ever it
is. It's always like that when you start a new band, people try and
work out who you are a mixture of, which of course is there to be
worked out because every new band is a mixture of some older stuff.
There is nothing new under the sun, as they say. Someone else tells
me that they thought we sounded like D-Clone covering Totalitär
songs, and that was just fine by me.
A little while
later one of the old boys that usually hangs out at the bar I manage
approaches me. Jorma, a chuffed, Finnish pisshead. I can't quite
believe he's tagged along tonight. He grabs a hold of me with a huge
smile on his face and gives me a bottle of beer. I thank him
gratefully. “I used to work at a steel plant back in the day, I
recognised that melody from that place on stage!” He then pisses
himself laughing and then gives me another hug. Good old boy.
It's a relief to
finally be able to relax and enjoy the night. I watch parts of the
Kvoteringen and P.R.O.B.L.E.M.S. sets but spend most of the night
chatting to different friends and acquaintances, as you always do on
these occasions. The beer soon runs dry in the bar though, which of
course coincides with a large chunk of the public disappearing. No
beer, no punks. By the time P.R.O.B.L.E.M.S. are done the place has
emptied considerably and Bengtsson wants to close the place as quick
as he can. I get chatting to the guitarist from P.R.O.B.L.E.M.S. for
a while who seems to be a really nice guy. He tells me about how
their tour has been going and how their show in Oslo the night before
had been a bust since there had been a big ruckus between some punks
and Nazi skinheads in town and when the punks at their show got word
of what was going on they'd all fled to aid their comrades. What
are you supposed to do? The punks had to go and stand up to those
assholes but the band went from playing a packed little show to
playing to pretty much no one. Tough break. Fucking Nazi's...
Bengtsson
eventually clears the last stragglers out and it's time to head off.
Andy Victims, Kev and I end up taking the train over to Brooklyn Bar
and meeting the rest crew there who had taken a cab. The place is
packed when we arrive but Sikas has procured a table so we park
ourselves. There is beer a plenty and no one goes parched for the
rest of the night. My old work mate Frasse is stood behind the bar
taking care of us. Lucas is buzzing from playing his first show in a
long time and seems to be well on the road to inebriation. Viktor is
sat beside him with a broad smile on his face, looking like he's on
the same journey. Andy's got that look I know that tells me he's
half pissed as well and Kev is cosying down into one of the big
armchairs, gently nodding off into the land of sleep, something that
happens all the time with that fucker. The first time I saw Kev in
this state was at an impromptu party that Speedhorn played in the
basement of the King George by the Astoria in London, long before he
joined the band. I clocked him from the stage, stood propped up
against the bar, full pint in hand, stupid grin on his face, fast
asleep. I've witnessed it many times since, tonight being just
another such occasion.
There are a shit
load of friends hanging out and the atmosphere is buzzing. Now that
the first show is done and we survived it, I find myself wishing we
were on tour and that we were heading off to another show somewhere
else tomorrow... It seems that everyone sat around our table is
pretty pissed up, everyone except myself and Jamie, but that's fine
with me. I'm having a great time anyway. I had a pretty rough ride
a few weeks ago, and I have no need to experience that again any time
soon.. It was the previous time Kev was over and D-Clone were
playing 44. The day after I suffered the worst hangover I'd
experienced since I was a teenager. Total sprawled out on the bog
floor, cuddling the pan and praying to God for mercy stuff. Fuck
that crack! I don't do hangovers very well.. Thankfully I don't do
them very often nowadays..
Andy heads off
after the one beer, he's got a new baby at home and I guess it's not
really the time to be getting fucked up. The rest of us shuffle out
when the lights in the bar come on a little after three. Lucas is
shouting “After party”, and doing some sort of tropical dance.
He only lives around the corner so we head there. Fuck it, it's not
often I'm out this late and I'm sober. The band and Jamie end up sat
around at Lucas' place passing a bottle of cachaca around whilst
Lucas runs around his flat hysterically, playing air guitar to the
Crazy Spirit album spinning on the turntable. Like a kid, I put the
bottle to my mouth but don't take in any of the spirit, fooling the
others in to thinking I'm drinking. Ridiculous really, don't know
why I don't just tell them I don't want any. Jamie has a few drops
as does Kev, who is now falling asleep on Lucas' couch.
Lucas is in great
form though. Between running around and drinking cachaca, he makes
us some grub. I get him to put the kettle on. So at the “after
party” I'm sat drinking tea and eating cheese on toast like an old
man. All I'm missing is the tartan slippers and the cardigan. Jamie
is vegan, so Lucas makes him a bit of toast with a carrot on it. I
find this hilarious but Jamie seems chuffed enough. We end up
staying an hour or so until I feel the sudden urge to go home. Kev,
Jamie and I depart leaving Lucas dancing about the place and Viktor
taking good care of the cachaca. We jump in a cab back to my place,
getting home sometime around four thirty.
Funny thing is, now
I'm actually in the mood for a night cap and offer the boys a drop of
whiskey. I make the sofa bed up and then the three of us sit there
watching some inane late night tv, nursing a glass of eighteen year
old Talisker. Me and Jamie are chatting away, enjoying the peppery
taste of one of my favourite Scotch whiskeys whilst Kev is slumped
with his glass resting on his chest. When he eventually takes a sip
he shunts the glass in my direction, “Fucking minging!”. Cheeky
bastard. Me and Jamie share the rest of Kev's and leave him to
sleep, before eventually calling it a night ourselves.
When I climb into
bed beside Jen, I'm now glad that we're not on tour, because if I was
then I'd most likely be getting up again in a few hours to drive all
day and right now I couldn't be fucked with that. Right now,
crawling into bed with my pregnant wife will do just fine. And
besides, there will be plenty of tours in the future...
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