Punk Illegal Fest 2010

Next Saturday Victims are playing the Punk Illegal Fest! Really looking forward to it. We play at 16.15 on the main stage, England play their first game of the World Cup at 20.00 and From Ashes Rise are finishing the night off on the main stage at 01.00.  It doesn't get better than that!

I'm looking forward to a few drinks and a merry old time watching From Ashes...catching up with my friends in Palm (who are coming all the way from Osaka to play) as well as hanging out with a bunch of other friends.  I am promising myself that I won't be repeating my appauling display at Hultsfred last year...the night where I drunk like a teenager, went to watch the Sounds, vomited in my fast food before they even started, got put to bed in the van and woke up the next day very, very confused...

Also worth checking out is a great show at Klubb Gås in Stockholm tomorrow.  Bombus and We Live In Trenches.  You'd be a a fool to miss it!

Punk Rock Stories: Rambling Around Europe...Part One

Before we started the band Battle of Santiago, most of us played in another band called Rowdy Ramblers.

That band had started some five years before, the core members being Erik, Tompa and Olle. There had been various people involved around the band during it's existence, in one way or another, I myself had been friends with them all a long time before I ended up joining the band. I'd been involved in recording their 10” The Maple a year before. When their guitarist Martin left the band a while after that recording, I told them that I may as well hop in and play with them. I never did like the name of the band too much but I loved the attitude they had. And they were some of my best friends here in Stockholm, so I knew it would be fun playing with them.

Later on Patrik would become involved with the band, initially as a producer on what would have been the second record. Then, one night out at our log cabin in the woods, whilst sat on the porch, drinking to the approaching dawn, listening to the latest Fall of Efrafa record as I remember, I suggested Patrik join the band as third guitarist.

He did, we wrote a bunch of new songs and became Battle of Santiago.

About a year before Patrik came along, when  we were still called Rowdy Ramblers, still playing what you could label garage rock, albeit a far messier and heavier version of the term, we headed on what would be our one and only European jaunt. The only gigs we ever seemed to play with that band were small, weird shows in Stockholm, mainly in front of friends only. I was looking forward to heading off on a DIY, internet booked tour in Europe.

Now to say “tour”, is a slight over-statement. It was five shows. Five shows in something like nine days, in June 2008. It was actually, half holiday/half tour.

We'd set up an initial couple of shows in Poland, one in Warsaw, one in Bydgoszcz. Erik had got chatting to some crazy rock guy on Myspace, called General Burner, who was nuts for Swedish garage rock n' roll and had heard the Ramblers and wanted to book some shows for us. Ok, what the hell, why not? He turned out to be this great big guy who looked like Lemmy and was a real gent to us. He set up those first two gigs and that set us up for the other shows in Europe financially. We hooked up another show in Berlin through a friend, another show in Prague and a final show in Rostock.

It really was a piss take of a tour. We lost a lot of money in the end since it was nothing more than an expensive holiday, but we ended up spending two free days in both Berlin and Prague and of course, we had a blast. The shows were all pretty cool, except Rostock, but that's another story.

There are two nights from this “tour” in particular though, that for the rest of my life, will make me smile whenever I think about them.

The first night is actually the first night. We were getting the ferry from Nynäshamn just outside Stockholm, down to Gdansk. It's a long old ferry ride, the bulk of the passengers being rough and ready looking Polish truck drivers. We board the ferry, get settled into our cabins and then rendezvous at the bar. Where else?

It's a long journey ahead and being a Polish ferry company, we're all hoping that the beer prices are going to be Polish too. We're all delighted when we find out that the price of beer on board is indeed very cheap. Chuffed we head to the bar and start purchasing beer.

It's all very relaxed at first. It's around 2pm, it's a beautiful day and there is a little bar up on deck. We're sitting in the sun drinking half decent beer from plastic mugs and eating fatty grey sausage. My wife Jenny is with us for the first few days of the tour. We all sit there in the sun enjoying ourselves thoroughly. The fact that almost every other passenger on board looks akin to a character from the movie Roadhouse, raises a small pattering of amused chuckles from us. We take in the scenery and sit there in the sun, drinking for the next couple of hours.

The sun slowly fades as night engulfs the Baltic Sea. We head down to the restaurant and eat a cheap and pretty useless dinner, before heading to our cabins for showers, preparing for a night of entertainment on board the boat to Gdansk.

We hop around the different bars on board, drinking beers and having a great time, all of us slowly getting drunk. There is a nightclub on board which is opening later on in the evening. We decide we're partying it up there later on, but until it opens we need to find another bar. We're all getting a bit full in the stomach from the beer consumption so decide to move on to drinks. As we're scouring the boat for another bar we bump into a bunch of Swedes, one of which myself and Jenny are kind of acquainted with. He's the trainer of the AIK women's handball team, the team which our close friend Annica plays for. We'd previously met this trainer guy at a couple of parties. We laugh at the fact we're bumping into each other on a Polish ferry. Apparently they're going down to Germany to watch a couple of the football games in the European Championships. I tell him what we're up to and we politely chat to each other for a while. The conversation isn't really flowing that freely but it's pleasant enough. He seems like a nice guy, although a little stiff for my taste. Anyway, after a while, we make our excuses and note that we'll more than likely bump into each other later.

We end up in a small bar which is empty except for the bartender. He seems like a friendly chap and we get talking to him. I want to order Grasshoppers for everyone but he doesn't seem to know what that is. I drunkenly...proudly, tell him the recipe and we get chatting, barman to barman. We sit there drinking all manner of cocktails for the next hour or so. The barman really wants us to try out his special own cocktail recipe that he himself has created. We tell him we'd be more than happy to, so he gladly goes about making the drinks for us. It turns out to be pretty disgusting. I don't really remember what it was, something with Jagermesiter and a couple of other spirits. We don't have the heart to tell him that the drink stinks, so we painfully gulp them down as quick as we can, nodding throughout the ordeal and doing our best to look like we're enjoying it.

After another couple of these drinks, we decide it's time to test out the night club. We're all pretty fucking pissed by this point and Jenny decides she's heading to our cabin. I am nowhere near done though. We still have another ten hours or so on this boat and the nightclub just opened! Jen heads off and we make our way to the bar, and soon afterwards, the dance floor. We're throwing back everything and anything by this point and everyone is steaming.

Memory defeats me from there. It's only Erik's later account of the story I have from here on in. As has been said before on this blog, and as most people who know me, when I'm on the dance floor at 1 am, then yes, chances are, I'm pretty fucked! So there we are, dancing away. There is literally nobody else on the dance floor, only us. There is barely anyone else in the nightclub actually. A couple of bemused looking trucker types, a bored looking female bartender and a DJ playing records. If we weren't all out of our minds, it would be a thoroughly depressing scene.

Since we're single-handedly owning the dance floor, I decide I want to make a request. For some reason I want to hear Phil Collins. Phil Fucking Collins! The DJ guy gives me a half interested smirk and then carries on about his business. I head back to dancing, but then after another few songs and Phil still hasn't been on, I head back to DJ man and inquire as to what is happening with Collins. He can't even be bothered amusing me by this point, just grunts "No" at me and tells me to piss off, or at least I guess that's what he's telling me. I can't understand Polish, but his tone says it all.

Disgruntled by the DJ's attitude I grumble back to the dance floor By this time, the rest of the band have given up and sat down to some more drinks. Not I though. No, no. I stand in the middle of the dance floor, pull my arse out and stand there mooning the DJ for the duration of the song he's just started playing. It's just me on the dance floor and I'm standing there mooning the DJ cunt. The rest of the band are sat off to the side, steam boats, loving every minute of it. The bartender still looks bored, the two trucker guys look like they want to kill me, or at best rape me, and the gang of Swedes led by the handball trainer I kind of know, who had only came in about five minutes ago, well they look a bit shocked.

Erik eventually walks me off the dance floor and tells me to pull my fucking jeans up. I think there are another couple of beers that go down, some failed conversation with handball guy and then Erik leads me back to my cabin where my wife Jenny is innocently sleeping.

On the way back I decide I'm going to bang loudly on every cabin door along the corridor. Erik has had enough by now. Can't say I blame him. We get back to my cabin and he throws me into it, calling me a tit, before wishing me goodnight.

The night still has one funny turn in store for Erik though, before his night is over...

He gets back to the cabin he is sharing with Tompa and Olle and knocks on the door, wanting to be let in. No answer. He knocks again. He hears Olle's faint voice calling from within.

-“Hello?”.

-”Let me in for fuck sakes! What are you up to?”

Olle then opens the cabin, his head peering around the door, the room completely dark. Tompa is passed out in his bed, Olle looks white and terrified, wearing only a t-shirt. Erik asks him where the fuck his pants and jeans are but Olle just hurriedly pulls him into the cabin, whispering to Erik, telling him to be quiet. Erik now has to know what the fuck is going on, because knowing Olle, this is going to be good!

Olle is a really mild guy. He's a great friend, the kind of person that would do anything for you and would not intentionally cause harm to another soul. But maybe once or twice a year he has some mad, wild blow-out when he's drunk where he gets himself into trouble, much to the amusement of the rest of us.

Olle, still looking terrified, tells Erik what's happened.

Apparently, when Erik was doing his best to get me back to my cabin, Olle and Tompa had wandered off to theirs, somehow getting separated on the way back. After a short while, Olle realises he has lost Tompa and that he has no idea where their room is. He continues to stumble around the cabin corridors looking in vain for their room. After what was probably five minutes, though Olle swears it was longer, he realises he is lost and what’s more, in desperate need of a piss. In blind, drunken panic, having looked for a toilet for what was probably all of thirty seconds, he decides to piss in a quiet corner of the corridor.

I'm not quite sure why but in order for him to do this, he deemed it necessary to pull his jeans down to his ankles. He's barely started taking a leak when he hears a screech from behind him. “Scheize!” Before he understands what is happening, there is some angry Polish truck driver screaming at him. Not only that, he has firmly planted his boot up Olle's arse! Olle yelps in pain and starts staggering off in blind panic, his jeans still around his ankles. The truck driver chases after him though, screaming all kinds of venom in his direction and continuously kicking Olle in his bare arse! Olle is screaming in fear by now, and his arse is starting to hurt. His only reaction is to kick off his jeans and kecks, and run the fuck away from there. The guy gives chase but Olle finally manages to get away. He has by now, of course, pissed all over himself!

When Olle recounts this story to Erik, back in the cabin, wearing nothing but a t-shirt and stinking of piss, Erik of course falls to the floor laughing hysterically!

I wake the next morning, head fucking banging! We all meet up in the ferry lobby, myself and Olle looking very pale and sheepish, wanting to get the fuck off the ferry as quick as possible. Olle is shitting it, worrying that he'll bump into the angry trucker, I'm worried I'll bump into handball trainer. We mutter to ourselves as the boat finally docks and we make our way to the car platforms. As we're hurriedly heading down the stairs we do indeed bump into the handball lot. Fuck. I feel my stomach go. That guy kinda looks at me a bit put out, and I grumble something like, “Whoo, heavy night last night!”. He doesn't look impressed. I make my excuses and hurry to the van. Oh well, I guess you can't be friends with everybody...

We head off the boat and start making our way to Warsaw from Gdansk. It's hot as hell, we're all hungover to piss and within thirty minutes on the road, we're pulled over trying to fix a puncture. Well actually, the guys are, I'm desperately walking around with a bog roll in my hand, looking for a bush to shit in.

As I'm squatted there, relieving my stomach of filth, I realise that these guys are as prone to trouble as the Speedhorn lot were. Or maybe not quite, but they sure as fuck like to drink. I wonder what the rest of this trip has in store, as we haven't even played the first fucking show yet!

It was to be an eventful little trip...

Records

My friend Kalle Blom was in the bar the other day. He works at Electric Tattoo Studio, which is two doors down from us, and on occasion he comes by for an after work bottle of Corona. I got to know Kalle when his old band, Outlast, reformed for a show at the Fluff Fest in Czech Republic last year. Jon from Victims also played in that band and being that Victims were also playing the same festival the day after, I travelled down with those guys for a night of partying in Rokycany, Czech Rep. I got to know the Outlast guys and we had a great time together. I've gotten on well with Kalle ever since.

Anyway, Kalle came in to the bar with another tattoo artist who was guesting at the studio, I can't honestly remember his name but he was a friendly foreigner on his travels. We got to talking and Kalle asked me how long I'd lived in Sweden.

I had to think for a minute since it has been a while now. I've been together with Jen for more than nine years and I started coming to Stockholm regularly in 2001. Then in the November of that year I blew off a flight back to England and decided to stay and see what happened. By the beginning of 2002 we'd decided Jen's twenty seven square meters of apartment just wasn't big enough for the two of us, and if I was planning on sticking around we'd best look for a bigger place in which to live. In July 2002 we moved into our first flat and I started moving my records across the water.

So after much deliberation, I told Kalle that I moved my record collection to Sweden in 2002, so that would make it eight years that I'd been a resident of this fine country. Kalle laughed and agreed that that was indeed a proper way to measure it.

I've been collecting records since I was about fourteen years old. I'd been given a few cd's as Christmas presents in the year or two before then, mainly collections of greatest hits by bands like the Stranglers and Black Sabbath. But on the whole, I hadn't really thought about buying any records of my own since my dad had so many in the house that I loved listening to. It hadn't occurred to me until I was thirteen or fourteen years old that one day I'd be moving away from my parents house and then I would need my own records.

I'd gotten into the usual stuff everybody else did in those days, but at that point hadn't really considered the ten or twenty cd's I owned as any sort of collection. It was when I discovered Metallica and Iron Maiden that I started collecting records for real. I'd gotten into the albums And Justice For All... and Seventh Son of a Seventh Son in a big way through my mate Heg, and when I discovered that these bands had a load of other records too, I just had to buy them all. So that's where it started.

By the time I was nineteen years old I had around one hundred and fifty cd albums. But then something happened. I discovered Sonic Youth. And Sebadoh, Pavement, Jesus Lizard, Big Black and Black Flag and a load of other bands who sounded nothing like the Megadeth, Anthrax and Napalm Death records I owned. Being a stupid teenager, my collection suffered an enormous cull. How would it possibly look to other viewers of my collection if I had Suffer the Children living amongst albums like Thirteen by Teenage Fanclub. The metal records had to go. This would be the one and only time in my life that I would have a clear out of my record collection. These days I refuse to throw anything out for the sole reason that the only purpose the record now serves is a nostalgic one. In fact, sometimes those records, cheesy as they are, bring you the most joy.

It was actually when I first started visiting Stockholm for longer periods of time that I started re-buying these albums again, and that eventually turned into a mission to find the main bulk of the records that I so nonchalantly sold two or three at a time some years before. And this time Scream Bloody Gore would happily sit in the same pile of records as Daydream Nation. The only difference this time around would be the format. I had now become obsessed with vinyl.

Until that point, for some reason the only records I bought on vinyl were albums that were released before the cd had even existed. It didn't seem right to buy records that were released in this day and age on vinyl format. I had quite a bunch of vinyls but they were mostly 70's rock stuff like ZZ Top and Cactus. The idea of buying a Helmet album on vinyl seemed like a weird idea. Oh how that attitude has changed!

I've probably only bought two or three records on cd in the last three years. These days if a record isn't released on vinyl at the same time as the cd, I'll just wait until it is. I do happen to be given cd's now and again and in that case I will of course happily accept them, but if I buy a record these days it has to be a proper fucking lp. This I'm sure will continue to be the case for the rest of my life. As it is, the cd is becoming a dead format. I'm sure it will be completely defunct within five years. Vinyl will live on though. Last year, vinyl sales had risen and sold more in one year than any other since 1991. People download music these days, but if they do want to buy a record, if they collect albums, then normally they want it on the unbeatable format that is the vinyl lp. It's been said a million times, but there is nothing like holding a 12” lp in your hand and looking at the cover artwork in all it's glory, as it was meant to be.

I moved my collection to Sweden over the course of around three months in the spring of 2002. I moved it using a series of Ryanair flights, as I happened to be flying back to England a few times a month for Speedhorn stuff. I would fly back to the UK with a an empty suitcase, save for a toothbrush and a stick of deodorant, fill the case with about two hundred cd's, fill a shoulder bag with about thirty lp's as hand luggage and return to Sweden with it.

I must have repeated this arduous procedure about ten or eleven times. I eventually bought a load of books and videos too, even a cd player and a VHS machine. Even these days, there will always be something that I spot at my parents that I need to bring back with me. By the time we moved into our flat though, I had moved just about the whole record collection.

I had to be convinced that one day I'd marry Jen to have made such a bold move. Luckily for me Jen also collected records and she had a great bunch of vinyl’s and cd's that I didn't have. Some may suggest that combining the two collections into one is an even bolder move than marriage but I was more than happy to do it. Jen had records like Blues For the Red Sun and Love it To Death on lp, of course I wanted to put our collections together!

It's funny, one of my best friends told me a while ago that even though he and his girlfriend live together with their baby and are very much in love with each other, they still considered uniting their record collections as too big a commitment. I laughed my ass off at the fact he considered that a bigger step than having a kid together. Of course he was joking, but at the same time, their records do occupy different shelves...

So yeah, 2002, the year my records left their storage space in my old bedroom in Corby, England and headed via various methods to Stockholm, Sweden. The year I moved out of the UK.

I'm headed home as I write, having had a weekend in the UK visiting family and friends in Corby, hanging out with my good friends from Regimes in London and getting tattooed by their guitarist Mucky Marcus at Kids Love Ink, the shop he and Alec own together in good old Deptford. And although I had hand luggage and only and a limited space in my bag, I still found time to go by Rough Trade on Brick Lane this morning and make at least one purchase. I picked up the new Shitty Limits lp.

I've heard mixed reviews but it was only eight quid so it's worth the gamble...

Flying

I normally dislike flying during the “hours of darkness”, as the Ryanair cabin crew always refer to night-time flying.

For one thing it's pretty fucking boring, sitting cooped up like a caged chicken on a Ryanair plane for a couple of hours, not being able to see much outside, on a night like tonight when all there is to see is the faint outline of the clouds below. But it's not just the boredom, I feel uncomfortable being thirty-eight thousand feet up in the air, inside a steel box, engulfed in darkness. I wouldn't say I'm a nervous flyer but daylight does bring that extra fathom of comfort. I like to be able see what's going on around me if the plane starts bumping around...

I must have flown with Ryanair over a hundred times in the last eight years, since I packed my bags and moved them to Sweden. I wonder exactly what number flight this is? I wonder how many times I've promised myself never to fly with them ever again, to pay the extra money and save myself the circus that comes with flying with these cowboys? It's somewhere around the hundred mark I imagine...

This is the first flight I've been on in a while though, the first this year actually. That must be, without doubt, the longest stretch on the ground I've experienced since I started Raging Speedhorn. There was a period, when I hadn't officially moved to Sweden, yet was constantly flying back and forth from England, where I recognised almost all of the Ryanair cabin crew staff. I recognised each of the pilots voices even. I knew that I had to prepare myself for a particularly rough landing if a certain female pilot was at the controls. I'd sigh if she came on the intercom before we took off, since she always seemed to just throw the fucking plane at the runway when we'd land on the other side. Funnily enough, I heard rumours a while ago that Ryanair had suffered numerous fines throughout the years for speeding upon landing! You certainly know you've arrived when you land with the worlds on-time airline! I swear there have been times when I thought the plane has been up on one wheel, careering towards certain doom, such is the bang and bump when they land the fucking plane.

You do get used to it after a while though, if you fly with them as much as I have. There is almost always someone on board the flight who is not expecting the thump though, and when I hear the shocked gasp followed immediately by the cheesy trumpet accompanying the recorded voice of the proud Irish guy bellowing from the intercom, announcing that I have arrived on yet another on time flight, all this while the plane is struggling to brake to a stop, well I have to giggle.

During the years I've got to learn quite a lot about the general swindle and bullshit this airline pulls on it's customers. I'm on a flight with them right now as I write this, checking off the list of things that piss me off about the Ryanair experience.

It actually starts with booking the flight. They lie to your face from the start, claiming themselves to be the worlds cheapest airline. The only way you get your flight for anywhere near the initial advertised price, is if you take absolutely nothing extra. That unfortunately includes baggage, paying with any kind of credit/debit card (really no getting around that), using the toilet on the plane...and then you can get yourself stung in the ass if you don't happen to notice the small box on the website for insurance and “priority boarding”. And then of course there's the airport and fuel taxes, no getting around them either. All this is normal stuff you pay for with other flights, granted, it's just the sleazy way Ryanair go about advertising themselves and their low prices that piss you off.

Then there's the claim they make about being Europe's most punctual airline. This is a huge fucking swindle. This probably pisses me off more than anything else about them. They tell you that a flight schedule for “Stockholm” Skavsta to “London” Stansted is two hours and twenty-five minutes. In all my years of flying with them, I can recall maybe nine or ten occasions when it's actually taken over two hours. One time, just one time, I've been on a flight that has taken two and a quarter hours! It's normally somewhere between one and three quarters to two hours per flight. So they're giving themselves a huge margin with their hugely exaggerated flight schedules. It never ceases to make me laugh, when the plane lands five minutes before schedule, yet at the scheduled take off time I was still standing in the cue at the airport waiting to board the fucking plane! Amazing..

They even go as far as to list in their in-flight magazine, all the other European airlines and how they proudly sit top of the punctuality table. Cheeky fuckers! You have to almost admire their balls.

On top of all this you have a tiny, tiny seat to sit in. And if that's not enough, you have to deal with the endless amount of turds who travel with them. I never, ever pay for priority boarding, yet somehow I almost always manage to get my seat anyway. That's fourth row from the back, window seat, left side of the plane, in case you're wondering... When I'm stood in the cue at the gate, the one for the low priority boarders, nothing thrills me more than to see some goon wonder along the priority aisle, trying their best to look confused, knowing fine well they don't have an applicable boarding pass for that line, getting told when they get to the desk that they don't have the right boarding pass. I find it hard not to laugh out loud at these people. It's even better if they then try to casually slide over to the head of my cue, as if that’s ok, only to be sent to the back. It's wonderful! I want to applaud loudly at them as they do the shame shuffle, past me to the back of my line. These people really are filth!

Despite all this complaining though, here I am, as usual, fourth row from the back, window seat, left side of the plane. Even if the flight didn't actually cost the 49 kronor as advertised, 500 kronor is still too cheap to allow myself to look elsewhere. The 1500 kronor extra it would cost to fly with a normal airline is just too big a difference. And then there's the fact that I usually take pleasure in being annoyed by nonsense.

It's pitch black outside now. Take off was actually pretty cool this evening. Coming through the clouds during the very last moments of daylight was like a scene from Neverendingstory. The outline of the clouds as they succumbed to night had an ethereal presence about them. I sat by my window, looking out transfixed by the sight of the patchy clouds and the sound of the engines pulling the plane higher and higher. Therefore I fucking hate it when the tool beside me has to ruin that moment by turning on his reading light when he's not even reading! Why exactly?

And now this same guy, about an hour into this flight, has started making out with his girlfriend in the aisle seat in a pretty big way. Fuck sakes, they're almost humping on my fucking leg. Go to the fucking toilet at least! I know it costs a quid but have some fucking respect for your fellow passenger! The only good thing about this right now is the fact that I'm sitting here writing about them whilst they're ignorantly getting it on with each other beside me. For fuck sakes! Get the fuck off my leg! I think they're Italian. I know these people are known for the passion and I embrace that, I truly do, but there's a time and a place, and it's not on this cramped flight...

I'm stuck looking at this sign on the seat in front of me, there's nowhere else for me to avert my gaze. Stupid sign as well. I love how calm the guy appears to be as he's apparently hurtling towards the ground...and then he's just up and out of the emergency door, cool as you like. Someone once told me that the only reason they drop the oxygen masks down in the instance of a plane going down, is to make you relaxed to the point of stoned, it actually being some potent, hardcore oxygen mixed with some other shit that makes you languid and carefree about your impending death. It sounds far fetched I know but I hope it's true.

A while has passed now. The clouds have cleared and the pilot has just told me that the city lights I just happened to be looking at below, is Amsterdam. Shouldn't be too long left of this flight now, and of course we're bang on schedule.

I'm going home for a few days. I've been working a lot of long shifts recently...I need a little break before the madness of summer at work kicks in. It's nice to go home and see my parents and old friends for a few days, without doing band stuff for once. I'm going be in Corby at my parents for the weekend. Pint of beer or three with dad and one of my best mates Beany tomorrow, and then a night out with some of the old Speedhorn guys on Saturday. Will probably get a bit messy. Mum's roast dinner on Sunday, followed by a night crashed out on my parents wonderfully comfortable couch. And then I'm taking the train down to London on Monday to hang out with Kev and the Regimes guys, getting tattooed by Marcus during the day, getting drunk with the others at night. Staying at Kev's Monday night and then having a day to myself in London on the Tuesday before flying home at night.

Just felt my stomach drop and my ears pop, the plane gradually tipping itself forwards towards the ground below. The Humpers beside me are now sleeping. Soon they'll tell me to turn off my computer. I can now see the lights along the English coastline...

And now that I no longer live in Her Majesty's Kingdom, those lights are a comforting sight.

Zqaty

Battle of Santiago hard at work in the studio...

Santiago in the studio

This weekend just gone, I was in the studio with my band Battle of Santiago, mixing what will be our first lp. I say “mixing”. It was actually our old friend Zqaty who was doing the mixing, we were there, generally getting pissed.

We returned to the woods of Värmland, to Silence Studio, to mix the songs we recorded last October. I don't why these things always take so fucking long but they do. Zqaty is a busy guy and he's also a complete flake, so the studio booking had actually been postponed around five times between December and this weekend. Anyway, we finally made it. The aim was to mix twelve songs in three days. Zqaty assured us that wouldn't be a problem...

I arrived on the Thursday morning. I worked all day and night on Wednesday and then got the train from Stockholm to Arvika, departing at 6.15. I didn't get a wink of sleep during the four hours I spent in my bed. So I was pretty fucking tired when I got to the studio since the train didn't offer me any sleep either. The other guys were all awake and chirpy when I got there, except Patrik, who as normal, was fast asleep in his bed. My good friend Paddan sure likes to sleep...

I jumped into bed with him, spooning him in the process, and bade him good morning. Without even opening his eyes, he just kinda mumbled “Hey Gaz...” No wonder we call him Mr. Haze. He can fucking play guitar better than most people I know though...

We hung out with Zqaty for a while in the morning, going through the plan, listening to Zqaty harp on about some new philosophy on life he has, or something to that extent. The man just rambles on in his charming, wasted way and I pretend to listen. So the plan is fours songs a day. Zqaty says he can mix at about three hours a song. He thinks it's best that we sort of stay out of the way whilst he's doing all the technical stuff and then we can join him when a mix is up and we can say what we want changed. That was the plan. It would change dramatically by the end of the day.

Zqaty spends that first day, locked away in the control room at the mixing desk, smoking weed and fiddling with faders. We're upstairs in the house section of the studio getting drunk. That first day turns into evening and still the first song's mix is waiting to be heard. We catch a few bits here and there but nothing is ready to work on yet. We carry on drinking upstairs...Evening quickly turns into night and we've made our way through a bottle of Scotch Single Malt, twenty four cans of Crocodile Beer and a box of red wine. We're all pretty fucking boats by this point. Zqaty is still downstairs twiddling away. Well, we're behind schedule it seems. It's around midnight and we're all rapidly crashing. I haven't slept in around thirty hours and I'm pissed as a fart. The guys all start drooling off towards their beds and I'm on my way too, but somehow me and Patrik end up in some deep, drunk conversation in the kitchen and I feel a second wind coming on. After chatting for the best part of an hour we decide to grab some more beer and head down to the studio to see what's happening. Time to get into studio mode.

We get down to the control room and check in on Zqaty. This man is a legend, he really is. He's never phased or worried by time. He has no idea what the word “stress” means. He's sitting there, happy as you like, smoking a joint, as if everything is perfectly fine. It turns out he now has a new plan.

He's getting a mix together for the entire record. When that's up, all that needs to be done is some detailed tweaking for each song. Zqaty is re-assuring us that this is a much more efficient way of doing things and that all is fine. He's got a mix of the first song up and he tells he's almost ready with it. He lets us hear it. By this time though, Patrik and I have fallen asleep, open beer cans in hand, sat upright. Snoozing.

I have a vague memory of coming around, heading back up to the kitchen, me and Patrik enthusiastically ranting on about Fugazi's album, Steady Diet of Nothing, and then falling asleep in my bed with that album playing on my Ipod.

I wake up the next day to the sound of the song that Zqaty had spent the entire day and night mixing. It's on the stereo on repeat and Patrik is sat upright in a chair, sleeping. I realise then that I've been hearing that song in my sleep all night...

Day Two begins with the determined decision that substantial progress will be made today. I get out of my bed around 11am. and am greeted by an ever cheerful Zqaty. “Ah, good morning! Great, everyone is up, so we can make an early start on things!” He seems genuine when he says this. I'm far from shocked though when he makes his way down to the studio for the first time that day at 4pm and starts working on that very same song again...

We head into the woods and climb this really impressive cliff that is hidden by them, right behind the studio. We get to the top, look out over the glorious scenery of the valley below and crack open a can. Day Two follows almost exactly the same path as Day One. Zqaty in the studio listening to a distorted bass drum, us either up the on the cliffs drinking beer, or playing pool, or hanging in the kitchen. When I wake up on Day Three Zqaty has gotten through four songs, although we haven' heard much of them yet and there is some contention between the band as to the mix details of each song.

Zqaty is an absolute genius when it comes to sound. No doubt. As is often the case with genius though, it brings an element of madness along with it. He gets so lost in the music and his work that he takes on, that he's sometimes hard to reach. He gets involved to the point that he acts almost as if he's part of the band and that it's his record. I have a problem with this and find myself suspicious of everything. I've always been the same when it comes to these situations. I'm always really guarded and defensive when it comes to my music. I don't want anyone fucking with it too much. The thing is, I do really like Zqaty and I want to trust him to get the job done. Johan Victims told me once that Zqaty was without doubt, Sweden's most talented sound engineer. Without doubt. He's also completely unemployable! Johan had Zqaty working for him at Debaser for a while, but it didn't work out...

So Day Three arrives and we're all hungover to fuck! And there are eight songs to mix in one day. Zqaty assures us it's no problem. His plan is to work through the night without sleep and get it done. The trouble with that plan though is that it leaves no time for us to listen to each individual mix and change the things we want changing. We all decide that morning that we're gonna stay sober and get the job done. I actually believe, for a short while, that that plan will be carried out. For a short while. Until Tompa starts mumbling suggestions about driving into town and picking up some beers for himself. This is quickly latched on to by Patrik who says he could probably have a few beers too. The rest of us play innocent and say that we're not drinking. Tompa and Patrik head off in to town whilst myself, Erik and Olle head off for a walk in the woods and grab some much needed air.

We all meet back at the studio an hour or so later. The fuckers have bought a twenty-four pack of beer and another box of red wine. We head up the cliff with a couple of cans each...

Zqaty actually does spend the next twenty-four hours mixing the record. Twenty-four hours straight, give or take some time for dinner and the odd joint. What an incredible individual he is. We spend the night getting drunker than any other night previously. It all starts when Erik suggests we play the game Quarter, which basically leads to the five of us getting through almost a whole twenty-four pack in the space of an hour. And then we have the wine and Erik has some of his Jelzin vodka left. He had brought two and half bottles of the cheap French piss with him.  Yes, French vodka!  He'd bought them from a friend who had found them on the street, having apparently fallen off the back of a truck...

I wake up Sunday feeling the hangover shame. Surely I'm getting too old old for this nonsense...

Zqaty, looking like the walking dead, hands us a cd with the mixed tracks on it. Although there are some minor details to be changed, that will need another half day or so in a studio, in Stockholm, he has for the most part, pulled it off. It sounds great and we're all really happy with how it's turned out. Quite what our presence was required for, I don't know.

We hug Zqaty goodbye, tell him to get some sleep, and head off in the car back to Stockholm, the mystery of Zqaty no closer to being resolved. I still can't work out if he's a genius, or just a complete and utter bullshit artist.

Either way, I love the man...

Click here for more pictures...

Some Victims Love...

I'm sitting on a train, headed in the direction of Arvika.  I'm on my way to Silence Studios to meet up with the rest of the Battle of Santiago guys, and we're going to, at long fucking last, mix our first album.  Excited about getting it done.  But more on that in a short while...

I'm on this train, knackered, after almost exactly nil hours of sleep last night.  I always have a hard time sleeping when I know my alarm is set at an ungodly hour...I much prefer meeting 5am on the way to bed, not on the way from it.  Anyway, I was cheered to notice a sign on the train informing me I can get on the internet for free.  I was cheered even more to see our friend Dave Witte, from Municipal Waste/Discordance Axis/Burnt By the Sun (the list goes on), has went and got his Victims tattoo done.  He told us on tour that he was going to but I wasn't sure he would.  Nice work indeed Mr. Witte!

In response to Dave's Victims love, Jon got himself a Waste tattoo.  I called him Saturday afternoon to find out how it had gone at our friend, Kalle Blom's tattoo studio.  "I'm never getting tattooed again!  You can't imagine the pain!"  He was lying on his sofa, half drunk, trying to numb his agony at the time of telling me this.  He ended up getting three tattoos done that day, all band stuff!  Waste, Nasum and a Manowar tattoo on his shoulder/collar bone, which had been the main offender apparently.  He's got quite a few now but he moans just as much every time he gets a new one.

Anyway, welcome to the club Witte!  We're all very touched at Victims HQ..

So That Was Record Store Day 2010...

A big thumbs up to everyone who came out and bought a record on Saturday! 

I had a great time playing records at Sound Pollution, especially since Bonden brought his little, portable turn-table.  It was fun playing a bunch of 7''s!  Although it was an early start, a big, strong cup of the black stuff shook off the cob webs and the two hours I played flew by.  I met a bunch of friends and had a great time hanging out.  A top day all in all.

Mass Hysteri were great too.  It was really fun watching them play in a packed out record shop.  In true DIY style, they were playing Göteborg later that night too.  Stellar work!  Last Days of April also played a fine little accoustic set, including a lovely version of Lemonheads The Outdoor Type.

As I said, Record Store Day is a hugely important event for those of us who care about the future of the record shop.  There is nothing quite like popping into your local indie store, hanging out with friends,  chatting about the latest releases, new re-issues, new bands and up-coming shows, and then buying a record, taking it home and listening to it for the first time. You will never get this from a computer file.  A world without indie record shops would be a fucking depressing place, so don't let it happen!

It was heart warming to see a bunch of young kids, hanging outside the shop before opening time, waiting to get in.  I'm told by friends in the industry that physical record sales, especially vinyl, are on the rise for the first time in years, so maybe the future is bright after all.  Lets hope so! 

I of course picked up a couple of records before I left too.  I picked up the first Mass Hysteri lp, a re-issue of My Bloody Valentine's Loveless album, the new Roky Erickson album and an Axe 7".  Chuffed!

So once again, thanks to Bonden for working so hard to make Sound Pollution a great part of Record Store Day.  I hope you had a few beers afterwards!

Pete Steele is Brown Bread

Woke up this morning with a big fucking spot on my lip. That sucked.

That was just the start of a bad morning. Whilst surfing the net and drinking my morning tea, I read the news that Pete Steele had died of heart failure.

Now, mine and Pete's worlds are two very different places indeed. But for a few weeks in December 2007, our worlds came together. Speedhorn supported Pete and his band Carnivore on a European tour. Who didn't we play with really? Anyway...

We didn't exactly fit the bill musically on those shows, but from the very first moment we met Peter Steele, we knew it was going to be a fun tour.

We had driven to the first show in Essen, Germany in our trusty van Betty. We were stood around the venue in the car park, early on the day of the show, wondering when we'd get our first glimpse of the legendary Peter Steele. Jay was obsessed with the Playgirl spread he'd done and wanted to know if his dong really was that big. We'd only been standing there a couple of minutes when Pete comes slumbering out of their tour bus with another couple of people. They come walking towards us and we're thinking, “right, here we go, let's see what this is all about...”

Pete kinda comes charging at us with the other people hanging behind him. Fuck me, he was a big bastard! He stoops over a very small feeling Raging Speedhorn and asks us, “Who's the bass player?”. Our bass player, Little Dave, steps forward.

Pete then pulls out a bottle of Vodka from his big army jacket and thrusts it at Dave, “You want some breakfast?”. It's 10.30 am. We all crack up laughing. Dave takes the bottle from him and nervously takes a swig. Whilst he has his lips around the bottle Pete then says in the most matter of fact way, “I just had an AIDS test yesterday....positive.” By now we're all pissing ourselves laughing.

Another five minutes of banter ensues, about us being Limey bastards etc., and then just before he heads into the venue he tells Dave in a more serious manner, that if his equipment ever goes down whilst we're on stage playing, then just plug straight into his gear. He then tells the rest of us that we're welcome to anything from their rider. From that moment on, I had nothing but respect for Pete Steele.

So reading the news today that Pete had passed away from heart failure at the age of forty-eight was indeed a sad blow, if not an all together unexpected one.

Without a shadow of a doubt, I have never, in my life, witnessed any other human being drink as much as that man! On his rider, every day, he had at least three bottles of fine red wine, a bottle of single malt, a bottle of vodka and as many beers as you could wish for. And most days, he got through the fucking lot of it. He would have his wine with him, up front on stage, on a box next to his bass equipment , and he would be drinking it mid song. He had a big rubbish bin somewhere hidden at the back of the stage, that he could use to puke up in. And he never missed a note. He was an awesome bass player!

He treated us like sons on that tour. Weirdly enough, it seemed to me he treated some of his own band and crew like shit, but to us he was a true gent. And he had made the time honoured mistake of inviting us to whatever we wanted from his rider. But even we, on this occasion, had met our match. There was no way we could keep up with Pete.

Joking aside though, it was sad to see the state he was in sometimes. I became good friends with Carnivore's tour manager, Lotje, and she told me that he barely ate on tour. She would put food out for him each day, so he'd have something to eat on the tour bus when he woke. But each day he would stir at some point in the afternoon, get out bed, puke up and then start drinking. This one time, he told one of our guys, completely serious, that he drank to escape his own thoughts. And you believed him. He was an incredibally intelligent man, underneath all the nonsense. It's was sad to see a man of his stature battling with inner demons like that.

So, although I'm saddened by the news, I'm not surprised.

It's weird looking back now, that our paths crossed for a short space of time. And although the shows for our part, were rarely more than luke warm, we still had a really fun time on tour.

I have one memory of Pete Steele that will last with me forever. And it is this.

During the entirety of the tour, he would have this small, steel tool box with him. He carried it everywhere. One time in Copenhagen, we were sat in their dressing room partying with Pete and his booze, cracking up, when Pete stands and says he's going to have a shower. He picks up his tool box and takes it into the shower room with him, as if it's completely normal. The Speedhorn guys all stare at each other, and then burst out laughing. What the fuck has he got in that tool box. The mystery goes on for the entire tour. Pete's tool kit...we imagined no end of wild stories.

And then on a day right towards the end of the tour, we're sat around in a communal band room chatting away, Pete sitting silently on his own with his thoughts, off to the side, as he did so often, with his tool kit on his lap. He gets up and walks out for a moment, leaving his tool kit behind. “Right, this is our chance!”, we think. We shoot over to the tool box, open it up and look inside. It's contents...a neatly, plastic wrapped sandwich. And that was it. He's most likely been fucking with us the whole tour...

Pete, you were a gent and a scholar. Although your music never meant much to me, that tour will live with me forever.

R.I.P. Big Man.

Record Store Day

My good friend Bonden, who works at the legendary Sound Pollution record store, where I've been known to loiter on occasion, asked me if I wanted to be part of this great day on Saturday and play records in the store.

Well of course.  Record Store Day is an important day for us collectors, and Sound Pollution as always, is proud to be part of it.  I'm not sure what time I'm playing records, but there are some other cool dj's spinning the wax too, so come down and hang out for the day, listen to some good music, and then buy it!

The name of the band of course is simply, Victims, but I'll let it go this time...

Now everybody go out and buy a record on Saturday!  From a record store...