Cigarettes & Alcohol.

So, Oasis finally broke up.
I have a very mixed feeling about Oasis. I have seen them on most tours and I have seen them good, bad, amazing and awful. I have seem them with the original line-up, without Noel (horrible show), without Liam (slightly better show) and tired, rich and uninterested. But I have always read all their interviews. Oasis have always made better quotes than albums and they have always delivered in interviews. I talked to Liam earlier this year and that is a tape that I will keep forever. He was very nice, very Liam, full of bragging and pretty damn hilarious. Liam was a journalists dream, he spoke in headlines and delivered a show-stopping answer on most questions. He also spoke a completely unintelligible Manchester accent filled with "you know's", "fuck" and more "fucks". It took me 2-3 listens to transcribe it properly.
I also saw Oasis at the Hultsfredfestival in 1994 when they were as good as they ever got. The show was loud, cocky and really damn good. That is also the same festival were someone really bright put Oasis in a small hotel in Hultsfred with a bar that closed at midnight together with Primal Scream, The Verve and The Wildhearts. Earlier that day Primal Scream had heated up their heroin in the tourbus microwave during a interview with a big Swedish newspaper and Bobby later in the evening fell of the stage. The Verves singer Richard Ashcroft sat on the edge of the stage druling during The Verve's show and did not really manage to sing many words. Ginger in The Wildhearts was just off heroin but had got a pretty bad coke-habit and Oasis, well, Oasis was Oasis. You can imagine what happened to the hotel when the bar closed at midnight. Big Swedish headlines.

Listening to: Kinky Friedman - Sold Amercian

There´s a trampoline in my livingroom.

Spent pretty much the whole day out at the garden. I was digging a hole in the ground. I would say that that is one of the most manly things you can do. I am going to let that one sink in for a while. Digging a hole in ground. Manly, spade, soil, hole. Mathias.

Right now I am sitting with a glass of wine watching the "Finnkamp" (weird name I know, just ask the person to the left of you what it means).

Nude With Boots.

I know I should be writing some fun and interesting right now. But because of the IKEA catalog I am too damn tired and my brain is not working properly. So here I am, with a martini (3 measures gin, 1 measure vodka, half a measure of vermouth, shake until ice-cold, serve with a slice of lemon) and watching previews on the computer.
So instead of trying to write well and fail, I will give you this great preview (looks really funny):

http://www.apple.com/trailers/independent/themenwhostareatgoats/

Listening to: Juliette Lewis - Terra Incognita (I am interviewing her next week)

Bangers & Mash.

In abut 30 seconds.

A Bath.
Radiohead - In Rainbows.
Joseph O´Neill - Netherland
3 fingers of Bushmills.

The Jackson Whites.

Stayed home today again because of the knee. Got up as usual at 5.15, made my tea, ate a sandwich adn walked to the subway. But it hurt too much walking down the stairs to the station that I turned around back home and called in sick.
Been spending most of the day in the sofa watching Battlestar Galactica and drinking tea. I also finished my book about the Mount Everest disaster. Great book, so far I have not read anything bad by Jon Krakauer. Next up is Netherland by Joseph O´Neil. I have heard a lot of good about it so I am pretty excited.

I kinda feel like my last post was pretty damn boring, so everybody should just skip it. I was tired.

Down Like Disco.

How come bands are so bad at knowing what is best for them?
That is something that I spent way too much time thinking about. It just does not make any sense to me. But the fact is that almost anyone except for the band themselves know what is actually a good decision and a bad one. Take for example Bob Dylan. Bob Dylan is known for leaving great songs off his albums while putting crappy on instead. There is no coincidence that the his albums of rarities and unreleased material is better then most of his normal albums.
Another exampel is The Dandy Warhols. I mean not even the biggest fan thinks that Colder Than the Coldest Winter Was Cold is funny the second time. And still it is there, opening the damn album. When it comes to The Dandy Warhols the skip or program button is there absolut best friend. On their latest album if you just take the last two songs off you have a pretty damn good album, but if you leave them on I have a hard time giving it any better then a 2/5. It does not help that they together are over 21 minutes long. That is 80% of an album by Shellac or Mclusky. On the other hand it is only the first song for Pink Floyd or The Cure live.
Another example if the stoner/doom metal band Electric Wizard. They have not played in Sweden for 6 years and have a pretty big fanbase here for what they are. And still when it comes to doing a european tour they will play London, Paris, Berlin, etc, etc and then in Sweden a restaurant in Växjö. I mean, who made that decison? Do they not want anyone to come? Or what is the deal?
I could go on with this forever, but someone has started drilling in the wall next to our apartment so I have move in to the next room.

Open Day At The Hate Fest.

It is funny to think how right Marcel Proust was.
Last night Anna and I baked our own pitabread and along with that we created our own falafel and which we we ate it in front of the TV watching the Track & Field World Cup. And I started thinking about Times Square. When I worked at Virgin there was this kosher-cart on 5th Ave that had the best falafels. It was an old jewish man that stood there and he always put pickles in the falafel and it was so damn good. And we are sitting there in front of the TV and I think about this and then I get up and get the pickles. I take a bite and suddenly I am sitting in the sun on the sidewalk right next to the old jewish man. And I can hear the traffic and I am wearing my Virgin shirt, smelling the city, loving the city. And this was in the middle of one of my Hemingway phases. And that is when, in front of the Track & Field on TV with a homemade falafel in my hand, that I decide to give up on On the Road. It is great and all but I just do not care anymore. So I take down one of Hemingway's short-story collections and I start to read. and for some reason everytime I do this I get equally surprised by how good of a writer he is. It is just insane. He seemingly says nothing and still it is all there. One story is called After the Storm and this is the first sentence:

It wasn't about anything, something about making punch, and then we started fighting and I slipped and he had me down kneeling on my chest and choking me with both hands like he was trying to kill me and all the time I was trying to get the knife out of my pocket to cut him loose.

And I remember sitting there in the sun with my book, my falafel and a soda watching the midtown traffic speed by, the men in suits running with the lattes-to-go, the homeless screaming man who always stood in that corner and one time tried to spit me in the face. And maybe the falafel there was not better than any other, maybe it was the view, the smell and maybe it was me and where I was in life then that made it the best. Or maybe that old jewish man just knew soemthing that the rest of us don't. I like to think that.

Listening to: Curve

A Ghost Is Born.

My knee started acting up last night, probably been pushing it too hard at work. Which means that when I got up this morning it locked up when I walked the stairs, so I am staying home today, sadly. I have been home one time before because of my knee, and that time the doctor said that it could help with injections of, wait for it, rooster-comb-oil! Yup, that's it, rooster-comb-oil.
This really makes me wonder, and I when say wonder, I really mean it, there are no googling, twittering or calling friends for answers, just thoughts floating in the air like injured seagulls in a northern coastal town of Scotland.
Is it really the oil from the combs of roosters, or is it just a really bad/excellent name? And if it really is the oil from roosters, how do they get it? And even more importantly, how did they find out that it is good to inject into the knees of injured mailmen? Who was the first that they tried this on? And how come he agreed to try it?

While you mull this over I will leave you with a few words from Mogwai:

What is the greatest secret of Mogwai?

Major to relative minor + delayed guitar = girls crying

Watching the World Cup in track and field and Sweden is so damn good. Oh, sorry, wrong channel.

Touch me I'm sick.

Saw Ginger from The Wildhearts play an acoustic set at a bar in Old Town last night. The room could probably hold about 15 people and Ginger and Conny Blom (Electric Boys, Hanoi Rocks) sat in a corner under one of the speakers while about 40 of us were crowding around trying to see something. The set was really good and they played mostly Wildhearts tunes but threw in Abba's S.O.S together with a Prince cover they improvised as Purple Vein. Anna and I each had a Spitfire Ale and then we tried one called Canterbury Jack Pale Ale that was really good.

Right now I am reading Jack Kerouacs On The Road - The original scroll, and I must say that I am slighty bored. Jack is a great writer and he really has an amazing flow in his writing and the story just speeds by. But the problem is that I read this when I was a teenager and since then I have read to many of the copycats so that now I feel like I have read the story a hundred times. Not Kerouac's fault.
I will see whether I finish it or if I start something else.
The amazing thing is still that he wrote it on an actual scroll and that you can tell when you read it. There are no pauses or anything just this constant urge to move forward with the text, I have honestly never really read anything like that.

Listening to: Sonny Boy Willamson

Ghostrider

Spent saturday out in suburbia watching 11 year old girls play football. That is, I was watching my neice playing a football cup. The funny thing with these things is that you discover little things about people that are pretty interesting.
If we take these kids boys and girls 9-11 years old playing football the first thing that hits you is this: The girls do not really care if they win or lose, the boys do not really care either BUT it is important for the boys that they score. It can, for example, sound like this after a game:
-How did it go?
-We lost, I think, but I made a goal!
And when it come to the games, the girls want to get rid of the ball as soon as they get it, it does not really matter to whom, as long as they do not have it anymore. With boys it is the opposite, they do not want to give the ball to anyone, all they want is the ball for themselves.

Spent last night drinking mojitos and watching Fishing With John. TV rarely gets better than that.

Today me and Anna have been cleaning and baking (that is Anna has been baking and I have been helpful).

Listening to: Atmosphere.

I am all about BRING THE WAR HOME right now!

http://www.myspace.com/bringthewarhome

Throwing Bricks At Trains

Wow, that was a long break. Seems like I just stopped writing all together. Well, it was summer and I stayed mostly outdoors where there are no computers, cellphones with internet, internet cafés and other assorted electrical outlets.
But now that I have joined the long line of running lemmings towards that steep cliff that is also called the iPhone, I think that I can start updating a wee bit more frequently. That is, if my iPhone ever comes. It seems like everyone in Sweden wanted one at the same time, so they all bought one. Then I waited a couple of weeks before I decided I wanted one. By which time, they were all out. ALL OUT. Not one left in the whole country. So here I am typing away on my trusted electrical typewriter hooked up to the Commodore 64.
Anyway, if everything turns out all right, maybe I can even figure out how to post some photos that I have not found on the net and post here. We will see.

So for now.

Up the irons.
See you on tour.