When the First Cab album “Little Pieces” was about to be released in 1985, we did a record label showcase concert in Stockholm at the Orion Theatre, together with stablemates Imperiet and Docenterna. First Cab were at the bottom of the bill and Imperiet at the top. Which puts Docenterna, hmm, firmly in the middle. We had borrowed an apartment from the record company for a couple of nights and the evening before the concert went out to celebrate the album release and the upcoming concert, which was perhaps the biggest gig we had done at that point and certainly the most important. The beer flowed freely during the evening and at least one of us threw up walking back to the apartment. Not naming any names, but I think it was the drummer. Initals BH.
We had to be at the venue by early afternoon for the soundcheck, and standing in the centre of that huge stage, pale-faced and shaking slightly, was not one of my proudest moments. We were all very tired and badly hungover and struggled through the soundcheck. Nobody was expecting any action from us and of course they didn’t get any. We simply played through a few songs and that was that. The concert was also to be filmed, adding to the stress, though the main focus for that was Imperiet.
Just before we went onstage, I was speaking to the label MD Peter, and asked him if I should talk in English or Swedish between the songs. “English” was the reply, so that’s what I did. The consequence of that was one of the daily newspapers (DN) in their concert review wondering why the First Cab singer spoke in “bad English” between the songs. What? My English isn’t that bad! I’ve always suspected that in fact it was his English that was crap and he simply didn’t understand what I was saying.
But we weren’t as active onstage as we normally would have been. We didn’t have enough energy for that. So, although our gig was also filmed, no-one ever bothered to edit it for use in any way. Not worth the expense, most likely. There exists a video cassette (somewhere), taken from one of the three cameras which filmed the gig, the one placed right at the back of the venue. I haven’t seen the film for 30 years and to be honest I don’t have any great desire to see it either. In fact I watched a bit of it only once when I had it in my possession. The sound on the video cassette is from the microphone on that particular camera and though I can’t actually remember what it sounded like, it had to be substandard, with the whole length of the venue between us and the microphone. We were a good live band – sometimes very good – which is how we got the record deal in the first place. We had the opportunity to make an impression on a crowd of two thousand in a classic Stockholm venue with all the major newspapers there to see it, but we lost it in a cloud of alcoholic fumes. I can’t even blame it on being young and stupid, as I was 31 at the time.