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48. Friday on my mind

Drömfesten, 23rd August, 6.30 pm. Don’t miss this!

Drömfesten 2019 is this week in Sandviken and on Friday 23 August, at 6.30 pm, the first band on stage is A Padded Room. This is very special for us as it’s the first time ever we’ll be playing live under that name, despite having made four albums since 1993. A Padded Room has always been a studio project, but when Drömfesten general Per Almén asked if we were interested in playing live, the answer was “absolutely yes!” All we needed was for someone to ask.

We’ll be playing the whole album which we released almost exactly a year ago and this will be the first time that any of these songs are played live on stage. Herbie, Björn and I will also have support onstage from Bertil Fält on piano/organ and Niclas Carron on guitar.

This year’s Drömfesten looks like being a lot of fun and apparently ticket sales are going well. Friday evening starts with A Padded Room and continues with good-guy Chris Kläfford, Among Lynx and Louisiana Avenue. Saturday includes Kingsgarden, Anton Swedlunds Indianer, Lasse Lindbom and also Thomas Di Leva and I’ll definitely be there for that. No doubt it’ll be packed both evenings.

Friday on my mind is a song by Australian band the Easybeats, led by producers/songwriters Harry Vanda and George Young. When the Easybeats finally gave up, Vanda and Young started Flash and the Pan, and they had a lot of success with that, at least in Sweden. George Young’s brothers, Angus and Malcolm, had started another band a few years earlier: AC/DC, which was also… quite successful. Friday on my mind was one of a few singles I bought in late 1966. The others were the Beatles’ Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever and the Beach Boys Good Vibrations. The two best singles ever? Well, I think so anyway.

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48. Friday on my mind

Kl 18.30, fredagen den 23 augusti.

Drömfesten i Sandviken börjar på torsdag den här veckan. Och på fredag kväll, den 23 augusti kl.18.30, är första band på scenen A Padded Room. Det här är lite speciellt för att det är första gången någonsin att vi spelar live under det namnet, trots att vi har producerat fyra album sedan 1993. I princip har A Padded Room alltid varit ett studioprojekt, men när Drömfestengeneralen Per Almén i våras frågade om vi hade lust att spela var det inget snack. Självklart ja! Allt som behövdes var att någon frågade.

Vi kommer att spela hela albumet som vi släppte för snart ett år sen och det är livepremiär för samtliga låtar. Herbie, Björn och jag kommer att ha förstärkning av Bertil Fält på piano/orgel och Niclas Carron på gitarr. Och det känns tryggt.

Annars ser årets Drömfest ut att vara en väldigt rolig sådan och tydligen går biljettförsäljningen bra. Fredag kväll bjuder på A Padded Room, den gode Chris Kläfford, Among Lynx och Louisiana Avenue. På lördag kväll kommer Anton Swedlunds Indianer, Kingsgarden, Lasse Lindbom och även Thomas Di Leva. Det blir säkert fullsatt båda kvällarna och det tänker jag inte missa.

Friday on my mind.

Friday on my mind är en låt med the Easybeats, från Sydney, Australien. Harry Vanda och George Young startade Flash and the Pan när the Easybeats gav upp och lyckades bra med det bandet, framförallt i Sverige. George Youngs bröder, Angus och Malcolm, startade AC/DC och hade även dom hyfsat med framgång. Friday on my mind var en av flera singlar som jag köpte i slutet av 1966. Dom andra givna köpen var the Beatles Penny Lane/Strawberry Fields Forever och the Beach Boys Good Vibrations. Dom två bästa singlarna någonsin? Enligt mig i alla fall.

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41. Time is Tight

Time is Tight.

Four albums in 26 years and so far, not a single live gig has been forthcoming from A Padded Room. But things are about to change. We’ve been asked to play at the annual Drömfesten in Sandviken in August and the plan is to play the whole of the latest album. If they let us. But time is always an issue at festivals and they usually restrict the number of minutes onstage, so the risk is that we’ll be thrown off after 30 minutes. But we’ll see how it goes.  

I don’t really know why we’ve never thought of playing live, but right from the start in 1993 this was a studio project. Also, we’ve not had a band – just Herbie and myself. What’s changed this time is that Björn (drums) has been involved in the whole recording process and the songs are all playable without the need of a symphony orchestra or a bank of keyboards. On the other hand, there’s a piano or organ on most tracks on the album and Bertil Fält has agreed to play piano with us. He might also be persuaded to add a little sax here and there. Niclas Carron is guesting on guitar and backing vocals, so we won’t need to skip anything at all. We’re already working individually on the songs and I’m seriously looking forward to both the band rehearsals and the gig.

Great Yarmouth. Why did we go to Great Yarmouth?

Time is Tight is an instrumental from Booker T. and MGs, released in 1969. That summer of ’69 I went on a camping holiday with three schoolfriends, Paul, Tony and Keith, to Great Yarmouth, where we lived in a rented caravan for two weeks. We were 16 (Paul 17), but as always, we managed to get away with visiting local pubs for a pint. But none of us drank much during those two weeks. We had quite a mature attitude to alcohol even at that early age. If we drank too much, we would anyway have been quickly thrown out.  

For me, two songs stood out in a big way in Great Yarmouth: Tight is Tight with Booker T. and Stevie Wonder’s My Cherie Amour. During the first week I also met Joy, a nice girl from Barnsley in Yorkshire, who was also on holiday there with friends. And I spent most of my holiday money on her and was broke the second week. The others had similar experiences, and our second week in the caravan was spent playing cards at night and sleeping during the day to save money. Towards the end of the second week, food also became a problem. We ended up on a cheap diet of baked beans, bread, butter and tea. We were all very thin back then.