Sweden Part II: ABBA ABBA ABBA!

My first real introduction to Sweden was the goofy Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show, and then as an adult, Igmar Bergman. Always being a huge movie buff, I discovered his films "Persona", "The Silence", "The Seventh Seal" and plenty more. Between 18 to 20 I watched ten or more of his films. I read his screenplays. I read about him. His films fascinated me. The starkness, the enigmatic relationships and dialogue, the insight into human behaviour... there was also something a bit standoffish about his characters. Living so far up north, they could easily seem a bit detached. Reserved.

I had also met a sprinkling of Swedish people in my life. A blond girl in a hostel in London. I invited her out to a bar. She seemed nice (a bit detached but friendly) but declined my invitation. Another girl I worked with at Starfucks. I couldn't place her accent at all. I thought she was British. But no, she was Swedish. We got drunk on red wine and had a one-night stand. I got together with her one more time, but the conversation was stilted and she told me she didn't like the film "Happiness" which I thought was brilliant. Needless to say, we lost contact.

Well, our show at King Kong in Stockholm was in the end a minor success. It took ten songs, but by the end, I think we won them over. However, they absolutely would NOT do the Trikey. The first crowd in ages who just wouldn't even try. And it was a full room!

Anyway, yesterday we busked twice in the street and twice in the metro. It was great. We made a bit of money, entertained strangers, and had a chance to wander around Stockholm. Hung out in a square in the old city with a big fountain with lion head motifs spitting out water (not yesterday, though). Girls with clothing store bags filmed us and smiled. There was a cafe with a row of people all swathed in green blankets staring at us blankly. A British guy came up and said hello. Then we all meandered around seperately.

I went to the shopping district and bought a writing book and a pen. Then I popped into a record store which had a big ABBA shrine and a massive "ABBA" on the blue wall in giant letters. I spent half an hour reading a book about them. I heard somewhere that one of the guys suffered from a strange memory loss where he forgot everything that happened in those years but still remembered how to play/ sing the songs. That wasn't mentioned in the book.

I also walked through a Royal Court thingy with guards in blue and white and big rifles. They stood in small archways. One archway had a mannequin guard (that was rather odd). The architecture was beautiful. Not as ornate as, say, Prague.

We thought of going to see two seventies' style rock bands playing last night who gave us a flyer but we decided to rehearse our version of "Hide Your Love Away". We need to enlarge our repertoire. So we stayed in Meike's place (strange, outlandish couchsurfer we're staying with) and rehearsed, and later watched more of "L'Aventurra" by Antonioni (one of Woody Allen's favourite films).

But we're leaving Stockholm today and either going to Gothenberg or Malmo. Dunno which one. We still have two days until we're due in Hamburg. And we're leaving without any real sense of what makes Sweden tick. It was nice hanging out with my friend Nils, seeing his art space and going to his friend's birthday party, but to really understand Swedes would require more time. In truth, most people I met seem a lot like characters in Bergman films: serious, pensive, slightly withdrawn and detached. Generalizations are dangerous, I know, but sometimes apt. Billy Bob Thornton referred to Canadian audiences as "kinda like mashed potatoes without the gravy". Well, being Canadian, I've been to a LOT of shows and played a LOT of shows, and that remark isn't totally off the mark. We get crazy audiences in Vancouver, but Vancouver is a unique place and attracts some pretty crazy folk. However, in Ontario, some of the shows people were like logs. Even in Montreal we played one show and it was impossible to get people to stand up/ dance. However, as an example of the polar opposite, in Zilina (Slovakia), Ljubljana (Slovenia), Zagreb (Croatia) people were nuts from the get-go. A freedom of self-expression that I rarely see.

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Another chapter in our Swedish experience:

We popped by Maria and Joakim's delightful apartment in Linköping en route to Gothenberg for a delish breakfast. Joakim played a hilarious album with groovy beats and a recording of "Mister Black" anonymously calling Swedish housewives and talking to them in English. Mister Black is actually a recording; an English-learning recording from the fifties. The results were hilarious and weird.

They then took us to M Cafe to see Maria's art work. She had lots of pieces with dogs and girls near lakes, a forest of stockinged legs etc... she had sold most of them. Joakim used serious pressure-sales techniques on us, but they didn't work, being poor travelling gypsies.

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As a final note, our show in Gothenberg was AMAAAZINGly fun. It was a living room show. We were selling our new shirts (thanks Chris!) for the first time. The crowd was comprised of Hungarians, Greeks, Turkish, Kyrgyzstan people and a sprinkling of Swedes who, surprisingly, danced their faces off! It was a great night, got lots of great music from Michael and made a small new fan base in Gothenberg. Success! Also met a redhead makeup designer who is in love with Peter Jackson's early splatter films. A girl after my own heart.

Then we went to Hamburg and played a show, then to Berlin. I will write about those sooooon!!!