Progrock-delight; Swedish prog-rock 1968 untill now!

CD Review: "Ingenting är längesen"

2006-05-30T19:43:00.000+10:00

”Ingenting Är Längesen” (Nothing is a long time ago) is the first collection which covers music from all original records by Blå Tåget, from 1969 untill 2005, and is obviously a welcomed addition for the Blå Tåget fans. It is a double cd containing 37 songs, including all the major “hits”, like “Staten och Kapitalet” (The state and the capitalists), “Glassfabriken” (The ice cream factory) and “Kalla Kriget” (The Cold War). Besides that, this is the first collection that also have found space for more alternative tracks like “På väg till Koppargruvan” (On the way to the coppermine) and “Mannen på verandan” (The man on the balcony), and by that presents a good overview of the complaxity and diversity of Blå tåget’s unique production.

Material from seven original records is selected, and the strenght with the selection is that the band members themselves have been influential during the process. The variety of tracks reflects most sides of the band – the strict political songs just as much as the musically progressive and more artistic ones, and the jazz influece is present as much as the folk song and pop influence. However, I personally think songs like “Alienation” and “Trollkarlens Hatt” (The Wizard’s Hat) would have deserved a place on the tracklist, and also added a valuable perspective on Blå Tåget’s complete production. Then again, every single fan would probably have their special favourites even beside these selected 37 songs.

The hardcore Blå Tåget fans would find this selection too limited to give the band justice. Their production is way too complex and big to be contained on a small double cd, so I would advise everybody to invest in all the original records, which are now formatted and published on CD, to get a respectable overview over Blå Tåget's production. However, “Ingenting Är Längesen” provides a good introduction to Blå Tåget, and reflects their different sounds and development in a nice way, and is good value for money for people yet to be familiar with one of the most legendary bands of Swedish progrock history.

Rock, Blå tåget and Lady Godiva's Operation

2006-05-28T20:21:00.000+10:00

The following is extracted from an informal interview by songwriter and drum player in Blå Tåget, Leif Nylen, undertaken by the author.

Does the music reflect the musical values and ambitions you all had when you decided to form a band?

Well…we actually had ambitions to play quite hard rock once upon a time. But we realised after a little while that it wasn’t for us...

How come?

Hehe...we didn’t really have the musical ability. Remember, when we started, just a very few of us actually knew how to play an instrument. And of those, one bass and two clarinets aren’t really much to build a rock band on.

Is it fair to say though that you were inspired by Rock music when you wrote and performed as Blå Tåget?

Our inspiration usually came from a variety of cultural expressions and scenes. For instance, Mats Gunnar Bengtsson wrote “Ner med allt” (Everything goes down) based on Friedrich Nietzsche’s philosophical writing and “Mrs.Klein” based on an old, book about children’s psychology by American psychologist Melanie Klein. “Var finns en sjö?” (Where is an ocean) is based on an old poem by Carl Jonas Love Almqvist, and most songs include references to literature, art history, politics or other music. And well...I actually wrote “Kära nån” (Dear you) on the melody of Velvet Underground’s “Lady Godiva’s Operation”, but we never got the rights to it.

Why Velvet Underground?

They were the best. Try to sing “Kära nån” to their melody,it is so much better.

Is your fascination for Velvet Underground refelcted in any other Blå Tåget song?

Probably not, but you never know. Listen carefully yourself and you might find some other songs. Then again, Ebba Grön showed that our songs actually works as rock or punk songs (When they covered “Staten och Kapitalet), even though they didn’t make it justice with their alterations of the lyrics.

Do you like what Ebba Grön did to the song?

Yeah, it was fine. Great fun to hear it and it definately boosted the song’s popularity in the public. And the plan was that we should get their song “Ung och Kåt” (Young and Horny) and make our version of it, but it never happened.

Well, it’s not too late for that, is it?

Oh, I’m not sure about that – we’re not exactly young anymore at least (laughs).

Tore Berger discusses 'Staten och Kapitalet'

2006-05-24T17:49:00.000+10:00

While many prog bands tended to be products of its time, and disappeared as the prog movements started losing ground in the mid seventies and left the alternative arena to the punks, there are examples of some stayers out there, bands and artists that turned out to keep up even outside the cultural and historical context they developed out of. Blå Tåget (The Blue Train, in my English translation) is certainly one of them. Their recored production stretched from 1969 to 2004, they were touring and performing more or less regularly all through this period, with all the main members remaining the same.

As being more a collective of different, independent avant garde artists with their roots in literature, philosophy and performing arts, than a traditional rock band, the internal discussions about expressions and performances were many throughtout the years, and a great deal of discussions seemed to revolve around the band’s major hit, that made them famous for the Swedish mainstream audience, “Staten och Kapitalet” (in English “The state an the Capitalists”.

One of the leadsingers and founders of the band, Tore Berger explained that he found it more and more disturbing with an audience that continuosly identified the band with this one song, rather than showing a genuine interest in the new or more alternative material they presented. In an interview he claimed that during the 1990’s he more and more got the feeling that the performances developed towards a nostalgic trip, rather than presenting the continuosuly developing, modern and searching nature of the band.

“I felt this undermined the band’s integrity, and I suggested to permanently remove the song from the playlist”, Berger said. “But however, this tendency and association was too strong, and my suggestions never got any results. ‘Staten och kapitalet’ remained a part of almost all our performances.”

I wondered why this became such a big issue for Berger personally, and the answer reflects that there must have been a lot of reflections and considerations on the theme during the years.

“Blå Tåget’s performances are built on a certain integrity. We never rehearsed a lot, but at least we are always authentic. We play what we want and are completely independent. By constantly delievering this trademark song, I felt we lost a bit of our genuinity, and a lot of our newer and more unknown material became overshadowed”, Berger said.

Also, when I asked whether he felt the song reflected values and opinions he can still stand behind today, more than thirty years after it was released as a massive political and social critic, Berger express some reservations.

“At the same time – the whole song needs some sort of reservation now. We have to mark it as rather nostalgic. The story about the state and the capitalists coorporation as two pieces of one big machinery for power abuse and monopoly is clearly not that valid anymore. The state, the democratic legitimate stae, has lost ground to an increasingly internationalized capitalist economy led by huge companies, and are trying to fight its way back to power through more or less democratic initiatives as the European Union etc. I hope the states will succeed with this”, said Tore Berger, and admitted that the song and the lyrics itself was a product out of another historical context, and not as valid today as in the 1970’s.

“The state seems as the only democratic opportunity we have to remain in some sort of control against the capitalist economy. We need a strong state to fight monopoly, and to regulate the market. We also need a strong state to coorporate with the finance capital, as when this relation breaks down, all we have left is chaos and civil war – and the ones ready to take over are local demagogs, warlords and dictators. That is far from the working classes ideals of social revolution and a class-less society”, Berger explain.

Even if the mainstream Swedish audience seems to identify Blå Tåget mainly by this one song, which by the way was successfully covered by one of Europe’s biggest punk bands, Ebba Grön (feat. Joakim Thåström) in the early 1980’s, their impact on the cultural scene and their complex fanbase that has bought their records over a period of nearly four decades tells us that many people have detected that the band can offer far more than one song.

Why Hoola Bandoola Band

2006-05-24T17:41:00.000+10:00

In a Donald Duck cartoon there is apparently a scene where several aggressive ants are stealing the food out of Donald's picnic basket, while they are shouting "Hoola Bandoola".

Björn Afzelius, Mikael Wiehe and Peter Clemmedson who founded Hoola Bandoola Band in 1970 wanted their music to front and present a radical socialist message, opposing the ruling classes and insist on the working class's need to rise up against the class society. Therefore, I guess, they found themselves a little bit like the ants in the cartoon, robbing the food for the priviliged and giving to the masses while shouting their war message: "Hoola Bandoola".

Mrs. Klein is food...

2006-05-18T23:53:00.000+10:00

Melanie Klein is probably, and unfortunately enough, not a familiar name for most people without a core interest in psychoanalysis. But after all Mrs. Klein was the first psychologist to actually present a psychoanalytical theory and practise aimed towards children, and a more or less household name in alternative cultures untill at least the 1970’s. That Blå Tåget’s wonderful song about Mrs. Klein also seems completely ignored and forgotten, even in a society more obviously suffering from freudian traumas than ever, is a bloody shame. Since the song is one out of very few Blå Tåget-productions that is ever written and performed in English, it’s just about time it gets its revival, or maybe even its first breakthrough, in Australia...And as soon anyone teach me how to publish a music file here, I’ll make that available too!

“Beloved pets are shapeless in your dreams
Contours are bumping together or so it seems
Some of them are food
And some of them are not so good”

The beloved pets of the western world...can’t we all see contours of them, bumping together in what seems to be a dream, or rather a nightmare, but turns out to be reality, which again is just images of another reality to parapharase Baudrillard? Some of them are food – make chocolate not war my beloved pets in Pentagon and Canberra (who on earth would care about Canberra if it wasn’t for good old Johnny’s American jingoism anyway...so maybe it’s a good thing for Canberra?), you are obviously suffering from your own little traumas...

“Your world is splitted in two opposite halves
If you don’t understand learn from Mickey Mouth
One half is food
And the other half is not so good”

Well either you’re with us or you’re against us...thank God I’m on the food half...Let’s all act as food humans – don’t we all believe that humanity, benetah all this, is generally food? Let’s hope so, and keep on waging war against the not so good ones. And where is Mickey Mouth when we need him?

“This is the world of self-denying repression
(Amen to that!)
the circulation of language is a digression
Back to Mummy’s inside
Somewhere there you can hide”

(Listen folks! One of the most impressive drum performances of rock history is about to start...Long live Leif Nylen!!)

Yes a chorus to hang on too! And so to the point...rhetoric and propaganda in an endless circle, let’s hide behind the words and make sure we say it all but still nothing. Maybe – if nothing is mentioned, it never happened...Yeah fuck it all, and lets go to sleep, imagine we’re back in the embryonic stage again.

“The boundaries are blurred between your inside and outside
Idols like Teddy Bear you have swallowed
Beloved pets are food
And they are so very good”

Do you swallow Mr. Howard? Spottswood is right; taking another man’s cock in your mouth is sealing a pact not to be broken...let’s go on then – cross the boundaries and rape the infidels, fuck them back to the stone age! Cause our beloved, Western pets are food...they’re all very good!

“Your mummy and daddy combined in evil positions
The parental figure evokes your deep suspiciouns
Your mummy is food
And your daddy is not so good”

Well, your dad’s a sad little man, boy George. It’s just a joke – you never kicked that Vietnam trauma out of anyone’s mind guys...and even Freud would have laughed of you two’s hyper dimensional Oedipus complex...Getting an erection when watching a Patriot missile missing its target, does not make you a man George.

Come on Blå Tåget – give us another chorus, Leif kick those drum’s ass and Tore give us all you have!

“Caressing your motionless animals at night
Protecting you at your bed from phantoms and fright
Animals are food
And they taste so very good

Mussolini he was a politician
Sadistic hunger tormented his secret mission
Politicians are food
And some of them are not so good”

Well Mussolini had a vision, and maybe a mission Mats Gunnar, but at least he had something. All we have now is illusions that our beloved Western pets are tearing apart and presenting as democratic values. They are no better than Mussolini, fascism doesn’t get pretty even if you call it liberalism my little pets...and the phantom and frights of history will always come back to you.

“Caressing yourself in spite of outer rejection
Narcissim gives you a kind of inner perfection
Your body is food
And it tastes so very good”

If noone else can appreciate us, let’s love ourself! It makes perfect sense, and anyway, we can always count on American Samoa's and Israel's votes anyway, so who cares? Let’s just go back inside and masturbate to the image of our liberal values...oh America, I’m putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

“Mrs. Klein has told us about introjection
The frightening world outside you is your projection
Mrs. Klein is food
And she is very good”

Amen – Mats Gunnar Bengtsson, you left us far too early...but your poetry live with us, more relevant than ever, and I’m sure you would enjoy reading your psychoanalytical reflections in this context. What would Mrs. Klein be without us...and how would we understand anything without her?

*Written with deep respect to the late Mats Gunnar Bengtsson of Blå Tåget.

The flesh is burning again...

2006-05-10T10:29:00.000+10:00

Legendary Swedish prog-rock band Fläsket Brinner (The flesh is burning in English) made a surprise comeback appearance on the music scene on a Labour Day celebration and concert at Borlänge Jazz Club on May 1st. The old rockers still contain of two of the original members who founded the group in 1969, Erik Dahlbäck and Bengt Dahlen, and is reported to have played numerous old folk-prog numbers from their heyday, such as 'Gånglåten' and 'Räva'.