2008 summary

In the last quaking moments of 2008 I'm sitting here, contemplating what I have achieved this year, and where the hell it went!

So, what did happen? Released an album by Balls, a short but interesting journey which made me think about personal chemistry and how it can sometimes fool us. On the other hand I decided to give the accumulated Balls-energy to Overdrive and we soft of ended the year with a gig at Compagniet in Karlshamn which went really great, and made me gain hope in the band again. This time we did some quite unexpected covers: "Red Hot & Heavy" by Pretty Maids and "A Merry Jingle" by The Greedies. Yes, of course, 2008 started with a new Overdrive album, which have received raving reviews, which feels great!

It's also taken most of the year (in small portions) to demo and record the Constancia album. Now that's it's finally in the final stage I think it's been worth it as it's becoming a really great album!

I've started workin on a new book, got the Ebay-bug and started selling stuff to be able to buy stuff (writing encyclopedias is an expensive hobby). I've so far found around 2500 Swedish bands I need to include and write about. Fun, but a lot of work.

We decided to sell our house just before Christmas, so the ad is out and the ball has started rolling. It will be interesting to see where it takes us!

Two weeks in New York was a great experience as always, and seeing Dave, Amy and Jeb was great, not forgetting Robin Trower at BB King's and rehearsing old Sir Lord Baltimore songs with John Garner! Firefest in Nottingham, Arrow Rock in Nijmegen and of course Sweden Rock Festival and the Sweden Rock Kick-Off with Blackfoot, Hammerfall and Bullet. Some nice trips to Denmark to see Pretty Maids and Three Doors Down, the of course Ted Nugent, Kansas and ACT in Malmö.

So, my top 10 among this year's releases goes like this (it actually changed in the last minute):

1. Grand Magus – “Iron Will”
2. Volbeat – “Guitar Gangsters And Cadillac Blood”

3. Black Stone Cherry – “Folklore & Superstition”
4. Opeth – “Watershed”
5. Blindstone – “Freedom’s Calling”
6. 3 Doors Down – “3 Doors Down”
7. Truth – “Machine”
8. Big Jim Slade – “This Is Delicious”
9. H.E.A.T – “H.E.A.T”

10. Nickelback - "Dark Horse"

However my Top 10 - overall - right now, looks like this:

1. Diamond REO - "Dirty Diamonds"

2. Robin Trower - "Bridge Of Sighs"

3. Santers - "Shot Down In Flames"

4. Black Pearl - s/t

5. James Gang - "Bang"

6. Foghat - "Fool For The City"

7. Grand Magus - "Iron Will"

8. Budgie - "The BBC Sessions"

OVERDRIVE and Explorer!

Bought a Gibson Explorer 76 Re-issue of Micke "Nord" Andersson a few months ago. Lately I've only been using my two True Temperament neck guitars, the Gibson Les Paul and the Epiphone Strat. These I still use for the Constancia recordings, but man, that Explorer felt so 100 % right for the OVERDRIVE gig! It's so much wood, so much power and even though it's still got the original pick-ups, man they sound GREAT! Micke had put on s standard 0.11 set and I'm sticking to it! As phat as it gets (to quite Leslie "tone master" West).

I've also got my signal chain together pretty well now. For the OVERDRIVE shows I'm using the Boss Delay and a booster in the loop, only for the leads, and in the chain I've got the Sonic Research strobe tuner (AWESOME!!), Ibanez Tube Screamer, Cry Baby Wah and the Boss Super Octaver. Still using my Highes & Kettner Trilogy amp + 4x12 cab.

I've seriously started looking into the next MOUNTAIN OF POWER album, too now. I know some of the stuff I will do at least like Trapeze, Max Webster, Rory Gallagher, Pat Travers, Diamond REO, but there are sooo many more I'd love to get into! We'll see. I've also got some great offers from musicians that are into lending a helping hand, like Steve Williams (Budgie), Kim Mitchell (Max Webster), Mark Boals (Uli Roth, Royal Hunt), Ed Collins (Pod), Frank Zuri (Diamond REO). This will be fun!!

Listening to:
FOGHAT - Energized
STRAY DOG - Stray Dog
BLACK ROSE - Boys Will Be Boys
Mountain - Flowers Of Evil

New Balls please!

So, it finally came to a halt. Last week the singer decided to leave Balls. Well, to be honest it was "an accident waiting to happen". The "offial" reason, according to him, was that we didn't want to play live or even rehearse. Well... I for one love to play live, so there's actually a bit more behind it than that.
Not to go into too many details, it actually started already during the recording when our singer suddenly put quite a big, and not previously discussed, price tag on his involvement in the recording. That's ok, IF you discuss these matters on beforehand and IF you evalutate other peoples contributions (such as artwork, arrangement etc) using the same price guide. Also IF you, after a weekend of arrangement and song-production decide "let's split things three ways", well... you don't suddenly just retract it and say "I've changed my mind" and then go into a hair-splitting contest where fractions of percent is discussed. That's actually BS.
THEN... to compensate for the economical issue (because the rest of us weren't interested in investing in the recording at the price rate decided by the singer), the rights to the album was owned by the singer and the CD subsequently issued on his label. This means the rest of us would receive no royalty until 1500 copies were sold. In all cases known to me, the members always receive at least 5 free copies. Not in this case though. We had to purchase every single copy ourselves, meaning we had to pay for the record we ourselves played on. When pointing this out, the singer had one of his tantrums and left the band... to return again (if I recall correctly this happened 3-4 times before his final bye-bye).

So, the next step was that he INSISTED that we would empty our calendars for two months to play all available gigs, from pubs to areans (well...) at any cost, to promote the album (from which only he had any income). Some of us has music or work for a living, meaning we would have to play for nothing to gain money for the singer... Does that seem fair? Not to me. So, so be it. We did a bloody good album, and the history may or may not end here. At least I and Micke "Nord" will continue working together. We have already written some great songs (in the same vein as the Balls album) and there's more to come.

Listening to:
Guy McCoy Tormé - "Evil Twin" - Great raw edged hard rock!
Sky High - "Download" - Killer Swedish Hendrixy riffster!
Diamond REO - "Dirty Diamonds" - A classic I can't seem to get out of my CD player!
Black Pearl - s/t - Forgotten gem from '94

Getting ready for Kick-off!

Tomorrow it's time to go to Stockholm for this year's Sweden Rock Kick-off. Blackfoot, Hammerfall and Bullet will be on stage. I've just finished writing the presentations for the first bunch of bands to be presented, so I k n o w!

Managed to lay down guitars for another Constancia track two days ago. Slowly getting there ;-).

Found and received a bunch of Swedish stuff for the new encyclopedia I'm working on. Some stuff actually makes me wonder why they've even wasted any vinyl on. One band, called Blue Balls, was total garbage and if it wasn't for the book I'd probably throw it away. On the other hand getting new stuff like Ammotrack, Vanity Blvd and Urbandux made me feel a bit better.

Also managed to find a few vinyl goodies on Ebay, at very nice prices - Earl Slick Band - s/t, The Dodgers - "Love On The Rebound", Blackjack (feat Kulick/Bolton), Reggie Knighton Band - s/t and UK band Rage "Nice & Dirty" with a totally different cover.

Also, through my friend Joe Romagnola at Grooveyard Records, heard some new interesting stuff by Jive Mother Mary, Fall Of Envy, Black Pearl (from 1994), Ra, Earshot, Suicide Nation, Big Bad Bubba (horrible name, but a great album!) and The Showdown. All well worth checking out.

My current playlist includes:
Ammotrack - s/t
Diamond REO - "Dirty Diamonds"
Black Pearl - s/t

So... here we are!

The BALLS album was released a few days ago. Great feedback and reviews so far. Micke has been interviewed by FUZZ and Sweden Rock Magazine, Björn Lodin and myself by Scream Magazine. The artwork came out really great! This one I'm actually really proud of!




Received an offer to record an instrumental track for a compilation CD released by Shredguy Records. I'm mainly a "vocal song kind of guy", but I've written some instrumentals for both Locomotive Breath, Overdrive and Mountain of Power, so why not. It was actually fun! It's now finished, just the mixing left! Haven't come up with a title yet, but it will probably be "True Temperament" (a dedication to the guitar necks - I used my Les Paul with TT frets all over this one).

Also recorded another guest solo for Tower of Stone. Came out pretty good, too :-)

Spent three days away fly fishing last week. Fun and relaxing, but the fishing sucked! 8 years since I did it, and it will probably take another 8 until next time...

Next weekend it's Firefest! Too bad Pretty Maids had to cancel, but H.E.A.T is a great replacement! This will be a great weekend!

Listening to:
Buckcherry - Black Butterfly - Great new album! Rawk n Roll!
Anthrax - Sound Of White Noise - Forgot how great it is!
Zero Illusion - New great Swedish band to check out!

BALLS mixed and ready

Finally the BALLS album is mixed and ready. The first "single" "Lover of the 3rd Degree" has been sent to some radio stations, so we'll see what happens. The aim is to have the album out in the fall. Listening to it now I must say it's one of the albums I'm most proud of so far. I think we managed to capture the simplicity we were after, but still with a twist. It was also both challenging and fun to play together with one of Sweden's number one guitarists - Micke "Nord" Andersson. Man, he's really got his shit together. An outstanding wonderful person and a truly amazing guitarist!

The Overdrive DVD went down the drain. The sound couldn't be saved and we refuse to make any post re-recording. We'll keep the film and use it to make some music videos to post on YouTube.

The Constancia album is also finally in the making. Michael Mueller will add his bass this weekend and David has started working on the vocals. Time for me to get the guitar work going then. Fuck, time just seem to fly... I promised some friends at work I would help out in our internal Avalon Rockstars band... which ended up in me getting all the songs and mucicians together and playing guitar. It's fun, I must admit, but i t t a k e s t i m e!! Time I don't have.

The encyclopedia is also coming along nicely. But the more information I find about "old" bands, the more NEW bands I find! I've now reached 2500 bands!! This will be a HUGE book. This time I also have to scan and re-scan ALL covers, as this one will be in colour. It's truly a labour of love.

When it comes to new stuff, I've received some really great stuff. Here it goes:
CLOUDSCAPE - Global Drama - Their best so far! GREAT album! Heavy semi-prog with great songs and hooks. Highly recommended!!
BLINDSTONE - Freedom's Calling - Danish heavy funk:sih riffsters! Killer stuff!!
BIG JIM SLADE - It's Delicious - Their fourth and best! Great riff-oriented southern oriented hard rock
HEALING SIXES - One More Friend To Ignore - Oustanding melodic southern oriented hard rock. Jason Bonham played drums on their two first albums, not on this, but the feel is still there!

Short but sweet

The headline of course refers to the Swedish summer... Found a great new beach (not really a beach as it's an old quarry) which was awesome. Burned myself nicely and read a really awesome book I can recommend if you're into the quirky type of humor of, for instance, Douglas Adams, you may love this one! The author is Christopher Moore and the book is entitled "Lamb - The Gospel According To Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal". It's totally hilarious!!

I've also spent quite a lot of time working on the new (and third) encyclopedia. Holy crap! I thought I had a pretty good view of all new stuff since my last book in 2002, but nope. There's soooo many obscure black metal bands that have had stuff released on even more obscure labels!! My estimation is there will be around 2500 bands in this one!

On the musical side of things we did a show with Overdrive on July 17, which we recorded on DVD + sound. The sound was a bit fucked up by a an ignorant sound engineer (not all his fault tho' as there were some mis-communication berween the stage manager and the sound company), but we'll see if we can use it. We've decided to go ahead and finish the Constancia album, so that's what I'm up to in the next few days.

Recently got my Orange Tiny Terror amp which is a little power pack, to say the least!

Listening recommendations:
Big Jim Slade - "It's Delicious" - Great southern-tinged ballsy hard rock
Healing Sixes - "One Less Friend To Ignore" - see above
The Muggs - "On With The Show" - The 70s revisited!

OVERDRIVE live DVD

This weekend we started rehearsing for the OVERDRIVE live-DVD which we will record at our show at the Baltic Sea Festival Thursday July 17 at the Karlshamn square main stage. We'll mix old and new tracks to try to please both old and new fans. Some of the tracks you'll hear are: Back On The Hunt, Overdrive, Dream Away, Fight To The Finish, Gravy Train, Bring Me To Submission, Deceived etc. There will be some nice surprises on stage, too.

I also finished the BALLS cover this weekend and it should be ready to send in a day or two. It's not the common metal/hard rock cover so I hope it will be well received. The album may speak for itself though ;-).

Mixed and ready!

The last couple of days we've been putting the final mixing touch on the new BALLS album. We also had a photo session in Falun (Fotograf Heléne) and funnily enough this was the first time the entire band were together. It's interesting that in this day and age you can write, record and mix an album without the band members even meeting. Anyway, it was quite a drive for me from Mörrum, 680 km to Björn's studio in Rättvik. I only took 6,5 hours (incl lunch, gas refill and peeing) and with a nice pile of CDs in the car it went smooth. The car I find being one of the best places to listen to music. On this trip I brought some good old Jethro Tull, Judas Priest, Kansas and Rory Gallagher mixed with some new stuff by Volbeat, Kursk and Grand Magus.

Right now I'm waiting for the download of the final mix of the album to finish. It sounded great in the studio :-)

Roger, over and out!

Listening to: "Nightcap" by Jethro Tull

Arrow Rock Festival

Recently returned from my first ever visit to Arrow Rock Festival. Quite a line-up this year indeed! They managed to in one day squeeze in a bunch of my favourite bands! Here's a quick run down of the trip.
Friday 20.25 - took a flight from Växjö (Smaland) airport to Weeze (Dusseldorf), 40 minutes delay, but the bus waited for us. Took us to the centre of Nijmegen (pronounced Nischmechen), and a quick cab ride to the nice Scandic Sanadorm hotel. Saturday was just a lazy day. Late breakfast, a walk in the neighbourhood (went slightly lost), back to the hotel, took a cab to the city centre. Saturday market. Found some CDs and DVDs at great prices. We were told there was a Hard Rock Café (we collect them), but how much we searched we couldn't find it. Finally found out there was none. The cab driver had probably meant the Backstage Rock Cafe (great music!). Cab back to the hotel and then we went to their great big Spa with 7-8 different pools, saunas etc. Niiice! Quite a lot of rebuilding going on there however, so some things were closed.

Sunday - festival day! Late breakfast and then we went to the site. Very smooth entry. Two guest passes each (one from Sweden Rock and one from the great Doug Aldrich), only needed one though :-). Got our wrist band and in we went. Strange scenario by the main stage. They had a special closed off area 15 meters in front of the stage only for "de luxe passes", guests and press! Hmm... They also have special tokens you have to buy as you can't buy food or drinks with money at the area. Nice idea, but fuck was it expensive!!! 2.30 Euro for a small glass of water!! Fuck me!! 4.50 Euro for half a grilled chicken!! Wow!

REO Speedwagon - Highly impressed! Only saw some of their set at Sweden Rock last year, but this was brilliant! I truly love "Back On The Road Again", which we used to cover back in the Paradize days. Great performance, lots of heavier stuff!
Gotthard - Have seen then so many times now we decided to explore the VIP area instead.
Journey - Man, this was beyond my expectations! They sounded awesome!! Close your eyes and it's all Perry again! Great choise of songs, even though they really rushed through it without any talk inbetween songs.
Twisted Sister - Despite Dee's flight being 6 hours late and he had to be flown by chopper to the festival, they were only 10 minutes late. No make-up and all rock n roll! Didn't see them, only heard.
Def Leppard - Man Joe hasn't got much of a voice left. A bit disappointing. Didn't see much f them.
Kansas - Awesome!!! They may not be fun to watch, but man do they play great! Great choise of songs, too!! Will see them again in Malmö tonight!
Whitesnake - They rocked!! Coverdale's voice wasn't really there, but musically it was great!
Motörhead - Didn't see them. Seen them probably 10 times before.
Kiss - What a show! I'm no big fan of the band, but I have seen them twise before (1980 and on thye Animalize tour). What a circus, but man was it fun to watch! Two hours of classic songs, pyro, pyro, more pyro, flying Gene and Paul, flying drum raiser, shooting guitar, you name it!

Monday we took a quick trip to the center for some light shopping and lunch before heading home. A great festival indeed.

Back in action

Haven't been posting for a while, but now I'm back in business. First of all the Sweden Rock festival:
DERRINGER - Holy crap!!!! These guys still mean business! Derringer - Johnson - Aaronson - Appice. These names stand for pure 70s power! Outstanding show! Great to hear some of the stuff sung and written by Danny, too, like "One Eyed Jack" and "Driving Sideways".
COHEED & CAMBRIA - What a band! They sound as good live as on CD. Highly musically entertaining!
TRIUMPH - OK, the stage show was a little shaky, but man did they sound good! Welcome back guys!
BLACK STONE CHERRY - A bunch of young, humble and very nice Kentucky guys that really knew how to get down and boogie! Killer southern groovy riff rock!
MUSTASCH - These guys sure know how to rock heavy and steady. Reliable live act!
JOE SATRIANI - Outstanding show! The best I've seen him do!
H.E.A.T. - Highly promising young Swedish AOR band that showed they deliver the goods live, too!
There's more of course: Tesla, Ace Frehley, Hensley/Lawton, Birthcontrol, Whitesnake, Fourever, BÖC, Saxon and some more.

We also had a new LOCOMOTIVE BREATH track featured on the compilation CD "Sweden Rock Festival CD 2008" entitled "Fill Your Head With Rock".

My computer is finally working! This week I'll be finishing up the last solos for the BALLS album, and it will be on its way!

Geeeeeetars!!

Was in Göteborg at the annual FUZZ Guitar Show last weekend. Nice! Should've brought a big bag of money! As I'm endoresed by ESP and Hughes & Kettner I checked out their booth and found a new series of cheapy guitars. Vintage was the brand, most parts were Wilkinson and the single coil on their Strat sounded great! The guitar felt really solid, easy played and great! Need one of those I guess. Also checked out Mattias Ia Eklundh at his seminar and he was just as crazy as usual. He's the kinda guy that, when he spots you, he makes sure everyone knows you're there. This time is was me, Anders Johansson and Jonas Hellborg that became his target. He's hilarious, though, and such an amazing guitar player! Also ran into Christian Alsing who gave me his CD "The Last Robot" - a great piece of music indeed, released in 2005 already. Met a lot of nice people and saw a lot of nice guitars!

New recommendable pieces of music:
Ben Granfelt Band - The Sum Of Memories
Caroline's Spine - Captured
Opeth - Watershed

This weekend...

We had an Overdrive band pow wow. We signed a load of CDs, decided on a set list for some shows this summer and we had a photo session with photographer Thomas Tjäder. Think we got some good shots there! Also kicked off the work on a new Overdrive website, which is loooong overdue (maybe we should change the name to that...).
Also received a new review from Stormbringer who gave "Let the metal do the talking" 4/5. Thaaank you!
Have a whole pile of stuff to review (Paul Gilbert, Whitesnake, King's X, Aggressive Chill, Disturbed, George Bellas, Tri State Corner, Alberto Rigoni, Marco Sfogli, Eric Gales) and some features to write (Michael Schenker, Robin Trower...). So much to do, so little time! Still... it's fun! The sun is finally here, meaning the garden got its fair share of attention this weekend. Planning on getting a lot of strawberries this summer :-)

I'm amazed!

In 1984 we released the last official studio album with OVERDRIVE. We reunited in 2003, and have just released the first new album in... let's see... 24 years!! Releasing a new album after so many years is not easy. You have to satisfy the old fans and not stray away from the original sound too much, and at the same time the album has to sound fresh and not dated. I admit, at first I did not want to do this. They however tricked me, with the cunningness of a woman (straight blokes as they are), they lured me into writing and recording a new album. I shall howeber admit that the writing part was hower not the problem I anticipated. Half the material was songs we'd written, but never released, back in the 80s. We just went from these, and lo and behold, it worked! However the media can be cruel, so their verdict was still to be seen...

Here it is... and I'm really humbly amazed of the great response!! Just some grades we've received from various magazines and webzines:
Brave Words - 8/10
Bright Eyes - 13/13
Burrn! - 83/100
Sweden Rock Magazine - 8/10
Peacedogman - 4/5
Zware Metalen - 78/100
FFM Rock - 5/5
Neckbreaker - 9/10
Danger Dog - 4,5/5
Metal Observer - 8/10
Metal Temple - 4/5
Metal Glory - 8/10
Heavy Metal Resource - 7,5/10
Rock United - 8/10
IMHOTEP - 5/6
Disintegration - 7/10
Classic Rock Newswire - 4/5
Rockreport - 4,5/6
Streets Webzine - 7/10
Lords Of Metal - 85/100

THANK YOU for taking time to really listen to our album, and to grasp our philosophy behind it. Thanks for not letting the cheesy title (a pun on Joe Perry's solo album "Let The Music Do The Talking", from a song we wrote back in 1982) become an obstacle in your listening. Thanks for giving us a chance to proove ourselves once again... after 24 years!

New Locomotive Breath song

Tonight it's mixing time! Through an initiative from Johannes Lindström at Sweden Rock, we decided to record a new song for a compilation that will be available only to those who buy 3-days tickets for Sweden Rock Festival. All the songs actually have the same title: "Fill Your Head With Rock". This is a pure metal anthem stomper. The line-up (which, as you might have noticed always changes) on this one is: Mattias Osbäck: vocals, myself: guitar/bass and TumPeter Svensson: drums. We're also reinforced by the Double Trouble choire boys Mikael Loorentz and Håkan Windahl. Other bands/artists that will appear on the compilation are: Kim Mitchell, Sabaton, Axewitch, Ken Hensley etc.

Back from New York!

So, back in Sweden after two eventful weeks in the big apple! The home trip was quite eventful, too, I should add...

Shooooopping!
With the current state of the US currency, we did a lot of great shopping. Manage to do some great deals at Manny's where I bought a Keehley Compressor, a Boss Octaver and a Edirol US25 interface, plus lots od strings! Also found some great CDs and vinyls at Bleecker Street Records. I can also recommend B&H Electronics where we got some cameras, iPods and a good deal on a Shure SM57. Needless to say we also found a great pile of nice clothes!

Friends
Besides meeting up and jamming with John Garner and also bass player Rick Mullen, which was great, we also spent some time with our friends Dino Dave and Amy, plus met up with Dinosuar Guitar mate Jeb. Also a great dude! We jammed and recorded some stuff that will probably end up on YouTube - "I Am The Killjoy" - a classic to be :-)

The journey home
The flight home was supposed to leave at 6.15 PM, but was delayed until 7.30...
and we boarded at 8... but didn't get clearance to take off until 9.45 because of technical matters! Fortunately we had a 5,5 hour wait in Brussels, which was now only 1,5 hours. This flight was also delayed 20 min for technical reasons... We finally arrived in Copenhagen and just made it on the train home! (I should mention that we had to buy two suitcases and one bag extra for all the stuff we bought!) We were 5 people with two suitcases and one hand luggage EACH!
When we arrived in Malmö, they told us we had to switch train because of...
tadaaa... technical problems! So, this time without any carriage, we had to run back and forth with all our luggage and switch trains!
We finally arrived home yesterday evening 5.30 PM, with our entire luggage intact!

Take heed New York, we will definitely be back!

Second week in New York

So, this is how fast a week goes in New York. Man... So, what have we done? Well, I've rehearsed with John Garner for the upcoming Sir Lord Baltimore shows. Tomorrow we'll rehearse with a bass player, Rick Mullen, which will be great.
With the current dollar rate shopping is great! Bought a nice Keehler Compressor, a Edirol UA25 sound interface, tried the awesome Orange Tiny Terror amp which totally blew me away!! I want I want I want!!! Met up with our friends Amy and Dino Dave for some serious... eating (great Indian restaurant yesterday), plus I've found a shitload of good CDs on Bleecker Street. The weather has been really good (although it's raining today). Will go see and interview Robin Trower this evening, which will be great.
What more to say but... New York rulez!!!

Soloing

First of all, last week we decided to change our name. There was a Swedish pop band in the 80s called Salt. They have now decided to re-unite, so to avoid confusion we have now changed our name to BALLS. It's actually the initials of the members' surnames - Björk - Andersson - Lodin - Lundkvist - Stark.
I started working on the solos for the Balls-album this weekend. Have to finish it all before we go to New York in two weeks. Shouldn't be any problem.
Tomorrow I'll be on Swedish televison as a representative for Sweden Rock and hard rockers in general. The show is recorded in the afternoon and broadcast 11.25 PM on TV2. I can't wear any t-shirt with a logo on!! I mean what is hard rock without a big phat band logo?! Hmm... Need a plan to sneak it in somehow ;-)

Recording again!

The last two days I spent in the studio with Mikael "Nord" Andersson. We're currently recording the guitars for the forthcoming album by SALT (we may change the name, though).
I used my Hughes & Kettner Trilogy head, through a 4x10" Marshall cab (the same one that was used on the latest album by The Rasmus)¨and a TS9 Tube Screamer. The guitars were my two True Temperament neck guitars (Gibson Les Paul and an Epiphone Strat) and my Fender Strat HW1.
I'll start recording the solos next week.

Today we also received Beau Hill's final mix of the CONSTANCIA track "Save Me", which sounds really good! We've sent out four tracks to four different engineers/producers to try and decide what sound we would like on the album. They are as follows:
"Save Me" - Beau Hill (Ratt, Streets, Winger, Warrant, Alice Cooper etc)
"Wish I Could Fly" - Pontus Lindmark (Planet Alliance, Cloudscape etc)
"Blind" - Pontus Norgren (The Poodles, Talisman, House Of Shakira etc)
"I Never Said Goodbye" - Pelle Saether (Node, Locomotive Breath, Zello, Zeelion etc)
When we've received all four tracks we'll put them up on our MySpace (www.myspace.com/constanciamusic) for people to vote on which mix they like the most.

Over & Out

OVERDRIVE release today!

Saturday we had a release party for the new OVERDRIVE album "Let The Metal Do The Talking", the first full length album since 1984! A great bunch of people showed up. We played the album, showed some old and new videos, gave away some stuff, got slightly drunk and had fun!
Today we also put up a new track on MySpace (www.myspace.com/overdrivesweden) - "Bring Me To Submission".
So what now? Promotion work, of course! Possibly try to get some gigs.
Otherwise it's CONSTANCIA that has part of my musical focus at the moment. David recorded the vocals for the track "Blind" yesterday. We've just sent off a bunch of files to Beau Hill (Ratt, Warrant, Winger, Europe etc.) who will re-mix the track "Save Me". We received the test mix of "Wish I Could Fly" from Pontus Lindmark at RoastigHouse last week. It sounded great!
February 18-19 I'm off to Stockholm to start recording guitars for the SALT album. Really looking forward to getting this wagon on the road, too!

Currently listening to: RTZ - "Lost" - Great AOR album featuring former Boston boys Barry Godreau and Brad Delp (RIP). Hadn't listened to this in years, but suddenly got into a Boston-vibe and brought out Boston, Barry's solo album, Orion, RTZ and the Godreau/Delp stuff.

Grand opening

Hi all!



Welcome to my blog. We'll see what stuff comes up here. This will probably be some kind of journal of all my musical activities.



I'm currently recording the guitars and preparing files for my curreny "melogressive" project CONSTANCIA. The day after we opened our MySpace page we were contacted by American top producer Beau Hill (Warrant, Europe, Ratt, Alice Cooper) who said he liked our stuff very much and asked if we wanted him to re-mix some tracks. So, we will, why I'm working on re-recording some guitar parts for the song, at the same time as I'm finishing up demoing the remaining tracks (15 all in all).



I'm also writing new songs and rehearsing old ones for the resurrection of 70s classic band SIR LORD BALTIMORE which I'm proud to be part of today. Imagine being asked to join one of your old favourite bands! KEWL, huh?! We're off to New York in March to write and rehearse.



SALT is my current band, featuring among others Björn Lodin (Baltimoore, Six Feet Under) and Micke "Nord" Andersson (Nord, Private Eyes, Roxette etc). Robban has laid down the drums fro the forthcoming album and me and Micke will start recording guitars in February.



"The Encyclopedia of Swedish Punk 1976-1986" is a book written by Peter Jandreus, which I'm doing layout and additional writing, research for. It's in the final proof reading stage now, so hopefully this "never ending story" will be finished soon!