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"

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

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!

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