Lazy
These digital days enable too many ways of communicating, which leads to too little time to create things you actually want to communicate... At least for me. ;-) So in the spirit of the above song (which I love) I´m gonna try and stick to Facebook and Myspace, and leave this blog to rest for a while. Bisous! :-)
I´m in love
Went to see She & Him yesterday (S - vielen dank number 1!), and have now joined forces with all the gazillion indie boys who are in love with Zooey Deschanel.
The music´s lovely, the band´s lovely, even the merch was lovely... (Causing me to end up with a She & Him bag. S - vielen dank number 2!)
I ♥ Mamastore!
The very excellent clothing store for pregnant women, Mamastore, have great taste in music as well as outfits... ;-) Thank you!
B-day and a gay lamb
Today is my birthday (yay!) and this lovely (and sought after for weeks by me...) creature waited for me at my breakfast table. His name is Rossalicious and I think he´s gay. My birthday couldn´t have started better. :-D
This is not a fashion blog
...but I can´t help posting a pic of my new darling; a ring made by a very talented friend of mine: Maggie at Bahgsu Jewels. All the stones in her jewellry carry different energies, and apparently the one in my ring relaxes the heart chakra and brings order to scattered feelings. Since I am both unrelaxed and a bit scattered for the moment, it sounds perfect! I also (without knowing it) managed to pick the one stone mined in Sweden, the other ones come from such distant places as Mexico, Peru and Brazil. Guess I´m a Sweeeeede to the bone...
Inspiration
´Nuff said.
I´m baaaaack!
I´m back from the glorious land of Super Bock and surf! Luckily I didn´t get stuck in the Icelandic ash cloud, but I have friends who were supposed to be soaking up the sun in Palma right now (instead of getting soaked in rain in Stockholm...), poor things. I got back to find this very nice blog post from my favourite German Mr Grassi, It says so many nice things that I´m (almost he he) too shy to translate it. But only almost. So, for those of you who doesn´t speak German, here´s the translation:
The Swedes are lucky
You can really envy the Swedes! The best popmusic comes from up there and if you read my blog regularly, you already know about Vanja. In this article I told you about her. Here in Germany her album is only available as a download, in Sweden you can buy it on CD. Her concert are also concentrated to Sweden and the moment and so the Swedes have two advantages. They can buy the album on cd and they can go to a concert to let it be signed there. I only have the download and there are no concert in sight here in Germany. But Vanja is on a high position on my concert wishlist, I think I'll have to visit Sweden soon.
Vanja had a great experience a few days ago. She was able to mark off a point on her bucket list: To have her own name tag in a record store. She writes about that in her blog. I have set a visit to one of her concerts high on my bucket list and I'm optimistic to do that soon.
And if you like her music, maybe we can fly to Sweden together. And to be honest: Anybody who has just a little bit interest in popmusic has to love the songs of this adorable Swede with the wonderful voice.
By the way In the last week I listen to her song "I still" very often. I first listened to it very intensive on a train journey to Vienna and I can't get it out of my head since this day. It's not on Youtube, but you can buy it as a download. :) But the single "Tired" is on Youtube and here's the video:
Beijos de Portugal!
I´m currently in Portugal getting freckles and drinking Super Bock. Hopefully I´ll come home with a handful of new songs as well as a tan reddish new shade.
In my Easter Egg...
...this year I got a very special Easter present from the States, thank you so much Dale for making this amazing drawing and sending it to me...! I know it´s not very sophisticated to put up art portraying yourself in your home (unless you´re Joey Tribbiani of course, then everything is forgiven), but if there ever was a time to disregard that, it´s now. :-D
...he did a pretty good job, huh?! Happy Easter!
♫♪♪♫...
Writing lots of new music for the moment. Thank you to my wildly adorable sister Mini (...who also happened to snap this pic) for the inspiration.
Bengans!
Yesterday I went by Bengans record shop in Stockholm for the lovely (but just a slight bit self-absorbed) activity "I-want-to-see-that-bit-of-plastic-that-I-worked-so-hard-for-sitting-on-a-record-store-shelf-yes-indeed".
...and I got not only one, but TWO nice surprises...!
Nice surprise number 1: Remember this post? Well, I can hereby cross "having my own name tag in the record store" off my things-to-experience-before-I-die-list. No "U-V-W" as far as the eye could see. Yay!
Nice surprise number 2: It was EMPTY! No further comments needed.
...since I just HAD to ask the clerk if they were all out of Vanja-records (read: "since I just HAD to point out that this seems to be an aaawfully popular girl, and you need to get more records ASAP!"), they found me the last one (sitting in the "News"-section). So - I actually bought the last one in the shop. A good day. :-D
Mmwaaah!
Yesterday I played at Bara Vi - THANK YOU to everyone who came! ...especially Stephan who flew all the way from Germany (!) to be there. Vielen dank! ;-) Medomkajaden also played, lovely lovely band.
I did a few sad songs (obviously, as seen above) such as "Tired" and "Yesterday"... (Pic by Amanda Axelsson Duarte)
...but also some happier ones, like "Song II" and "Song for N". All in all, I had a glorious night filled with glorious people, so Mwaaaah! to all of you who came! (Pic stolen from the lovely Caroline J)
One (of the many) perk(s) of playing live is that you get cheap beer. :-D I love that at Bara Vi they even have that as a regular thing in their cash register; "kompisöl" (buddy beer). All bars should be like that. And I should be a buddy in all those bars. Hm, gotta play more live...
Blackberry tea and setlists
Since I´m still suffering from bad photography self esteem from yesterday, todays rehearsal will be illustrated by these two important guys; the setlist and the extremely delicious ecological blackberry tea.
Hopeless musicians
Since I love to sing jazz, I sometimes do jazz gigs, and one of those is coming up this Thursday. So - I was at my guitarists place tonight to rehearse. Since I now have a blog I thought I´d take some nice pics of it all to post here. But it turned out to be harder than I thought, my photo chemistry was definitely off tonight. Let´s start:
Since we didn´t have anyone else in the room to take our picture we did it with the self-timer button. Which is a greater science that one would think, and it also makes you feel kinda cheesy. So, this is us pretending to rehearse, and feeling very cheesy.
So we thought we´d stop pretending to rehearse and just look into the camera. Cheese-level rising even further.
"Ahhh, f*ck it, let´s just take a monster pic since we´re obviously not pulling off this self-timer thing" was the thought behind this masterpiece. But sadly enough, we couldn´t even do that very well.
We also managed to take this pic. Might be our best work tonight actually.
Luckily this guy (girl?) was the only audience while we completely massacred the art of taking blog pics. HOW ON EARTH do people who update their blogs several times a day do it? I think either they are all master photographers, or they have master photographer friends.
Bluff is the way to go
I had a very lovely fika recently with the equally lovely Erik Holmberg, during which he gave me the above book: "Bluff your way in music". It contains all the quick facts you need for instant expertise on the world of music, teaching such wisdoms as under the headline Singers: "It has been said that the only trouble with singers is that they just cannot keep their mouths shut". Hm, should I be offended? Well, since it also describes the classical term Coda as "An extra bit at the end of a composition during which people can find their coats and put their shoes on", I think I won´t be too upset.
