♫♪♪♫...
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.
A little hair and a lot of work
Today has been somewhat of a dancy day. I´ve worked on something that isn´t really my kind of music, but let´s see what it gives. *she said secretly* Hm. After a dancy day like this it´ll be nice to wash my ears with Dave Matthews band tonight. But first - indian food. Cheers!
Vanja goes trance
Amazing French dj Transparence made a remix of my song "Survive". Go to his MySpace page and scroll down a bit to hear it. What do you think, should I stop with the pop and become a trance artist full time...? ;-)
Amy Lotsberg wants to have a drink with me...
...oh, and she also wrote a review of my album on her amazing independent music site Collected Sounds. She is the internet queen of reviewing (mostly female) new artists, so I´m very happy she took the time to listen to my record. And Amy - if you´re ever in Stockholm, the whiskey sours are on me!
Punk?
Just noticed that Swedish online record store Ginza put me in the music category pop/Rock/PUNK...! Yup, PUNK! To honour this, I´ll dress in head-to-toe black today and shove a safety pin through my nose. (Hm, or maybe I´ll just do the black clothing thing.)
And now for something completely different
...the sun has been shining in Stockholm for four consecutive days (after cowardly hiding away four 4 months, bringing us the coldest, longest and darkest winter in ages)...! Might take a while before we can stroll around barefoot in the sand like above, but it seems like spring just might be happening after all. Was seriously worried for a while. *phew*
My favourite song...
If I might be so bold and admit my favourite song on my own album, then this one it is: "Song for N". A favourite song about a favourite person. Fun fact: I was seriously hungover when I recorded this track, if you listen closely I´m sure you can hear it...
Merci Grimaldi FM!
Merci! Bisous-bisous!
