Good Ol’ Goteborg

You know what they say: A band that sleeps onstage together, stays together... Or something. A shot in the early afternoon hours of the wakeup call that came after the show-that-shouldn’t-have-been in Goteborg. But thanks to the magical Christian Pallin, our Saturday night -- which only became available as of last Tuesday when a show cancelled -- the show-that-wasn’t became a small success. There’s a reason that somebody told me that Christian was “the best thing to happen to Goteborg”: In a matter of days, he not only secured the venue and the opening acts, but got upwards of 70 people to show up.

And a neat little venue: Kulturhuset Underjorden, or, “The Underground Culture House”. Formerly run, I’m told, by a worker’s union to show plays, the venue is now regularly host to live music of all kinds. A nice 150-or-so seat theatre space plus a small cafe-bar area... And a stage big enough to sleep five!

For a show that wasn’t supposed to be, well, it didn’t seem that way (once again, big ups to Christian!). The only challenge was clearing out the room at the end of the night: As we were to bed down in the venue, we had to empty the place of party people so we could lock the door from the inside. Thus, Jon steps up to play the role of ‘old guy’ at 3am so that by 4 I could lock the door and slip into my onstage bed. The revelry moved on, slowly but surely, with the gypsy punks leading the party out the door in the wee hours.

A shot from behind the band, admittedly not clear, during sound check. To get an idea of the venue.

Two opening acts, one planned in advance (Pistol Disco), and one added last-minute (Dorleen Love). The former, a minimal electro, loop-based duo with a couple of electronic drum pads, was mellow; the latter, a gypsy-punk six-some that came right from busking on the G-borg streets, brought the onstage numbers up to close to ten when they invited a few extra dancers/screamers to join the party. Perhaps some of you in Beijing had run into a couple members of Dorleen Love during their short China stint. Perhaps not.

Between acts one and two, short films were shown, adding a nice multi-media touch to the event. Something about a dude with a ukulele and harmonica singing under a tree; wacky animation; a woman in a bubble bath singing... There was more. It was cool, but not something I could tell you about in much detail.

Above, Pistol Disco. Below, Dorleen Love (and friends).

Kang Mao playing for the camera (not a rare occurrence, I assure you) , and the people.