It's cool when you are there.

It's funny to hear artists bitching around certain things but then change opinion in a second. I saw a poster about some band doing an anti Summerfest gig in Milwaukee. And as long they are not playing they will be anti-Summerfest.
Then suddenly they might be booked to Summerfest and suddenly the festival is cool to be on.

And it's the same with everything as long you won't get it, the thing sucks.
This star sucks, that gig place sucks.
And when you suddenly reach that goal it's okay with the stuff.

PERSONAL:
Twenty-twenty-twenty four hours to go
I wanna be sedated, Nothin' to do and nowhere to go I wanna be sedated.
The song just hit me. It came from a really bad cassette bootleg recording of Ramones that my cousin had bought on a trip to Stockholm.
At this point in time, it was really hard to get this kind of music in my hometown. The record stores there was not an uplifting story and I can easily say I just hated the main shit they where carrying.
But this was new. The sound was really bad but you could hear what a great tune it was.
My lifelong relationship with the Ramones had begun. Today I have my own personal Ramones museum with Dee Dee Ramones birth certificate as the odd one.
I loved the music.in reality, it was old. That song had come out at least 10 years earlier but of course, never reached me. I have been quite obsessed with Ramones and still, think many of the songs are one of the best ones.
Why I don't mention this when people ask for my favorite music is because then they think I look for a next Ramones. There will only be one Ramones so I don't look for it or want music that sounds like it. The only thing I want is memorabilia around them.
It's my collector's thing here in life.

A leader or a dead fish?

Yes, you find inspiration in people, but try to copy their career is not that smart. I get quite much that this person played on this festival was on this radio show etc. Just because of that we should do the same.

You know (Joey Ramone always started with), playing at CBGB:s was not cool when The Ramones did it. Sure all these years bands have been nagging they should play there since it went well with the first bands playing there like The Ramones, Blondie, Talking Heads etc.

In reality that was what came out from CBGB was these first bands. They took a chance, they were the leaders, the rest was just dead fishes that followed the stream.

I feel many are afraid to do something early. They want to wait until someone else has done it and they can follow. In the end, they are just chasing the next thing instead of creating it.

Go back to the iconic photo of the Ramones of the brick wall. It was not thought thru it just happened. And I bet you haven't seen the picture after that iconic one when Dee Dee is scraping dogshit from his shoe?

How many bands haven't been inspired by that picture? Instead, they should have done their own brick wall photo. Try to be the leader, not the dead fish that follows the stream.

PERSONAL:
I wrote about facing your fears a couple a days ago, also I wanted to write a more personal blog. And here I have to face the fear. I know what is interesting to write about, but it's hard personal and not pleasant. Still, that is what you want to read. I just noted myself going back to just write in the personal things that I'm excited about but can't say anything about yet. Pretty boring to read about. When I was changing I thought of giving out more anecdotes around me, but it's hard to write about it. You have to face the fear.

Oh well so here is a kind of strange story that I know is a bit untold and I usually never talk about.
If you ever visit our office you can't miss our pinball machine. And I know early in the blog I have revealed that I'm a keen enthusiast of restoring pinball machines. Nowadays I don't have so much time for it. But I really like to dig in around pinball machines made between 1992 to 1998 with digital displays. And that has been something I been told quite often in the interviews of odd facts about myself. What is lesser known is that the pinballs are there because a court settles after I was kidnapped.

Yes, it is true. I was kidnapped after a night out in Stockholm. We where celebrate a friend's birthday and was going from one restaurant to a bar. Suddenly a guy came up to us and pointed a gun at me and wanted me to follow him up the street. You really don't argue with a guy pointing a gun at you so I followed along. We went up to his buddy on the other side of the street. I guess they just wanted to mug me but also knew I didn't have any cash on me so it could turn ugly.

At the same time my friends was calling the cops. When we reach his buddy you can just tell both of them was high as fuck on some drug. The friend just laughed and said it was just a joke to get someone to follow them along. Okay I said turned around and walked back over the street to my scared friends.

A minute later the cops swarmed the street. A guy waving with a gun is not taken lightly and a block away they arrested them.

Since the forced me over the street it was counted as kidnapping and the damage money for that is kind of high. So before it went to court I decided if I got any money I would buy a pinball machine.

And there you have one of the two pinball machines I bought from the kidnapping money. The guy was as I thought high and had no idea what he was doing and got a longer prison sentence.