Month: April 2011

Categories
GUEST EDITOR

The Soundtrack Of Our Lives’ Ebbot Lundberg Can’t Control Himself: Jan Johansson (A Piano Player)

We assume most MAGNET readers are already under the magical, musical spell of the Soundtrack Of Our Lives, but if not, 2011 is the perfect time to change that. The Gothenburg, Sweden, band just released Golden Greats, No. 1 (Little W/The Orchard), a 19-track compilation of songs from throughout the group’s career. TSOOL formed in 1995 after the demise of Union Carbide Productions, a great, punk-leaning band featuring vocalist Ebbot Lundberg and guitarist Ian Persson. Since, TSOOL has released five studio albums and a handful of EPs and non-album singles, earning a Grammy nomination for 2002’s excellent Behind The Music. Lundberg will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.

Lundberg: Jan Johansson was a Swedish jazz pianist. He’s not very well known outside of Scandinavia, and a lot of his records are out of print. However, Jazz På Svenska (“Jazz In Swedish”) has sold more than a quarter-million copies and is the best-selling jazz LP ever in Sweden. Johansson is from Söderhamn, in the Hälsingland province. As a child, he studied classical piano, moving on to the guitar, organ and accordion as a teenager. At university, he met saxophonist Stan Getz and then abandoned school to play jazz full time. He is probably best known as the composer of “Här Kommer Pippi Långstrump” (“Here Comes Pippi Longstocking”), the theme song from the famous Swedish TV show. His musical influence on the Soundtrack Of Our Lives is immense. He was a true genius. Unfortunately, he died in a car crash on his way to a concert in 1968.

Video after the jump.

Continue reading “The Soundtrack Of Our Lives’ Ebbot Lundberg Can’t Control Himself: Jan Johansson (A Piano Player)”
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FREE MP3s

MP3 At 3PM: Art Brut

Art Brut‘s fourth studio album is out May 24 via Cooking Vinyl/The End. Brilliant! Tragic! was produced by Black Francis, who did the same for 2009’s Art Brut Vs. Satan, which was recorded in less than two weeks. Says frontman Eddie Argos of the new LP, “We got together in the second half of the year and wrote whenever we could two or three times a week. We had more time in the studio this time too (about a week more), so Black Francis had time to teach me how to sing … I’m very proud that I sing on it. Only took four albums to start singing. Not bad.” Not bad, indeed. Download first single “Lost Weekend” below, and catch the band on tour in North America in June.

“Lost Weekend” (download):
https://magnetmagazine.com/audio/LostWeekend.mp3

Categories
TAKE COVER!

Take Cover! Karate Vs. Billie Holiday

When is a cover song better than the original? Only you can decide. This week Karate takes on Billie Holiday’s “Strange Fruit.” MAGNET’s Ryan Burleson pulls the pin. Take cover!

One of the great protest songs of all time, “Strange Fruit” was originally published in 1936 as a poem in The New York Teacher, three years before vocal jazz icon Billie Holiday would introduce it to a much wider audience with her Milt Gabler-produced version on Commodore. Holiday wasn’t the first to set the poem’s couplets to music, either; that honor could be claimed by the poem’s author, Abel Meeropol, who had already performed the song with his wife and the singer Laura Duncan, in several New York City venues before Holiday put her own spin on it in 1939. Nevertheless, it’s Holiday’s stoic and brooding take that we remember most, a seminal work that paved the singer’s path to stardom while the country’s tragic race problem began to spill over into public view in perhaps the most significant way since the years leading up to the Civil War.

Judging by a cursory Google search, how Holiday came to know of the Meeropol poem is up for debate. What’s much more clear, however, is that the singer felt a personal attachment to the song’s horrific depiction of racism, perhaps no more sordidly displayed than in following lines: “Pastoral scene of the gallant South/The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth/Scent of magnolia sweet and fresh/Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.” While no one in Holiday’s immediate family had been killed in such a gruesome fashion—she was raised in the Northeast, where lynchings were far less of a threat for African-Americans than in the South—she had nonetheless seen the ugly reality of discrimination play out in the life of her father, a jazz musician who was denied treatment for a fatal lung disorder due to racial prejudice just a few years earlier. It’s no wonder, then, that Holiday’s bandmates reported that she would wind up in tears nearly every time they performed the song together.

For its part, Karate’s somber take on “Strange Fruit” is a shorter, bluesier rendering, though one that’s no less affecting. Leader Geoff Farina’s ineffably smooth guitar solo goes a long way toward that end, but so does the trio’s overall reverence for the issue at hand. Indeed, Karate’s earnestness is equally present in covers of protest songs by Mike Watt, Bob Dylan, Mark Hollis and others, which appear alongside “Strange Fruit” on the band’s In The Fishtank sessions, recorded while on tour in the Netherlands in 2004.

The Cover:

The Original:

Categories
GUEST EDITOR

The Soundtrack Of Our Lives’ Ebbot Lundberg Can’t Control Himself: Hållö (An Island)

We assume most MAGNET readers are already under the magical, musical spell of the Soundtrack Of Our Lives, but if not, 2011 is the perfect time to change that. The Gothenburg, Sweden, band just released Golden Greats, No. 1 (Little W/The Orchard), a 19-track compilation of songs from throughout the group’s career. TSOOL formed in 1995 after the demise of Union Carbide Productions, a great, punk-leaning band featuring vocalist Ebbot Lundberg and guitarist Ian Persson. Since, TSOOL has released five studio albums and a handful of EPs and non-album singles, earning a Grammy nomination for 2002’s excellent Behind The Music. Lundberg will be guest editing magnetmagazine.com all week. Read our brand new Q&A with him.

Lundberg: Hållö is a small island outside Smögen on the windy and beautiful west coast of Sweden. There are no people living there, but you can stay and live at a hostel anytime of the year. But most people go there in sailing boats during summertime. It is a magical place and looks like a piece of Sahara desert in the ocean. Almost like a painting by Salvador Dali with its strange red-like colours. It’s a perfect place for snorkeling and exploring different kind of rock formations. Most of them formed by erosion during the last ice age. And it inspired the Soundtrack Of Our Lives in the beginning of our career. There’s even a tribute song on our first album called “Theme From Hållö.” It’s simply a place called paradise.

Video after the jump.

Continue reading “The Soundtrack Of Our Lives’ Ebbot Lundberg Can’t Control Himself: Hållö (An Island)”
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VIDEOS

Film At 11: Maggie Björklund

If you can really judge people by the company they keep, Maggie Björklund is truly someone special. In 2009, the Danish pedal-steel player and singer/songwriter recorded her solo debut, Coming Home (Bloodshot), with the likes of Mark Lanegan, Calexico’s Joey Burns and John Convertino, Jon Auer (Posies), Rachel Flotard (Visqueen), Barrett Martin (Screaming Trees) and Rusty Willoughby (Flop). Not only that, but this week, five different music publications (usually sworn enemies who want nothing to do with each other) have gotten together to present “Maggie Björklund Video-Roll Contest Week,” wherein each magazine is premiering a new video from Coming Home and any reader who “likes,” comments on or re-posts the video is eligible to win a copy of the CD. Yesterday, Alarm debuted “Anchor Song,” and tomorrow Country Standard Time will do the same for “Summer Romance.” But today, MAGNET is proud to premiere the video for “Vildspor.”