it's so hard to say goodbye

so I've neglected this blog forever, and it's with sad sad emoticon that I redirect you to my new and improved personal website, where I'll post the meaningful things I write and artistic projects I'm working on. It has a blog feature and I'll be updating work there constantly. Thanks for those who followed this blog and youstayherewithme as well. cheers. :)

www.kikajonsson.com

non traditional interviews and please follow this chick on Twitter @kikajonsson

No rest for the wicked! Summer looks very promising, as I will be realizing a mostly-life long dream of attending Roskilde Festival in Denmark. This combines all that I love: music, journalism, and Danish people. Read my interview with spokesperson Christina Bilde, some interesting bits on festival history. 

I also finally finished the interview with Out in the North founders, who I had the pleasure to meet in Arhus at the SPOT festival when we both could not get into the Broken Twin show! This project take Scandinavian/Nordic musicians out into natural settings to play acoustic versions of songs, it's thoroughly original. Read about the ideas and inspirations and occasional mishaps behind this project.

 Coming up soon: I was able to interview Canadian former-quartet-now-trio Braids on Thursday. Will get that up as soon as possible, they were incredibly nice, well-spoken and gregarious. They played as one of three bands for the Introducing in June, part of the Intro series. They played songs off their new album (out in August) Flourish//Perish, which is different then debut album Native Speaker.
Rock Ton Paintball avec Braids (Épisode 8) from Scène 1425 on Vimeo.

FIDLAR, Berlin, February 2013

Let's remember a fantastic evening a few weeks ago. FIDLAR rocked Berlin's Bii Nuu, preceded by Shields from Newcastle and Vimes from Cologne. You can read my interview with them on NBHAP, they were the funniest and nicest band I have had a chance to talk to in awhile. Plus, it was talking to Californians, which is just like wrapping myself up in a warm blanket of familiarity. The fellas put on a great set, which was recorded by Arte and available to watch. So pour yourself a cheap beer and live vicariously through the internet. 

Toro y Moi show and a new Rover interview

Rest is for the wicked, here is an interview from French chanteur Timothee Regnier aka Rover. 

Please read my write up of the excellent Toro y Moi show at the Comet Club, small but mighty!

seeing other blogs & Kotti-Shop show

What's new readers, I am excited to announce the interview I did was published, on none other than venerable online music magazine nothingbuthopeandpassion. Hope to be writing more for them soon, but in the meantime, check out what the band members in Waldo & Marsha had to say on my recent trip to Denmark.
In other news, the following show in Berlin much recommended, tomorrow night, the Kotti Shop,  Neues Kreuzberger Zentrum - Adalbertstr. 4 - Berlin

Double-End-the-Cold-Concert with Kotti-Shop crew: The flaming llama duo: LEISEYLENTO  -- basar musical - poetic & bizarre -- & The howling four: HERR TEUFELSDRÖCKH UND DAS TASCHENMESSER

-- Schizofolknik Rock --

Mitwoch 19. Dezember 2012 Doors open 20:00 Concert starts: 21:00 3 EUROS TO GET IN....you have no excuse

brief hiatus while I do this thing here

things in progress

Open Studio at Laden Atelier, Mareschstr. 15, Neukolln, Berlin

What? Yes, it's happening, an evening featuring art by 

Ivo Gretener

Kika Jonsson

Ella Littwitz

Roman Moriceau

Julia Prezewowsky

used universe

 On Saturday, December 8th, 2012, from 6-10 pm.

Come and see some art, have a drink, and maybe your mind will be blown.

Brief hiatus from the musical jabberings until then, enjoy this track though.

Gentlemen Cowboys: Band of Horses at Admiralspalast, November 7, 2012

"Thinking it over by the snack machine/I thought about you in a candy bar"

Band of Horses have nice jackets

Well, it is the day after OBAMA!!!!!!!! wins again, and some smart people living on European time would have gone to bed early and just woken up at 4 am to watch the returns come in, but not...this....chick.  So, in the company of Barbara G. and Chris L., with approximately an hour and half sleep in 48 hours, we headed to Admiralspalast, my first venture into a Berlin venue that comes close to the elegant grandeur of my favorite Victorian ballrooms of San Francisco (Warfield, Great American Music Hall and the Regency Ballroom come to mind) it's a space with a large open floor and not one but two balcony levels.  Once again, acoustics were questionable, I don't know if it was just tonight but the mix sounded really poor and scratchy.

Count the references to Americana

The show openers were Goldheart Assembly, a (fairly standard) indie pop rock band from London (out on Fierce Panda) distinguished by the fact that none of us could understand them. If I said it once, I said it a thousand times: up and coming bands, say your names like 10 times, clearly and slowly. Banners help too. 

Anyway, after no delay, one fifth of BoH appeared on stage, all in skinny jeans, baseball shirt and trucker hats, before a screen image of the evergreen forest canopy, giving way to star-spangled sky.  These are not men, these are guys, good ol' American guys.  I guess I don't know what I miss until I see it.  They began with a slow, yearning ballad, one their many odes to what we love, we lose and we lust for. But I don't know which exact song so sorry.  

Throughout the show, behind the band appeared images from all around the US, I spotted Mono Lake and other places I'm certain were California and other gratuitous nature money shots in the Southwest.( You want to know what makes you homesick? THAT makes you homesick.) It was sort like an American road trip, but sitting down. They covered an Allman Brothers song, and I cannot confirm or deny it was the same one they did in their set in Phoenix but it was rocking.  They also had a few riffs that I swear are the opening to The Rolling Stones' "Gimme Shelter" but I was pretty sleep deprived at this point so no promises.

You know, in honor of Thanksgiving, here we give thanks that the Northwest has given us so much.  I want to you to imagine this band is the soundtrack to cresting some high mountain in the Cascade Range and realizing he/she is still gone.  That sort of sweeping, majestic sound mixed with heartbreak. (Before one song, "It's about to get real sad up in here." Oh, believe me, we know.)  Highlights of the evening was when they busted out the lap steel to accompany their reflective ballads. 

The election=addressed. Y'all? Yeah, he said "Thanks y'all for coming out." (Lead singer Ben Bridwell is from South Carolina.)  Gems enjoyed included, but not limited to, "The Great Salt Lake," "Weed Party," and the "Funeral" and a smattering of songs off the new album.  Enjoy these Seattle founded rockers at their set at Amoeba, my favorite record store in San Francisco.

Alexis Taylor IS Christine McVie: Hot Chip at Columbiahalle, November 1, 2012

"A church is not for praying/it's for celebrating the light that bleeds through the pain"

November 1, Dia de los Muertos, and one of my favorite Scottish people has organized an unwieldy group of seven to attend Hot Chip, on tour to support their latest album Motion Sickness. Now, last time I saw this band was when they opened for Animal Collective at the Fillmore San Francisco in 2005 (name=dropped).  Now during that show (supporting Coming on Strong) I remember...I remember... dancing? There's been a lot of head trauma since then but I did buy the album and absorbed them, they were a nice complement to Animal Collective. 
I am happy to say the ultimate British geeks have grown, expanding their minimalist pop for more synth heavy, danceable tracks that owe everything, and I mean everything to New Order. They played most of the new album, highlight was a cover of Fleetwood Mac's "Everywhere" (of the 1986 album Tango in the Night, oh the 80s) , and I love it when men sound like women, that probably indicates some latent issue in myself I know. [Please follow that last link even if you can't watch it, check out the top comment, internet gold.]  Highlights included a great version of "Motion Sickness" and "How Do You Do?" where the header lyric comes from.  So if you want something to dance to that has actually substantial lyrics, the soundtrack that will speak to all you ugly sweater wearing computer geeks who secretly press roses between the pages of classic literature while watching it rain, then check them out.

sometimes the best is at the beginning

Helmut.Is and Beirut, Columbiahalle, September 19, 2012

O fuck me it’s Wednesday.

I bought tickets to see Beirut back in May, and after obsessively listening to the latest album Riptide (see an earlier post that is laced with lots of hyperbole) it seemed perfectly reasonable to buy tickets to show five months in advance. However, let's just say prior to the show I was not feeling it, what with it being mid-week and all, and plus I believe Columbiahalle may be one of the worst venues in Berlin.  Saying the acoustics are better inside my oven may be an insult to my oven.  A sold out show at Columbiahalle is like a boat evacuation of a war torn land: everybody wants on and there is only so much space. However, yours truly is a brave little cadet and shoves all the workaday things aside to maybe go hear something transcendental that will make stepped on toes and arguing in German worth it.

Beirut

And...I will cover the headliner first because the pleasant surprise was the opener, Helmut.is.  So Beirut came and readily admitted they were ragged after lots of touring.  The wear and tear was definitely evident, while the playing was excellent (the lead is definitely a virtuoso, and they have three horn players AND an upright bass) the band seemed to lack energy and enthusiasm.  They treated us to many gems off the latest album, including "Santa Fe," "A Candle's Fire," and the wrist-slitter "Goshen."  The highlight was "East Harlem."  What this band needs to be appreciated for is how they incorporate Eastern European influences without descending into camp.  Beirut knows how to make horns sound plaintive and needy, the soundtrack to nostalgia.  Put this on when far from home, and when Zach Condon tells you there's "a thousand miles between us," you have permission to yearn.

And the special guest and pleasantly surprising opener was Helmut.is.  No, he's not from Iceland, he's from Berlin.  Taking the stage before the sweaty, antsy throng that is the Beirut crowd, with the requisite combed over bangs and facial hair, Helmut.is is the modern one man band. Sitting before a buffet of effects pedals, he starts by strumming a chord, then looping it back, snapping his fingers, and repeating that track, building up a song piece by piece.  Normally wary of tons of effects which can mask crap musicianship, I am here to tell you this is the real thing.  Let's call it the layer theory of song building.  Highly recommended the seven minute jam "sepi," which tells you to "stay put/to regain control."  Put this EP on when the sky is gray and close, and you can't decide if getting up is at all possible. The album will decide for you.

Helmut.is

two yahs! and two blahs: Danish Invasion at Rosi's Berlin

Danish Invasion

Fresh from the Danish showcase at Rosi's, to kick off the five days of no sleep and ringing eardrums that is Berlin Music Week.  Rosi's is a sweet club a short walk from Warschauer Strasse, down a bit on Revaler Str.  The setting is sort of Berlinesque standard crap-washed-up-from-a-shipwreck mixed with what a crackhouse puts out for a yard sale, meaning an outdoor area with strand lights, couches, ping pong and sand.  The mish mash of outdoor furniture includes a thoroughly soaked swinging chair. Note: There was a guy wearing a shirt that said "No one reads your fucking blog" which maybe was a sign.
The lineup was Boho Dancer, Schultz and Forever, Waldo and Marsha and Tako Lako. I will cover the blahs in another post, but first let's drink to the amazing stuff coming out of Denmark. So be warned if you visit a Danish showcase, be prepared to stand behind some tall people and some high cheekbones.  How is such a small, homogenous country putting out so many quality bands?  Maybe there is some hidden socialist subsidies encouraging young music.  Spoke a bit with Morten, one of the (many) guitarists of Waldo and Marsha, and the consensus is that it's the English language stuff coming out of Denmark that is attracting attention (the panting over Iceage last year probably chummed the waters, leading all to assume the next and best is there.)

 Schultz and Forever

Five guys who look barely old enough to buy cigarettes, who proceeded to invite the whole club to join them for beers at their hostel.  Their EP is available for free download.  The lead vocals voice (Jonathan Schultz) is one of the more unique voices to be heard on the scene in days, sort of a mix of early T. Rex and Devendra Banhart in his amped up mode, with raspy addition all his own. Once again when he would address the crowd there is that weird discrepancy between a person's singing voice sounding completely different than his/her spoken voice.  The songwriting is solid, impressive when a musician manages well-wrought songs in his/her second language, and the rest of the band backs him up.  This just proves once and forever that yours truly will be a sucker for lush and sweeping all-male harmonies.

Waldo and Marsha

Okay so if Schultz and Forever looked young these guys looks embryonic.  An eight member band with four guitars (my notes: "4 guitars?!?")  they came on and laid down some solid pop with good rocking distorted edge (one guitarist's Beatles Help! album guitar strap belies their obvious influences). Favorite part of the set was a prolonged feedback and effects pedal rout that would do any noise fan proud.  Long live sets that exceed expectations.

two guitars good, four guitars better

New Order at Tempodrom, June 21, 2012

New orders coming!

get ready

I love auto correct, I wanted to say that New Order IS coming to Berlin, and look, it’s a double entendre. You see what I did there.

beginning

So as I shelled out 70 euros for two tickets to see a band, what, 20 years past it’s prime? I’m thinking of an entry where I can enumerate the many faceted genius of NW. While in my heart of hearts my deepest love goes to Joy Division, with New Order I find tracks that constantly surprise and refresh me. First, lest we forget, they had a great “comeback” with the album Get Ready in 2001. From the opening of “Crystal”, which begins with the signature New Order beats and a soul sample followed by the unmistakable voice of Bernard Sumner.  After watching Carlos the Jackal and the brilliant pairing of "Age of Consent" (that scene when he’s getting out of the shower)

Set List

Crystal

-

Ceremony

(Joy Division) Isolation

Age of Consent

-

-

Bizarre Love Triangle

586

-

-

Perfect Kiss

Blue Monday

Temptation

(Joy Division) Transmission

Love Will Tear us Apart

Gaps represent gaps in my memory, or where I couldn’t place the track list. Thanks to these guys for filling in some blanks.

As you can see, they played all the hits from a golden age. Check out the recent interview in ElectronicBeats , notice no mention of Peter Hook.  Thoughts that went through my mind during the show, after I sold my ticket to a solider in the Bundeswehr (errrr) was:

-incredible as yet unidentified opening DJ provided by sponsor, Electronic Beats

-what is it like when you just hold out your guitar and someone takes it, no questions asked?

-is drinking your water out of a wine glass some kind of nod to previous rock and roll excesses, like smoking tobacco out of an old bong?

Three Shows in Three Weeks

April 17^th, 2012 Boy and Bear – Roter Salon

April 23^rd, 2012 Manel – Lido

May 2^nd, 2012 Foster the People – Columbiahalle

Like any well rounded person, I try to include a variety of cultural offerings and the previous three weeks were no exception. Within the boundaries of Berlin I heard a band from Australia, Cataluña and Los Angeles. Let’s begin

Boy & Bear / Boy & Guitars

Boy and Bear – okay the Roter Salon is a lovely venue and reminded me of San Francisco places like the Great American Music Hall and the Regency Ballroom. Off to the side of Volksbuhne, it had decent acoustics and that small, living room feel that makes for a great indie show. The crowd was about 99% Aussie, and so therefore loudly drunk. I didn’t realize I knew this band (Bronwen invited me and I excepted on the “free ticket” premise) until they played “Mexican Mavis” with was featured on the SXSW 2011 sampler which you can download on itunes.  Let’s call them very very Fleet Foxish.  They are also a non-encore band, who just announces they don’t do encores and play another song without leaving the stage. Lead singer told the story of people waiting around for ages at their last show waiting for an encore and he felt bad…well obviously not bad enough to play a few more songs! I thought it was old when the Supersuckers did that.

I have no idea what he's singing

Manel – Heard about this band from an Andalusian coworker, who sent me these links to entice me, note the awesome Pulp cover.  And also, he told me “Estos chicos cantan en Catalan, pero son majos! Yo tampoco los entiendo!!” so off to see a Catalan band that I most certainly won't understand. Now Lido was packed with more Spaniards per square meter than I’ve ever seen in Berlin, and I’ve been to Gorlitzer Park on a Sunday. What impressed me most was the mandolin and (no shit) an oboe incorporated into their version of melodic folk pop. Reminds me a bit of my favorite bit of 70s psych folk, Secos e Molhados.  Not-annoyingly-earnest vocals backed by sweeping melodies and solid musicianship.

ohmygod is it really you mark?

Foster the People – At the pinnacle of my recent show experiences. Now I was pretty bummed when they moved it from Astra Kulturhaus (leaky concrete box) to Columbiahalle (sweaty concrete box with crap acoustics). Now about fifty critics described their album Torches as the soundtrack to summer…but it is! Beautifully danceable electro-pop with catchy-as-hell lyrics. but the band live, oh live… the frontman, Mark Foster, has that break dancing, all over the sweaty stage charisma that makes live shows 10 million times better than listening on your ipod.  The most touching moment was when he brought a brace-eted skinny teen girl on stage, who was brandishing a sign that said “We love Mark!” (there are two in the band). He asked her how many people she was with, and brought her 3 girlfriends and one guy friend onto the stage too.  He asked the to stay on stage and dance with them to this song, and she just kept mouthing “Ohmygod!” while awkwardly keeping time. I’m sure it was the highlight of her 13^th year, just as pogoing crazily to “Call It What You Want” was the highlight of my May.

Music from Trees

[The motto of this is you should never give up. Or 5 out of 6, then you can give up]

You know we all belong to various email updates that send you constant suggestions for things to do in Berlin, and while I’ll read them and think “Oh that sounds so cool!” often attending some cutting edge art show and seeing groundbreaking performance art will get superseded by watching Flight of the Conchords and drinking beer in flip flops. So when both Bronwen and I hear about the Sounds of the Forest put on by rreeaallllyy records, we were both “keen” (see future blog post: North Americans unnecessarily adopting British slang.)  The premise: a new album is released track by track at various spots in the forest, you plug in your USB receptive device and copy the song onto it. The label has provided a not so detailed map with photos and descriptions of where the upload points are, but basically you are walking in the woods looking for USB cables (note: some were black and some were gray, I kept looking for white apple cables which betrays my over dependence on THAT brand).

[affect Aussie accent] "Those are definitely dingo tracks"

We started at Grunewald S-Bahn and began our quest armed with a smart phone, laptop, and a printed out clues (which, halfway through, we realized we were looking for 6 spots and had only 5 clues, and also that the clues were NOT IN THE ORDER YOU WOULD FIND THEM.) I’m not sure what this says about our amazing detective skills, but throughout the walk I kept referencing the Internet generation and how we lacked the ability to creatively solve problems. More on this theme later.

a big sand dune in the Grunewald

We couldn’t find the first spot, so we went on to the second, which turned out to be in this magical part of the Grunewald, by a huge sand dune. Before descending into what is essentially a sand pit in the forest, let me note my enthusiasm: “I ain’t walking down no f**king stairs” but then with some coaxing I did (“Where would Lewis & Clark have gone if they refused to walk down stairs?”). We didn’t find any tree stumps with USB cables down there, although we saw lots of families and one guy taking a piss. I begin to lose faith and compare the reedy pond to the Dead Marshes in Lord of the Rings, and started to feel a bit like Frodo. Then Bronwen asks if that makes her Samwise Gamgee, and I said she could be Frodo if she wanted to. "I don't want to be Frodo because he's a pussy."  Dork fantasy movie references dealt with, we have a brief rest and philosophical discussion over the whole likeliness of this needle in a haystack musical scavenger hunt even working ( “To be honest, I didn’t think it would be this hard”) we hiked out of the sand pit choosing a steep, tree root strewn trail, during which my co-searcher made a Romancing the Stone sliding-down-a-muddy-hill-and-taking-someone-else-with-you-reference, which just goes to show that all really great movies have alligators. Strangely, sandy trails are easier to climb up than to climb down.

romancing the sand

 As we emerge onto another trail, we saw some people with laptops crowded around a fallen tree, so yay, track one, by Duererstuben, called “Verspaetete Errinerung.” At this point, I’m sensing Bronwen is not “keen” on sharing the whole discovering spots with others, especially when a friendly (American) comes over to look at our printed out map and clues.

So we soldier on looking for the next track, and for the first time in our walk the picture matches reality and we find the hunters hut. Let’s just say someone had a bit of that childlike Christmas morning glee as she scrambled over brush and pine needles toward the elevated hut. We clamber up the ladder, search around inside, but no USB cable, and the cryptic clue tells us something about looking for a neon yellow square, and the track is called Tree of Life. Which proceeds me to declare a specific tree in the vicinity a crucial tree (“That’s the most tree of life looking tree I’ve ever seen”) which is what happens when you see with your heart not your GPS. 

Tree of Life

 As we search an ever widening radius of the hunters hut and my Tree of Life, Bronwen dejectedly mentions “I just don’t know what else to do” and I again flog the topic of the internet generation and poor attention spans and how hopeless we are, like after we asked the internet and tried a smartphone app what else can you do? Really? Maybe there’s a wikipedia page we can reference?

We realize the Others (Lost reference!) are closing in on us, so we start walking south and again Bronwen has a moment of eagle eyed clarity and sees the stupid neon yellow square that is supposed to demarcate a loaded trunk. We successfully acquire track 2, Re-Drum “Tree of Life”  at this location (and also track 3, Josh Winiberg “Tweety”, which was the one we were hopelessly looking for in the sand pit was combined for some reason). Now using our ever sharper skills of orientation, we keep walking and our looking for five logs next to a path. You know it’s a good walk, when, mid-sentence, someone grabs your arm and says “Look! Five logs!”.  

(Sixth & seventh logs not pictured)

Happy to report I spotted this one, and we acquired Track 4, “Night Owl” by Trigoney.  At this spot we meet a helpful British girl who explains that by the first stump there is another station literally two meters from the first, so we walk back there to acquire Track 5 (“Wildwald” by Afromatik). At this point your loyal searcher realizes she has lost her sunglasses and has to race back to the hunters hut, where the same helpful British chick is puzzling about the tree of life and thankfully hasn’t taken my shades. I hustle back to the first stump and help some people with laptop incompatibility get the tracks and we share tips of whether or not the location by the pond exists. Bronwen and I are happy with 5 of 6 songs, we walk back to our start point and try once more to find the last one, with no luck, so we still don't know what Dogboy's track sounds like.. A group of German guys is also searching, we found a bag of books (one Dostoyoevsky) hidden in a tree trunk, and one fellow looked in the inside covers to see if they were part of the unofficial Berlin street library (kind like http://www.bookcrossing.com/), where people inscribe paper backs and leave them for others to read, with the only request being that the book keeps getting passed on. So I guess that scavenger hunt will have to be for a later weekend. Reviews of the record to come soon.