FLÄSKET BRINNER – The Swedish Radio Recordings 1970-1975 (Mellotronen, 2003)

 Instrumental, English vocals
International relevance: ***

The Mellotronen label has a long history of impressive reissues. Their ability to dig up forgotten recordings and unissued material of some of the most stellar Swedish 70s bands is almost unrivalled. But of all the great stuff they've released over the years, this is still their most impressive effort, in size as well as to content. Four CDs of radio shows from Fläsket Brinner's golden era, with some portions never even aired back in the day. One show from 1970, two from 1971, and one from 1975. The sound quality ranges from good to excellent and in both mono and stereo. Also several songs not available on any of their other albums. 

The 1970 disc was recorded two months before the earliest recordings on their eponymous milestone of a debut album and is brimming with all the youthful energy a newly formed band can offer. At this point, few had heard Fläsket Brinner, and even if only one song from the session was broadcast, it must have made a lasting impression on all who heard it on the radio. Their vision was clear in their minds already from the start, well structured, but they sound loose in a way they no longer do on the two 1971 sessions. That's not meant as criticism; on the contrary, the boldness of the performance is highly value in itself.

With the addition of Bo Hansson, Fläsket Brinner had become a tighter unit as proven by those 1971 dates. The October recording is as close as they ever got to 1968 The Mothers Of Invention, even on Bo Hansson's ”Sagan om ringen” medley and the three Maffy Falay compositions/arrangements.

The December set has again a different feel, less ”underground” and closer to jazz rock (in the most positive possible sense). If the other 1971 set is The Mothers 1968, this is much more ”Hot Rats” Zappa, but more open and spontaneously explorative. This show also has the greatest style span as exemplified by a very touching ”Gånglåten” being contrasted to a for-the-hell-of-it cover of ”Red River Rock”!

Fläsket Brinner didn't quit until 1981, but not too many post-1972 recordings have surfaced, why the last disc of the Mellotronen set is particularly revealing. ”Grasse” is definitely jazz fusion, but in the moodier moments, such as ”Kinaspel” and the reflective version of Mort Garson's ”Acquarius”, they have a lot in common with Ragnarök. It's my least favourite of the four CDs here but as a token of Fläsket Brinner's constant forward motion plus being a document of an underdocumentet period of the band, it's most valuable.

Taken together, ”The Swedish Radio Recordings” is a powerful testament to how Fläsket Brinner evolved over the years and what made them so great. Few bands were as adventurous and skilled without sacrificing passion and emotion as they were, and few could extract so much energy from their own music as they could. Needless to say, this is an absolutely essential collection.

Full album playlist

HANSSON & KARLSSON WITH BENGAN DAHLÉN – Crescendo 1968 Volume 1 & Volume 2 (Mellotronen, 2023; rec. 1968)

 

Instrumental
International relevance: ***

It's surprising that Hansson & Karlsson archival releases amount to only two, ”For People In Love” released in 2010, and this live recording spread across two limited edition vinyl volumes. There must be piles of unreleased Hansson & Karlsson tapes collecting dust somewhere, and since they were known to be a dazzling live act, it would be great having more documents like this officially released. (One thing's for sure: as long as Jimi Hendrix's estate refuses a release of his mythical Club Filips live jam with the Swedes being, most of us will only ever hear the chopped up lo-fi snippets that circulate.) So having access to a release such as this is much appreciated.

To put it short: This is the best representation of Hansson & Karlsson available, and that includes their original albums. Especially since this sees the duo expanded with soon-to-be Fläsket Brinner guitarist Bengan Dahlén on violin! Some have compared this unusual line-up to Zappa's ”Hot Rats” with Sugarcane Harris and Jean-Luc Ponty, but that's lackadaisical. There's no Zappa here to keep a tight rein on the musicians. What we have here is three musicians working as a collective mind, with all them being leaders improvising either entirely freely or wihin the framework of a song such as ”Tax Free”, ”Triplets” or ”Richard Lionheart”. Some tracks stretch out to 10, 13, 17 minutes but almost never feel overlong. All three players are on fire and Dahlén really brings a lot to the table with his violin. In him they get another person to bounce ideas off allowing the music to find new paths. He doesn't feel at all like an extra but a completely natural musical ingredient in a tight unit always ready to work up an improvisational frenzy. 

The stereo recording is surprisingly good with a rich and warm reel-to-reel sound that retains enough nuances to warrant a pleasurable listening session. Unearthing these tapes and presenting them to the public is an act of love and care, and it's shame only they're a limited edition release. This is the kind of stuff that should be kept available forever in a proper, physical format and I say that even though I'm not a die-hard Hansson & Karlsson fan. I am, however, a massive fan of Hansson, Karlsson & Dahlén.

Crescendo 1968 Volume 1 full album playlist
Crescendo 1968 Volume 2 full album playlist

FLÄSKET BRINNER FEATURING BO HANSSON – LIVE AT PISTOLTEATERN 1972 (Mellotronen, 2023)

Instrumental
International relevance: ***

This is exactly the kind of stuff I want to see excavated from the dust-covered shelves of history's archives, by a band that needs more releases out! True there's the great box set of Swedish Radio tapes released in the early 00's, there simply can't be too much prime Fläsket Brinner in this world. At the same time, it's a Bo Hansson release, as this show taped at the legendary Pistolteatern in Stockholm in 1972 documents his short stint with the band.

It's a rare recording, and the copy that has circulated among collectors was really bad sounding, so the discovery of the first generation tape is a Holy Grail find. It remains an audicence recording with plenty of room ambience, but the sound has been cleaned up and the nuances brought out as much possible.

But the most important thing is of course the music. The performance is explosive. Fläsket Brinner provides the perfect backdrop to a particularly inspired Bo Hansson who travels the organways with equal parts of precision and curiousity. He sounds as if he discovers new melodies all the time, explore them, moves on, returns to them again, constantly pushed on by a band firing on all cylinders. I must especially point out Erik Dahlbäck here. Captain Dahlbäck is just about a flawless drummer in any given situation, but here he really shines like a supernova. His playing is incredibly intense, precise down to a molecular level, following every minimal shift in the music, creating new possibilities. What a powerhouse he is!

So I have no objections to the music pressed on this disc (500 copies in black vinyl, 500 in 'water blue' which more looks like glow-in-the-dark green if you ask me), but I do have a few towards the presentation. There's one ugly midtrack edit that breaks the flow brutally. Other tracks fade out early, others again fade in. It's like going to the loo amidst a concert and hear the music grow in volume as you return closer to the stage. It's actually pretty annoying. It's been decades since I heard the inferior tape dub of this show, so I can't remember whether the music was chopped up, and I can't vouch for what the source tape used for this release is like, but there was definitely more music recorded at Pistolteatern than what's on this disc. Why not make it a double album with the entire show, or at least how much of it was recorded? And why only make it a prefab raririty in limited edition vinyl? Skip the coloured vinyl kollektor skum nonsense and focus on a proper unlimited release instead. And if the songs are cut on the original tape, please let us know in the liners so we don't have to wonder where the rest of the show has gone.

One more Pistolteatern track can be found on the FINALLY reissued first Fläsket Brinner album. True to Silence Records' lazy treatment of their own massive back catalogue, there hasn't been a proper reissue of that monolithic album until now, 2024. Apart from being nicely remastered, the original album has almost doubled its length with three long tracks added as bonuses. ”Gulan” is from Pistolteatern and is to be honest a messier recording than anything on the Melltronen disc. ”Mr. Beautiful” has better in terms of focus and sound quality, but is only a so-so latin-inflected track. The real tour de force among the new stuff is ”Collage från Konserthuset” which is a complete ten minute monster, ending with variations on a theme by Bo Hansson. Those ten minutes would blow The Mothers Of Invention off the stage any given night from the same period. I promise that you've rarely heard Fläsket that dangerous, not even on the Pistolteatern album!

Full album playlist

BEFORE PROGG - A SPECIAL FEATURE ON SWEDISH 60'S POP, ROCK & PSYCH

It is of course very convenient declaring the two Gärdet festivals the starting point of Swedish progg, but as with any 'movement', progg is the result of what came before it. There's not one thing that appears completely out of the blue with no ties to the history. Besides, claims of the Gärdet festivals as the real beginning of progg exclude bands such as Hansson & Karlsson and Baby Grandmothers from the equation which needless to say is plain revisionism. But the roots of progg go deeper and further back than that too. Several prominent and important characters of progg or, if you will, 'the music movement', were in bands long before progg was a thinkable concept. Therefore, and despite the 1967-1982 scope of this blog, I think it's time to go back a bit in history and shed some light on what went on in Sweden in the 60's.

I don't think anyone actually ever counted how many active bands there were between 1962 and 1968, but likely several hundreds. Some of them hit big while others had just a single or two released, while others in turn never rose above the amateur level playing to friends and rehearsing in their parents' garages and basements. Needless to say, it's impossible to mention even a fraction of all those bands here, why this is merely a small overview of some of the domestically better known bands. Bands familiar to Swedes but not necessarily to anyone outside our borders.

Just a linguistic note before plunging ahead: Swedish 60's bands rarely used the grammatical article 'the' in their names. It's ”Namelosers”, not ”The Namelosers”; ”Mascots”, not ”The Mascots”. While it may appear inadequate to English speakers, and although exceptions exist, I've decided to keep in line with the original and most common band name procedure.

As in most Western countries, the impact of The Beatles were massive on the Swedish youth. Through pirate radio stations such as Radio Syd ('Radio South') and Radio Nord ('Radio North'), and through national broadcasting radio show Tio i topp ('Top ten'), the new melodic sounds from the UK reached our domestic listeners. A pop band craze took on swiftly, although those new amateur bands from all over the country were called twist bands early on. A wimpy name but truth be told: many of the bands were pretty wimpy sounding anyway. Some started out even before The Beatles broke big, but The Beatles and, to a not negligible extent, also The Rolling Stones and The Who had a huge impact on the majority of the Swedish beat groups.

TAGES

With limited knowledge of the English language (including some truly awkward pronounciation) and a not necessarily natural penchant for songwriting, many of those bands relied on covers of UK bands and American rhythm & blues standards, but some creatively fortunate bands featured good songwriters and above-average skills. Most notably Gothenburg's Tages (pronounced 'tah-gehs', not 'taygs'). After a weak start with a couple of less than impressive 45's, they got the chance to record and release an impressive amount of five LP's before disbanding (or rather evolving into Blond who also had one full length disc out, in 1969). Tages won a battle of the bands contest early on and became known as ”The Beatles of the Swedish West coast”. Soon freeing up a considerable amount of songwriting skills and a genuine sense of creative studio work, their last two albums are exceptional for a Swedish 60's band. Both ”Contrast” (featuring the psychedelic workout "Fuzzy Patterns") and especially their final album ”Studio” are landmark efforts of very elaborate pop psych. Add to that their final singles among which "Fantasy Island" is a beautiful example of how far the band would go before the saga ended.

Tages featured one Göran Lagerberg on bass, who later became a stahlwart on the progg scene, generously sharing his abilities with bands such as Kebnekajse, Fläsket Brinner, Jason's Fleece and Egba. He was also an oft-hired studio musician why his name can be found on albums by Joakim Skogsberg, Sam Ellison, Bernt Staf, Pugh Rogefeldt, Bo Hansson and the likes.

MASCOTS

The decidedly second best Beatles influenced beat group was Mascots. As with Tages, Mascots had an excellent flair for short, catchy pop tunes appropriate for the 7” format. They did however release two full length discs, the eponymous debut album in 1965, and ”Ellpee” the following year. Their best track by far was however first issued on a flexi disc that came free to subscribers to the premier Swedish pop magazine Bildjournalen (the song later released on a proper 7"): ”Words Enough to Tell You” is where Mascots let all their melodic expertise shine the brightest. It even beats Tages in their own game, with lush harmony vocals and an absolutely irresistable melody line moving in perfect ways somewhere between The Beatles and The Hollies. It's no wonder that ”Words Enough to Tell You” has found its way to several various artists comps over the years, both nationally and abroad. It certainly deserves it.

It's a sad fact that a burgeoning interest in politics brought Mascots to their demise. The band evolved into the unfathomably abysmal political band/theatre ensemble/general break-every-record-with-their-name-on-it-inspiring Fria Proteatern. What an utter waste of almost unrivalled pop sensibilities!

SHANES

Predating both Tages and Mascots were Shanes. They first tried their luck as an instro band in the Ventures vein in 1963, but as pop mania spread like a wildfire across the nation, the Western twang of their very earliest 45's changed in favour of a more typical beat group sound. When they went for a rougher, more garage or freakbeat inspired style, as on the pounding and hard-driving ”I Don't Want Your Love”, and when they at the very end of their career moved a step or two towards pop psych as on the very nice Yardbirds influenced ”Faces, Faces”, it really worked in their favour. That said, their shamelessly poppy ”Chris Craft No. 9” is a prime example of Swedish 60's beat. Shanes compilations exist but tend to focus on their most familiar hits and not necessarily on their most worthwhile tracks why it's a pretty frustrating task approaching the band's output. You need to sit through a fair amount of crap to save the nuggets.

OLA & THE JANGLERS

The same can be said about Ola & The Janglers. A graphic diagram of the quality of their output would look conspicuously similar to an ECG curve. Their bad songs were really bad and their good songs were really good. At their rawest they were a rather convincing garage rock band, and their stabs at psychedelia – most notably the Eastern-tinged track ”No One Knows What Happens Round the Corner” – were credible enough. Their good stuff would fill an LP length compilation, but a good one doesn't exist, only a couple focusing on their hits, including pointless Johnny-come-lately covers of Del Shannon's ”Runaway” and Chris Montez's ”Let's Dance”. I wish compilers would cast off the demon of nostalgia and go for the truly good stuff instead. There's one pretty great album hidden in Ola & The Janglers' ouvre but that has yet to see the light of day.

One of the Janglers' most prominent members, Claes af Geijerstam, recorded one underrated popsikey album in 1970, ”Out of My Hair”. The Ola of the bunch, Håkansson, went on to fame and fortune with bands like Secret Service who scored big with their single ”Oh Susie” in the 80's. He also became an influential music business honcho.

LEE KINGS

Lee Kings' output is relatively slim. Apart from a slew of singles it consists of one and a half LP only (the half one being shared with the forgettable band The Sunspots which contribute three tracks). Lee Kings were obviously sensitive to the changing times, constantly trying to come up with a song that would sit particularly well with the adolescent record buyers. You can easily say their vision, if ever they had one, was shaped by the whims of Tio i topp. That said, they did put out some memorable tracks, especially when psychedelia was slowly becoming the new worldwide fad. From Lee Kings' last year in existence, 1967, it's well worth lending an ear to ”Coming from the Ground” (backed by a surprisingly rowdy and fuzz fuelled "Day Tripper") and the highly endearing "The Trees Are Talking".

Singer Lenne Broberg later scored a brontosaurus sized hit with ”Mälarö kyrka”, a soft sounding predecessor of sorts to Contact's ”Fyrvaktarens dotter” and something of a 'guilty pleasure' of mine. And of course: guitarist Bengan Dahlén went to Fläsket Brinner.

STEAMPACKET

Steampacket, a.k.a. Steampacket II, a.k.a. The Longboatmen were also stylistic grasshoppers, even more so than Lee Kings. Their eight 45's present a wide array of styles, from the moody balladry of ”Bara ett par dar” to the fiery freakbeat of ”Take Her Any Time”, with stops at psychedelia, country music and straightforward pop along the way. But with the great Rolf Scherrer and the exceptionally talented Mikael Ramel (both vocals and guitar) in the band, they were well equipped to dabble in whatever they felt like. Their complete recordings were released on the print-on-demand CD ”The Singles and More 1965-68” in 2015, and although it's far from stylistically lucid there's certainly not much to object to as far as quality goes. Having already mentioned Scherrer and Ramel, it's obvious why Steampacket are crucial to the pre-history of progg. Scherer was an early member of Kebnekajse and can also be heard on several Bo Hansson albums. And Mikael Ramel – well, he's Mikael Ramel, i.e. a genius solo artist of ”Till dej” et al fame, plus a one-time member of Fläsket Brinner.

So what about their multiple band names? Well, in Sweden they were called Steampacket II for their first three singles to avoid being confused with Rod Stewart's band Steampacket. For the same reason, ”Take Her Anytime” was released in the UK as The Longboatmen. Later they were domestically known simply as Steampacket.

SHAKERS

Say what you will of Tommy Rander – later to become main leftwing fundamentalist operator on Gothenburg's progg scene and eventually the nemesis and relentless decapitator of progg's unkempt creativity, and recently taking an unnerving turn towards ideas sampled from the extreme rightwing (after all, politics aren't a linear scale but a circle where the extreme right and the extreme left are much closer neighbours than a lot of people have the guts to admit) – but he indeed had a strong vision of what Shakers were supposed to be. More precisely a snotty Rolling Stones/Pretty Things styled, abrasive rhythm & blues band. If you don't mind his fonetical gibberish (English in Rander's mind) on early tracks and only slightly bettered in time for the band's final releases, you have quite a few highlights to discover. Shakers were also one of the earliest and most eager condoners of psychedelia, as evident on excellent numbers such as ”Who Will Buy (These Wonderful Evils)” and ”Tracks Remain”. All their recordings are decidedly rough-hewn which is a welcome change of pace after delving into the discographies of the more polite sounding bands. And if you pretend there's no Rander involvement whatsoever, it gets even better...

NAMELOSERS

In terms of rawness, Malmö's Namelosers gave Shakers a run for their money. Few Swedish 60's singles rock as hard and brutal as Namelosers' throat-grabbing rendition of ”Land of a 1000 Dances”. Of all the recorded versions of that old chestnut, Namelosers' version is hands down among the top 3. I mean, seriously, that fuzz guitar can simply melt concrete walls! It's hard to fathom the fact it was recorded and released in Sweden as early as 1965 when fuzz boxes were a brand new thing only just heard on Rolling Stones and Beatles records. Namelosers were truly in with the in-crowd.

Founded already in 1962 as Tony Lee & The Fenders, they soon changed their name to The Beatchers. As such they released their debut EP in late 1964 with Gary U.S. Bonds cover ”New Orleans” as the lead track. A Gothenburg band called The Beachers, without a 'T' in the middle, wasn't too happy having another similarly named band around, and threatened The Beatchers, with a 'T' in the middle, with a lawsuit. The now nameless band needed to come up with something catchy to call themselves, and a name contest was arranged by pirate radio station Radio Syd. I've no idea what other listener suggestions there might have been, but whoever came up with Namelosers (with an obvious reference to the recent Beachers debacle) won... ”New Orleans” was hastily reissued (on a new label) with the substituted band name on the cover. The name mess proved advantageous however, bringing a fair amount of attention to the band, and the song went straight to No. 3 on the Tio i topp chart. Fans were frantic, causing havoc at Namelosers shows, and the band quickly earned a bad boys reputation, Rolling Stones style. Restaurants wouldn't let them in because of their long hair and scruffy looks. (Those were the days...) To further nurture their hoodlum image, they told Bildjournalen that one of their favourite pastimes was to go to Malmö's local dump and shoot rats. Probably nothing more than a publicity stunt, although their best singles indeed sound as if they could kill a diversity of rodents...

Namelosers released a total of fourteen tracks from 1964 to December 1965. One further song appeared on a Bildjournalen flexi disc in 1966, the storming ”Do-Ao”. For some odd reason, the impossible-to-overrate ”Land of a 1000 Dances” failed to enter Tio i topp. Taken by surprise and hugely disappointed, Namelosers called it quits shortly after. In 1989, rare records shop and record label Got To Hurry issued a compilation of Namelosers complete studio recordings. Still possible to locate in used condition, a reissue is nevertheless long overdue.

ANNAABEE-NOX

In the small but loud legion of more garage infused bands you can't ignore the curiously spelled Annaabee-Nox. As with Shakers, no label trusted them with an album contract. Seven singles and a track on a Bildjournalen flexi disc are all that officially remain from their 1965-1968 lifespan. A rare surviving live tape confirms what people lucky enough to have seen them in concert have said ever since: they were one wild stage act. Not all of their studio recordings retain that same high level fervor, but you really don't want to mess with ”I'm Not Talking” and ”Bo Bo Boggie Pack” [sic!] if you love your mother. If you love your wife/husband and yourself, you don't want to pay the prices for the original 45's either – if they ever appear in playable condition that is. Thankfully, their complete discography received the compilation treatment in 2014 by Allatiders Skivhandel, and it's also easily obtainable in digital format courtesy of Parlophone.

LEA RIDERS GROUP

Of all 60's bands, Lea Riders Group is probably the one that most notably bridges the 60's and the progg era. They were also one of the most technically mature rock bands Sweden spawned during the entire decade. Led by Hawkey Franzén and featuring Slim Borgudd and Bosse Häggström, they were the embryo of Made In Sweden. Without Jojje Wadenius, the jazz elements were a lot fewer, although you could still hear jazz strains in their best known track ”Dom kallar oss mods” (the leitmotif from Stefan Jarl's [semi-]documentary of the same name). Without a doubt the band's high point, with wild screeching guitars, frenetic staccato vocals dissolving into stoned and paranoid groans, drums pounding out a disintegrating beat that is hazy and hard as rebar at the same time, a full frontal psychedelic assault leaving only smoke and dead bodies behind. A lot of people are familiar with it from being famously included on ”Pebbles Volume 3” (and subsequently on other comps as well). A track like that obviously raises the expectations for Lea Riders Group's other outpourings, but they might leave you disappointed at first. Which is not to say that the rest of their material is bad. Not at all. On the contrary, a lot of it is hard-boiled, thick-skinned, jailhouse badass rhythm & blues of international stature with all the chops needed to pull it off with brilliant precision. Just not from the same mould as ”Dom kallar oss mods”.

For an annoyingly long time, Lea Riders Group's recordings were just about impossible to find. Swedish label Garageland Records tried to rectify that in the late 80's when they released a vinyl comp, later reissued on CD as ”The Forgotten Generation”. However, the Garageland CD is best forgotten too as the sound is so dull and hissy that I suspect the tracks were taken from a fourth or fifth generation cassette dub. That hack job was thoroughly pushed into the depths of redundancy when Universal (for once!) did a good thing and released the collected singles on a Record Store Day LP in 2018. Although losing the bonuses from the Garageland CD (all of them live recordings and/or rehearsals in dubious fidelity from what I recall) and not including the additional instrumental tracks from the soundtrack to Jarl's movie, Universal's ”The Singles 1966-68” is absolutely essential from any perspective.

FRIENDS

When Garageland put out the unsatisfactory ”Forgotten Generation” CD, they concurrently reissued two other titles from their back catalogue, one by Panthers, and one by the rather peculiar band Friends. The Panthers release is best ignored altogether, but the Friends CD ”Talkin' 'bout Us” is well worthy of attention. At least to some. They're probably a band in the 'love it or hate it' category, all depending on what you think of Anders Peedú's vocals which admittedly is an acquired taste. The pronounciation heard on the early Shakers singles is Queen's English compared to the sometimes indecipherable syllables coming out of Peedú's mouth. But if that doesn't bother you (and I've learnt not to let it bother me although it took some time and persistance), then Friends were a rather remarkable group who despised the commonly overt Beatles and Stones influences. Their take on rhythm & blues was quite frankly unique among Swedish bands. ”It Ain't Necessarily So” and ”Empty Handed”, both taken from Friends' 1965 debut 45, are as raw as any of the American garage bands, untrained to the nth degree but nevertheless consistent and chock-full of self-assured and cocky attitude bordering on the nihilistic. Despite all Friends' obvious shortcomings (like having a twelve year old drummer, but so did Ornette Coleman), the three singles released during their short lifetime as a band are some rather exceptional stuff. The Garageland album fleshes out the short playing time those singles make for with some previously unreleased tapes which add nicely to the dizzying experience.

Although having Karusell, a major label with a thorough experience of bringing fame to their acts, backing them, nothing could catapult Friends to the commercially viable level of Tages, Mascots and Shanes. An appearance on the biggest (actually, only) TV talk show Hylands hörna generated gigs but no impressive record sales. Friends' fan base was largely made up of outcasts and mods from Stockholm's underground circuits, people often sharing the hard-living Friends' destructive lifestyle of drugs and alcohol. Years after the demise of the band – it was all over in 1966 – two of the members died from substance abuse. A unique band with an ever so inspiring integrity, but with a tragic story attached to it.

HEP STARS

I've not yet mentioned the biggest act of all: Hep Stars. Still heralded among a lot of people, I refuse to believe their position in people's minds is anything but pure nostalgia. Because man, did they suck! The only thing worthy of acknowledgement is their smash hit cover of Vince Taylor's ”Cadillac” which remains a stone cold classic. Albumwise, the only remotely amusing thing they did was the undeniably frantic live document ”On Stage” where they rush through their repertoire at breakneck speed in front of hysterical teenage girls. It's not a good album by any stretch, but yeah, it is remotely amusing. Hep Stars member Benny Andersson later became a mega star with ABBA.

COMPILATIONS

There are several shortcuts to the Swedish 60's if you don't want to take the long and often disappointing road to it. For a general overview there are two vastly different editions of ”Stora popboxen”. The first one leans towards the poppier side, while the second edition is more towards the rhythm & blues sounds. Both of them are a bit much to chew for the average listener, why I'd rather recommend the almost flawless one disc comp ”Searching for Shakes”. Originally released on vinyl by Amigo Records in the mid 80's, the CD reissue is graciously expanded with meticulously chosen tracks in the same garage/freakbeat vein as the original album. Some of the songs I've specifically mentioned above are featured on this five star compendium of Sweden's rawest sounds from the 60's. A similarly styled 2 CD set was fairly recently put together by UK's RPM Records, entitled ”Svenska Shakers”, accurately subtitled "R&B crunchers, Mod grooves, Freakbeat and Psych-pop from Sweden 1964-1968". There's some overlap with ”Searching for Shakes”, but the RPM release has several hard-to-find nuggets not on the Amigo artefact and vice versa, so if you like one of them, chances are you'll want the other one as well. The RPM set looks pretty nice too.

There are several minor acts that released utterly mindblowing one-off singles that are very rare and seldom comped. The six-volume series ”Who Will Buy These Wonderful Evils” does a brilliant job bringing several more psychedelic sides together. Well-known bands such as Tages, Shanes, Ola & The Janglers and Mascots rub shoulders with more obscure acts like The Outsiders ("On My Magic Carpet" is a killer track!), T-Boones (featuring a very young Kenny Håkansson, as on the devastating "I Want You"), the garage punk of The Other Side's "Out My Light", the brilliant Members Blues Band (whose ”P.S. Elic” is quite possibly the trippiest single ever released in Sweden), New Creation (Christian outfit whose ”He Is There” is a jawdropping slice of proto-progressive late night psych), The Junk's & The Angels, Älgarna etc etc etc. Reaching into the 70's, the ”Who Will Buy These Wonderful Evils” volumes are mandatory to readers of this blog. I'm not sure of their current availability but I assure you it's worth some effort to track them down, the first four volumes in particular.

VARIOUS ARTISTS – Alternative Instrumental Music (Caprice, 1980; rec. 1970-1978)

Featured artists: Kebnekaise / Arbete & Fritid / Bo Hansson / Fläsket Brinner / Tillsammans / Samla Mammas Manna / Spjärnsvallet / Iskra / Archimedes Badkar / Anita Livstrand / Ramlösa Kvällar

Instrumental 

International relevance: ***

An excellent if redundant compilation in Caprice Records' ”Music In Sweden” series. This is volume 7 and just like the title says, focusing on instrumental progg. All tracks are taken from previously released albums so there's nothing exclusive here. But, as a cream-of-the-crop overview, it's carefully selected and sequenced, with great numbers from the likes of Kebnekaise (from their second, invincible album and before their changed their spelling to Kebnekajse), Arbete & Fritid, Fläsket Brinner, Archimedes Badkar, Anita Livstrand, Spjärnsvallet and Bo Hansson. Pretty much the go-to album for a progg newbie interested in the non-vocal side of Swedish progg, as well as a thoroughly enjoyable disc to the ears of the already converted.

An LP sized multilingual booklet with short pieces on the participating groups as well as a introduction to the Swedish progg scene is included.

Kebnekajse - Barkbrödslåten
Arbete & Fritid - Två grekiska låtar
Bo Hansson - De svarta ryttarna/Flykten till vadstället
Fläsket Brinner - Gunnars dilemma
Samla Mammas Manna - Oförutsedd förlossning
Spjärnsvallet - Pojkarna
Archimedes Badkar - Darkpen
Anita Livstrand - Didjeridoo/Kulning
Ramlösa Kvällar - Maskulina mystiken 

BO HANSSON – Ur trollkarlens hatt (Silence, 1972) / Mellanväsen (Silence, 1975) / El-Ahrairah (YTF, 1977)

 Ur trollkarlens hatt (Silence, 1972)

Instrumental
International relevance: ***

It's impossible for anyone to follow up a masterpiece like ”Sagan om ringen” with something equally good, Bo Hansson included. Therefore, his subsequent albums will always stand in the shadow of his monumental debut. You almost have to forget you've ever heard ”Sagan om ringen” – at least, that's what I had to do to fully appreciate ”Ur trollkarlens hatt”. Truth is, it's a very loveable album, not as dark as its predecessor (see? now I'm comparing it to ”Sagan om ringen” again!), more like drinking dewdrops in the morning with the sun shining through the foliage of trees. It's a wonderful album, meaning both incredibly beautiful and full of wonder.

The album was released abroad as ”Magician's Hat” with cover variations.

Mellanväsen (Silence, 1975)
Instrumental

International relevance: ***

There's something about ”Mellanväsen” (international title: ”Attic Thoughts”) that makes it more intangible than Hansson's previous albums. It has more guitars (courtesy of Finn Sjöberg of Kvartetten Som Sprängde, and Kenny Håkansson) that somehow seem to restrict the album, and with more syntesizers in use, it also has an unbecoming coldness to it. Also, Hansson's regular session drummer Rune Carlsson has a stiffer way of playing here than before. It's also a bit worrying that the music at times veers towards fusion, only a tiny bit as if it doesn't want you to notice, but you can't help but doing it anyway. ”Mellanväsen” isn't a bad album but somewhat unsatisfactory.

The international cover seen above is eye-slicingly terrible. The drawing of Hansson makes him look like a mean-spirited caricature of Sweden's then prime minister Olof Palme.

El-Ahrairah (YTF, 1977)

Instrumental
International relevance: ***

Another album based on a book, this time Richard Adams's ”Watership Down” (the album's international title is ”Music Inspired by Watership Down”). ”El-Ahrairah” also saw Bo Hansson signing with a new label, YTF. My concerns with ”Mellanväsen” are even greater here. It's further down fusion road and despite several excellent names in the credits list – Kenny Håkansson, Bosse Skoglund, Sten Bergman, Göran Lagerberg et al – the music just won't come to life. The best track is the first part of ”Flykt” which sounds like the music to a porn scene in an Italian horror movie. I want to like this album more than I do, but unfortunately, there's too little here to invite me into the music.

The cover art was again mutilated for the album's international release:

”El-Ahrairah” is the last of the 'real' Hansson albums. He made ”Mitt i livet” for Silence in 1985 but that one doesn't count.

Ur trollkarlens hatt full album playlist with bonus track
Mellanväsen full album playlist with bonus track
El-Ahrairah full album playlist with bonus track

FLÄSKET BRINNER – Fläsket (Ljudspår, 1972)

Instrumental, Swedish vocals, English vocals

International relevance: ***

Fläsket Brinner's second album ”Fläsket” has everything going for it. It's a double LP with one disc recorded in the studio and the other disc live, it has several Fläsket classics (”Jätten Feeling” immediately leaps to mind), it features both Bo Hansson and Mikael Ramel, there's a whole lot of excellent playing (of course). Still, something is lacking, at least on the first album in the set. But I can't put my finger on what. I mean, it is good but something's just not there. It doesn't sound as sparkling as their immaculate debut.

The live portion is much better. More spirited, more exploratory. More adventurous. Dangerous even. The rendition of ”Bosses låt” is simply unbelievable, like a monster growing right in front of you, five feet away. That's the Fläsket Brinner I love. Disc one is more like an approximation of the band. But with the live disc being half of the album, it's still a whole lot.

Please note that CD reissues lack two songs on the original LP, ”Pukolle I Valparaiso” and ”Wild Thing”. Not that you need their version of ”Wild Thing”...

Full album playlist (CD version)

HANSSON & KARLSSON – Complete albums 1967-1969

Hansson & Karlsson emerged from the late 60's psychedelic Stockholm underground scene with the shortlived but highly influential Club Filips as home base. Club Filips was the place where international acts used to hang out, including the likes of Spencer Davis Group and Jimi Hendrix. Hendrix's jam sessions with Hansson & Karlsson are legendary, but the circulating tapes are of very poor sound and features Hendrix on bass only.

Using only Janne Carlsson's drums (he changed the spelling of his last name reputedly because it looked better with a 'K' on the album covers) and Bo Hansson's organ, they were the source inspiration to contemparies such as Sound Express and much later bands like Sagor & Swing and Trummor & Orgel. Their vinyl debut was the wonderful 1967 45 ”Lidingö Airport” backed with ”Canada Lumberyard”.

Monument (Polydor, 1967)

Instrumental
International relevance: ***

Their classic album debut features milestones like ”Richard Lionheart”, the brooding ”Triplets” and ”Tax Free” (later covered by Jimi Hendrix), perfectly capturing Hansson & Karlsson's sound with Janne Carlsson's intimidating drums underlining Bo Hansson's spooky organ."Monument" is their best album with all their elements in the right places. The only Hanssson & Karlsson album that I consider essential.

There's also a German edition of "Monument", retitled "Swedish Underground".

Rex (Polydor, 1968)
Instrumental

International relevance: ***

 

Hansson & Karlsson's style quickly wears thin, especially when they're stuck in a bluesy Hammond jazz rut. The live recorded ”Rex” demonstrates the duo's shortcomings, emphasizing sound before content. The jamming is energetic for sure, but honestly, how much of this do you really need? Definitely their weakest album.

Man on the Moon (Polydor, 1969)

International relevance: ***

Instrumental

Inspired by man's first landing on the moon this is indeed more spacey than the duo's previous albums. It's not as good as ”Monument” but it's more interesting than ”Rex” since they try to expand their two man format as much as possible instead of succumbing to it. Carlsson in particular impresses, using every jazz trick he know, adding power and pulse like never before on a Hansson & Karlsson album. (Carlsson was an excellent drummer, and way too underrated.)

For People in Love 67-68 (Treffpunkt, 2010; recorded 1967-68)

Instrumental

International relevance: ***

A two disc set of previously unreleased live and studio recordings. (The vinyl version was limited to 444 copies – are these prefabricated hipster drivel rarities ridiculous or what?) Great sound quality all through but the music isn't particularly interesting unless ”Rex” is your favourite Hansson & Karlsson album. Some powerful moments, but ”For People in Love 67-68” is mostly the duo in standard charter travel jazz mode.

Apart from the ”Lidingö Airport” 45, there exists a couple of other less common Hansson & Karlsson tracks. In 1968, daily morning paper Dagens Nyheter released a cardboard disc to their subscribers, called ”P som i pop”. Given the volatile nature of the release, it's hard to say just how many copies have survived, but then again, it's not particularly good. One untitled track is featured in Caprice's box set ”Svensk jazzhistoria vol. 10: Watch Out! Swedish Jazz 1965-1969” released in 2017. In 2023 Mellotronen unearthed a previously unknown 1968 performance with Bengan Dalén at club Crescendo in Norrköping and released as a two volume vinyl set. For those who wants a condensation of their small original discography, there's an eponymous compilation that will do the trick just nicely, including "Monument" in its entirety expanded with tracks from their other releases.

There's also a great 1967 performance on Swedish TV show Popside that just has to be seen.

Monument full album playlist
Rex full album playlist
Man On The Moon full album playlist
For People In Love full album playlist

BO HANSSON – Sagan om ringen (Silence, 1970)

Instrumental 

International relevance: ***

 Ranked #3 on the blog's Top 25 list

The beauty of Bo Hansson's solo debut is unfathomable. Few albums are as evocative and visual as ”Sagan om ringen”. It's no wonder that Anders Lind founded Silence for the simple reason of releasing it. (Gudibrallan's ”Uti vår hage” was recorded earlier but released after ”Sagan om ringen” was out.)

Based, of course, on J.R.R. Tolkien's ”Lord of the Rings” trilogy, Hansson's music takes my mind on a much longer and a much more vivid journey through the fantastic and the splendorous than Tolkien ever has and ever will. It's the sound of one spectacular man's spectacular vision, so perfectly moulded that it's impossible not to get carried away by it. So richly textured that you could almost touch the sounds with your fingers, smell the scents of that other world he shows you through notes and timbres, hear the sounds that will forever surprise your ears in utter wonder.

Hansson already used his Hammond organ like a painting tool as one half of the psych prog jazz duo Hansson & Karlsson, but compared to ”Sagan om ringen”, the Hansson & Karlsson albums sound restricted and two dimensional. Here he opens everything up to a dynamic experience of brooding darkness and jubilant light.

So much has been written about this album, so much has been said, so much love has been poured over it, and still no-one has been able to fully explain its grandeur. Neither have I. The only way to approach it properly is to listen to it, to give in to it, to fall in love with it again and again and again. This is a masterpiece of a magnificence that time can never diminish.

However, be aware of the different versions of ”Sagan om ringen”. Its release history is a mess, but I'll try to explain it to the best of my knowledge. Corrections/clarifications are much welcome!

First Silence pressing with the first and exclusive mix lacks ”En vandring i mörkret” and has no musicians credits on the back cover. The 1971 reissue adds the missing track, and has the credits, but is remixed. The international versions retitled ”Music Inspired by Lord of the Rings” have track titles in English, and a different cheesier cover that makes it look like rejected Genesis cover art. Some tracks are also shortened, and the album is remixed by Bo Hansson himself. Subsequent releases have this version. International cover variations exist.

 Original international version

First Swedish CD release from 1988 has a new remix version of the album, adding unnecessary and bad reverb, plus bonus tracks from Hansson's subsequent albums, plus the worst cover version of them all. Later CD reissues have the 1988 mix, but also previously unreleased bonus tracks recorded around the same time as the original album, plus the original cover art.

1988 CD version

The 2018 Silence CD is a reissue of the previous one including the unreleased track but with the international 70's cover art scaled down to fit within a too large and cheap looking frame.

 

 2018 CD version

Full album playlist 2018 CD version with bonus track