Chapter 10

2003

JANUARY 2003
Kent did his second unplugged solo gig at KB in Malmö.

FEBRUARY 2003
Chips returned home again from his “around the world” trip full of energy and ideas. (don’t worry it’s not gonna be “world music” on the next Sator album).
Tues 18th – For the fourth year now in a row Chips is part of “Grammis” nominations but end up without an award. The Hellacopters had two nominations this year but went home empty handed. At least Chips and The Hellacopters were part of an award for the compilation “Nationalsånger”, The Nationalteatern tribute record.
Thurs 20th – A Joe Strummer/The Clash tribute show at Debaser in Stockholm. Chips was part of the “houseband” together with Robert Cronsieau on keyboards, Heikki Kiviaho on bass, Conny Nimmersjö on guitar and Robert Plaszczyk on drums.

The setlist:

Chips: “Another great night. Mick Jones of the Clash were in the audience which made us a bit nervous. But I think he enjoyed it. There we’re lots of gret performances this night. Weeping Willows doing White Man in Hammersmith with Mick Jones was awesome. And to see Ebba Grön reformed also with Mick was a dream come through! Infinite Mass did a gret version of This is radio Clash. I think they will make a DVD of the show. I don’t know how it sounds on tape but it was one of the hightlights of the year for me”.

MARCH 2003
Thurs 13th – The first Sator show of the year at Nalen in Stockholm. “This ain’t the way home” was played live for the first time. The support band this night was The Mainliners.

Michael: “A very good show. Since we didn’t have a new record out in a while there were only “real” fans in the audience who were really interested in the new songs as well the “hits”.

The Nalen setlist (not in correct order):

Mon 31st – A new compilation CD featuring a Sator song was released. The album called “Absolute Svensk Rock Classics” is a double CD with 35 Swedish rock songs, including the Sator recording of the old Lili & Sussi song Oh Mama from 1988.

Hans: “We knew nothing about this and I wish that they had picked another song. I wouldn’t go so far as calling it a classic, even if we had lots of fun doing it”.

APRIL 2003
Mon 7th – Michael’s son Valentin was born.

MAY 2003
Sun 18th – Heikki Kiviaho officially joined Sator. That’s the first time someone new joins as a fulltime member the band since the Sator’s formation in 1987. He had now been playing bass with the band for almost two years so he probably knew what he was getting himself into.
Heikki also worked with Lisa Miskovsky playing bass on her second album.

JUNE 2003
Fri 27th – Rehearsals and demos of new songs in Stockholm for three days. Among the titles worked on were You walk alone, The world keeps turning, At the end of time, Water on a drowning man and All about everything.

JULY 2003
Sat 5th – Borlänge, The “Peace and Love” festival. Chips replaced Nix Vahlberg for one show with “De Galna Hundarna“, playing guitar and singing Nix parts. This short lived band consisted of The Nomads, Bob Hanson, Olle Ljungström and Staffan Hellstrand doing a show together with songs from all acts. Kent was also invited as a special guest taking the lead vocals on “Don’t pull my strings” (The Nomads), “I wanna go home” (Sator) and “Black ‘n’ White” (The Zeros/Sator). (Note: “Dom Galna hundarna is Swedish for “The Mad Dogs”).

AUGUST 2003
Fri 8th – More rehearsals and demos of new songs. This time in Gothenburg. The titles this time was “The things you don’t, If time don’t get me, Celebration town, The good guys” and a few more untitled tracks.
Tues 12th – Gothenburg, Liseberg amusement park. The second show this year and the first time for the song “The things you don’t” in the set for the first time.

Chips: “It didn’t have complete lyrics but I made some non existing words along the way. We’ve had the song for several years but the lyrics never got finished so we never got around to record it. I think it was written during the “Stereo days”.

The band also performed their first and only Chuck Berry cover ever. An obscure song called “I wanna be your driver”.

Kent: “It was actually more a “Swinging Neckbreakers” cover. We covered their cover of the song”.

The setlist:

SEPTEMBER 2003
Mon 1st – Chips and Kent joined White Flag and with only two days of rehearsals they were ready to play Greenland.
Tues 2nd – White Flag public rehearsal at Pusterviksbaren in Gothenburg.

Chips: “No promotion, no entrance and no people but we had great fun”.
Kent: “It was a good way to try out the band before Greenland. We really wanted to give the Greenlanders a good show”.

Sat 6th – White Flag at “Nipiaa rock festival” in Aasiaat, Greenland with Chips on vocals and guitar, Kent on vocals and bass. Pat Fear on vocals and guitar and Trace Element on drums. The other band were mostly local acts.

Chips: “It was quite an adventure. I don’t know anyone who have played on Greenland. There are no roads between the towns in Greenland so we had to ride the last part of the trip with a really shaky small plane. Aasiaat is situated in a archipelago area in the southern corner of the Disco Bay. There are around 3000 inhabitants and it’s one of the largest towns in Greenland. But it’s still not very big. There are no trees, the roads stop just outside town, there are dogs everywhere and you can see icebergs floating by you window when you wake up in the morning. A very different experience. It reminded me a bit of when Sator Codex played in Tromsö in northern Norway way back in 1986. We also had time to go out for some Whale-watching too. (But we couldn’t see Heikki, ha ha ha!). We saw lots of “Hunchbacks” Cool! And I can promise you that icebergs are quite scary when you get too close to them. Sweden is as north as Greenland but we don’t have any icebergs”.

Kent: “There were much more Inuits than we had expected. Not so many Europeans at all actually. We were really taken care of. All the people we’re really friendly and they know a lot about what’s going on in the rest of the world. It’s not as far away from everything as we thought it would be. I’d sure love to go back to Greenland again”.

White Flag set Gothenburg, Sweden and Aasiaat, Greenland
Not correct order. And some tracks differed. All songs by White Flag when not noted.

Fri 19th – Legendary country artist Gram Parson died 30 years ago this day. In honour to Gram Kent Norberg and some friends put together The All Star Gram Band for a gig at Pusterviksbaren in Gothenburg to perform songs from Parson related bands as The Flying Burrito Brothers and The Byrds.

The All Star Gram Band was:

Chips started working with Sons of Cyrus with pre-production of their second album.

OCTOBER 2003
Thurs 23rd – Chips son Milton was born.
Wedn 15th – Bob Dylan played in Gothenburg. After the gig, there was a tribute concert to Bob at Pusterviksbaren. The band, The Subterreanean Homesick Experience, (The S.H.E.) played a bunch of Bob Dylan songs.

The Subterreanean Homesick Experience was:

Heikki (together with Jörgen Wall) produced an album by Fatboy (a Swedish rockabilly band) on and off between October and December.

NOVEMBER 2003
Mon 3rd – The Nomads tribute album release party at the “Wild Kingdom club”, at Debaser in Stockholm.

The All-Star Band:

Chips: “This was actually the start of the “Wild Kings” but it wasn’t planned to be anything more than a one-off thing. But the guys at the club asked us if we could be the house band”.

Heikki: “Since we had such a great time and all of us really worked together musically we said yes. I don’t know how often we will do this. You don’t want to turn into a professional cover band. We’ll do it as longs as it’s fun for us”.

Chips: “It’s a great!. A club playing “loser-music” that you’ll never hear anywhere else. Lots of punk and powerpop straight from the bargain bin. Great music that not too many know anything about. The club is run by Henrik Walse, Nicke Andersson and Calle Von Schewen who all DJ between the bands. It’s really “the night of the nerds”. Music fans discussing important things like if the album version or the mini album version of The Plimsouls’ Zero Hour is the best one”.

Setlist:

Sun 30th – Nalen, Stockholm. Sator played three songs at Kent Norberg’s manager Petri H Lundén’s 40th birthday party. The setlist: “Teenage Kicks” (The Undertones), “Mental Hell” (Ramones) and Pigvalley Beach”.

The Sator song “What do you want?” was included in the snowmobile DVD movie “Spunkbastards – No more weakness”. You can watch reindeers and snowmobiles to the sound of Sator. What more can you ask for in life?

DECEMBER 2003
Mon 1st – Heikki Kiviaho (and Jörgen Wall) were awarded with Eskilstuna Kommun’s musical award for their “significant achievements in the region’s musical life”. The jury mentioned the duo’s work as musicians and producers for artists like Thåström, Ingo & Floyd, Whale, Lisa Miskovsky, Kent, Titiyo, Sator and lots of others. The festive awards ceremony was held on December 1st in Eskilstuna city hall. Congratulations Jörgen and Heikki!

Chips started with pre-production for an album with Captain Murphy, and started recording on the Sons of Cyrus album.

Tues 16th – The “All star band” was invited to be the house band at the Wild Kingdom nights. No Nomads songs this time.

Chips: “I came up with the name “Wild Kings” minutes before we went on stage so the other guys were a bit surprised when I introduced us. They didn’t know we were a “real band” with a name. I also wrote the lyrics to “Down at Wild kingdom” a couple of minutes before we went on. It was all very spontaneous”.

Setlist:

There was a lot of tributes and covers this year. Maybe the band should concentrate on their own album instead.

2004

JANUARY 2004
Chips worked with the Sons of Cyrus album.
He also started pre-production work on the forthcoming Dozer album.
2 of the Max Waltman tracks recorded in August 2001, with Chips as producer and Heikki on bass, was released under the name Kung Social.

“I wanna go home” was featured on the karaoke DVD “Rockklassiker”, released by Svenska Karaokefabriken in collaboration with www.rockkaraoke.nu and Rockklassiker 106.7.

Michael: “It’s certainly not us playing on this one. We don’t know anything about it but I guess it’s some kind of honor to be one of the artists chosen for this, or?”

FEBRUARY 2004
Chips produced the debut album by Captain Murphy.

Tues 10th – Another Wild Kingdom night. The Wild Kings’ set this time was:

Heikki was part of a “Grammis” award when Lisa Miskovsky won best female artist this year. He played bass on her album and was part of her live band as well.

MARCH 2004
Heikki toured Sweden with Lisa Miskovsky.
The last songs for the Sator album now called “Basement Noise” were written.
Mon 15th – Another Wild Kingdom night. The Wild Kings played a set as usual with special guests.

Setlist:

APRIL 2004
Sun 11th – Chips went into the studio as producer on the first session for The Republicans album. The following week 19 backing tracks were recorded at the bands own studio in Stockholm.
The Republicans are Markus Karlsson of The Wild Kings and ex-Turpentines with Instead of A Hug, Frank E. Male and Don Wanna of the punk/hardcore band Henry Fiat’s Open Sore.
Maybe Markus should think of a new harder stage name?

Wed 14th – The Wild Kings recorded drums, bass and guitars on their only original song “Down at Wild Kingdom” at 44Traxx studio with Jörgen Wall as engineer. An hour later the band went down to the club Debaser for another show at Wild Kingdom again.

Setlist:

Tues 20th – The vocals and guitar solo on The Wild Kings single were recorded.
The Captain Murphy album was released today.
The Republicans sessions also continued for another two evenings.

Mon 26th – The last missing piece of Down at Wild Kingdom, the backing vocals, was done when Melinda Rogersten (Ex-The Pusjkins), Janne “Bengtsson” Håkansson and the three Wild Kingdom club bosses Nick Royale, Henrik Walse and Calle von Schewen added their voices in the chorus. The song was mixed the same evening.
Tues 27th – Kent and his guitar player “Flamman” played at the club “Kompledigt” at “Storan” in Gothenburg. The set was mix of Kent’s Swedish material and some covers. “I wanna go home” was the only Sator song performed.
Wed 28th – The mix of the Sons of Cyrus album started. It was completed in 4 days.

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