The Soundtrack Of Our Lives in concert29 April 2005
Lisebergshallen, Göteborg, Sweden
I know some of you listen to TSOOL so I would like to tell you of a concert I saw with them recently. They played in their hometown, Göteborg, for the first time since their latest album "Origin Vol. 1".
(Swedish psychedelics
Silverbullit warmed up the crowd - and got the best reviews in the papers the day after. I’m not really into them though, and I’ve never understood why they get such good reviews. Their music is harder to grasp and in this particular case the sound was awful.)
1. BackgroundThe band started as
Union Carbide Productions in the late 80’s. Well known members then were
Ebbot Lundberg (vocals) and
Bjorn Olsson (guitar, now a producer of much folk/rock music in Sweden). I never liked their music at the time, a mix of Captain Beefheart and punk like Stooges. Locally they were pretty big and played regularly on festivals and smaller scenes. (But Ebbot supports the same football team as I do, so…)
After a couple of years they found that they wanted to make solo projects ad the band split. 1995 they reunited, called themselves TSOOL, and leaned more on psychedelia of the late 60’s and early 70’s, but with a very unique and personal sound. They won prizes as best newcomer in Swedish media.
The Homo Habilis Blues EP was released in 1996, followed by the full-length
Welcome to the Infant Freebase in 1997. After that Bjorn Olsson left the bands inner circle but remained as a part of the band studiowise.
They have released quite a few records, such as
Extended Revelation (1998),
Behind The Music (2002), and
Origin Vol. 1 (2004).
Official homepage:
http://www.tsool.net/index/index.htm Official US website:
http://www.thesoundtrackofourlives.net/Union Carbide Productions:
http://www.unioncarbideproductions.com/2. The ConcertI’ve seen them on stage a couple of times but this time they’re really good imho. In the reviews they got critique for playing the songs too much like on the record, but I don’t agree. I think they varied themselves and played both softer and louder songs as well as changed some of the originals with new beats.
Ebbot has a great voice and walks with dignity around on stage, waving to the audience and doing a great job as a pseudo-dignitary. But after one hour he starts to rock and roll more and the concert gets more wild and noisy. They play many songs from their latest two albums and I’m enjoying myself tremendously!
They play "Confrontation camp" and "Big Time", the latter with an Arabic twist. Great! And after having left the stage once and been applauded out again, they play "Nevermore", "Sister Surround", "Grand Canaria", and "Instant repeater '99".
And we don’t stop so they come out again and Ebbot makes us sit down on the floor as he walks out in the audience and sings "21st century rip off" in a 15 minutes version. Pure magic!
You should have been there!
