Some songs just surface without any effort at all and some songs you really have to dig hard to get out of the ground.
The Big One was sort of both of those scenarios. The chorus just appeared and was more or less finished in a few minutes with most of the lyrics too (which is a bit unusual for me). It was one of those rare flows when everything just falls into place without any conscious effort. I remember I did a quick recording of it the same night (listen to it here) and as you can hear most of it is already in place.
The verse and bridge on the other hand took much longer time. It was very much more a labour than a love and it took quite a few iterations before it fell into place, both with the lyrics and the music.
The Big One was originally performed by my former band Strangers In Wonderland together with singer/guitarist Åsa Girgensohn. But it wasn’t included on the album that we released. Today I can hear why, since it never fully reached it’s full potential as a Strangers In Wonderland piece. But we performed an acoustic live version and also did an acoustic recording that caught a sort raw nerve that is very different from any other version, including Bus Stop Dreams’s take on it. I have put up a link to it here and if you like the song this makes for a different but really good interpretation.
Let me end this post by including the lyrics. I know there is a stroke of darkness in those lines, but to me there is also a stubborn hope if we only can accept that our dreams are just that, dreams, and at times we will fail. And as long as we don’t stop dreaming we will rise again.
Or I just might be reading between the lines.
/Lasse
PS. I you haven’t heard or seen the final result here you can:
You’ve got everything you need
There’s nothing more you want
You are as happy as you can be (or so you say)
Nothing more in this world you want
On your way to work
You’re body starts to shake
Find yourself in a traffic jam
Caught up in a lie
Crying like child
(and then you know)
Life is a roller-coaster ride
And it scares you ’til you cry
Still you want the big one
Life is like driving when you’re blind
You just crash and don’t know why
Still you want the fast one
Life is life is like a knife
A stab in the dark
A cry in the night
You know who you love, and who you don’t
You say there is no other choice
You think you’re always in control
You know your do’s and you know your dont’s
One day in the shower
Your world begins to swirl
You reach out for something to hold
When your legs begin to curl
Crying like child
(and by now you know)
Life is a roller-coaster ride
And it scares you ’til you cry
Still you ride the big one
Life is like driving when you’re blind
You just crash and don’t know why
Still you drive a fast one
Life is life is like a knife
A stab in the dark
A cry in the night
Well, maybe we’ve not been kissing the entire world in the past week but we’ve been fortunate enough to be featured on some really nice music pages from around the world. I thought it’d be a good idea to present them here, they certainly deserve every bit of attention, and at the same time you can look at it like recommendations to great music sites, like the others we’ve presented before.
Skope Magazine is run by Michael Friedman in Boston US. It started out as a printed magazine but has now moved over entirely to the net. Our new single were featured on the site during the week.
Faronheit is an mp3-blog, which means that most posts contain downloadable mp3 files. Illegal you may ask? No, serious mp3 bloggers only publish content that’s been approved by artists and labels, like Faronheit for example. It’s a great way to discover new music, and Faronheit could very weel fit your taste in music with the frequent posts and curated music. “The Kiss” was part of the “Pick Your Poison”-post last Friday.
When you’re published on a blog named Recent Music Heroes, you feel a little extra proud. Who wouldn’t like to be a recent music hero? 🙂 The blog serves quite a variety of music, and if you’re like me and like to dive into various genres you should check it out.
We now know that “The Big One” is a “light jogger”, as defined by the excellent podcast Jogtunes. Jogtunes presents music that fits well with jogging of course. All presented as above and with pace descriptions.
And finally, “The Song of the Day” was a title “The Kiss” was rewarded with from the podcast Fm102x. Quite an honour.
You may have read about Lasse’s work with the video for “The Big One” before. Well, now it’s finished and today we published it, as you can see above. On lead vocals and starring in the video is Pär Enqvist. Backing vocals by Ulla Wrethagen. I hope you like it as much as I do. /Pär
“Read through this paper and answer the questions at the bottom”, the teacher said while handing out copies to the 11-yearolds in the classroom.
“After you have answered the questions, you gather in your normal groups and discuss the answers with your friends. And if you would like to change your answer, do so, but don’t erase the old one”, she continued. “Finally, we will collect the papers and correct them later”.
“Please note that the answers are not necessarily written in the text. You’ll have to figure that out for yourselves.”
I quickly read through the paper my daughter had received and saw that it was a story of a family driving through the night stopping at a camping site and setting up a tent in the end. The facts were left out from the text, though; it didn’t say really that it was a camping site or that it was a tent.
I raised my hand and asked the teacher: “This is a story, right? And there are really no wrong or right answers here?”
“That’s true”,she said somewhat hesitantly and turned to the class: “You will have to find your own answers”.
10 minutes later I sat with the group my daughter was part of. It seemed like all the kids in the group hade more or less the same answers; Yes, the boy thought it was nice that his sister was asleep because she was a drag, they came to a camping site, they were setting up a tent to sleep in. Short logical answers, and not much to discuss really.
Then I said to the group: “But wait a minute, what if it’s not really a tent. What if it’s a portable black hole, and it’s really not a camping site, it’s a gathering of aliens reuniting to find their way back home to their planet!”
The idea didn’t catch on. They looked at me smilingly, while my daughter laughingly explained to the others that her dad was a little crazy. Enough said, and the lesson was over.
This was the first class yesterday, as I spent a day with my daughter at her school. It was quite fun, and a great dad-daughter moment. The day passed through with maths, some history, spelling tests and other subjects, and I realized that not much have happened in school since I went to school myself.
The same subjects, the same type of exercises, tests, answering questions, checking and rechecking. The teachers were dedicated and very nice people and I’m sure that my daughter will learn a lot with them.
Still, something started nagging me in the back of my head. I noted that the most common question during the day from the kids was “What am I supposed to do now?”. And a lot of time was spent waiting for the answer from the teacher, who most of the times had an answer to this. When she hadn’t was when the kid had finished what was supposed to be done that day, and she said that he/she could take out their reading book and read for a few minutes.
Think about this for a moment. For twelve years (in Sweden most people go to school for twelve years), we are told exactly what to do next, we are all the time handed tasks and answering questions with one, solid true answer. Almost everything we do is measured, graded and checked upon and we follow the grand plan of us becoming educated citizens. Twelve years!
I think we all have a basic idea that school is supposed to prepare us for the grown-up life and be able to make a living for ourselves. But is that how life looks like today? Someone to tell us what to do, a plan to follow and career steps to reach? Well, for many who still work in the factory or those that follow “risk free” career plans, it’s still true, but for the rest of us? Is there any wonder that youngsters stand there confused after school, desperately looking to get into the “market”, or that people panic and get depressed after the old factory’s been closed down?
How many years does it take to unlearn a rigid plan-like behaviour? Well, I’m pretty sceptical about the entire idea behind today’s school system. I think that every time we do something new and creative and find our own route in life, it’s not because of school, it’s in spite of school.
An ironic quote i like comes to mind:
“Life’s not for real, anyway. If it was, we would have been handed a manual.”
A couple of days ago I talked to a friend who some years ago sold around 100 000 albums in Japan. He said that it was rather difficult to relate to that number. Sounds like a lot of albums of course, and a lot of yen, but emotionally it was hard, and much easier for him to connect to a letter he got from a fan in Portugal, the fan writing that he’d listened to the music for years and so on.
And it’s rather obvious when you think about it; you create your art and ship it with the intention to touch a person, an individual, and in that context masses of people in numbers, loose meaning.
Numbers can be fun, and quite useful sometimes, but for the creation of art they’re pretty much useless. I think the day that an artist start relating to numbers and not people it becomes a different game; then it’s not art anymore then it’s fabrication.
Does it matter? Yes, it does matter, a lot. The reason for doing what we do, the intention, matters; not only for ourselves, but also for those we’re doing it for. I think it shows through everything we do.
We’ve just had our songs aired on a radio, Butterflies radio in Florida and I have no idea how many listeners they have, and i don’t care. We’re happy that they like our music so much they want to put it on rotation, and that some more people will get to hear it, people we can connect with.
Well I do care if they are doing fine or not, and I hope that they get loads of listeners so that they kan keep doing their dedicated work they’re doing. And it’s good stuff, much better than most radio channels we have here in Sweden, and with a large influence from the listeners who can ask for songs to play and communicate directly with the radio. Impressive. They send from both Florida in the US and from Australia. You can find them on Facebook and Twitter too.
We’ve also had the honour of being played on some podshows lately. We have Indie Music Sampler where “The Big One” was aired in the latest show. Well, Indie Music Sampler is not only a podcast it’s an Internet radio too, sending live 24/7!
Bugcast is a podshow where each episode is recorded live in Butterflies radio. Each time they record they have a live chatroom where you can discuss the show and the music with the hosts and other guests. Great stuff.
John Reade from The Johnnyrockin’ Music Show had us wake up happy on Sunday with his latest show where he played “The Big One”. It was even more pleasing when we discovered that a friend of ours, Asatron, happened to be played in the same show! Good company indeed, also considering all the other great music on the Johnny’s show.
Finally, tonight My Pocket Player played “The Big One” on the show. It’s a show in Polish, and it gives me this magic feeling again I talked about the other day.
Well, we have a lot to be grateful about today, and we are indeed. I have also discovered some shows I will definitely get back to, to discover new music. /Pär
I’ve said it before, and I say again. Editing video is most frustrating and rewarding at the same time.
Rewarding because it gives us another way to express our songs. To put them in yet another frame, this time moving images, adding an extra layer of expression. And I’m not saying we are very good at it, but it’s fun to do.
Frustrating because everything takes such a long time and that you have to wait a lot. With music you play, try something new and then listen. Not with video, no no. Change something, wait for it to render (which can take hours), and then you can see. Often just to realise you need further adjustment. That needs rendering. Just to realise…. Well you get it.
Today I got some time to work on the video for The Big One. And I think that it’s starting to come together nicely. I put up a preview of the first minute. What do you think?
Today I’ve been listening to music until my ears bled. I usually listen a lot to music, but now it was about short snippets of songs here and there, and bunches of them. Why? Well I’ve been scouting music blogs, to find suitable ones that maybe would post something about our songs. There’s no use in sending music to pages that obviously write about totally different styles of music.
There’s a lot of work searching among all these sites, and then writing to each personally. Many of these sites get huge amounts of music submissions so you can’t even always expect an answer. They simply don’t have enough time to listen and read everything. But sometimes you get through and reach out to someone, and it’s all worth it.
The other day Bus Stop Dreams were featured on a russian podcast, Night Diary, and the feeling of having your band name mentioned in a language you don’t understand and then having your song played is something extra. A little vanity of course but mostly a warm gratitude of being able to cross barriers with the music and reach other people far away. A sensation of how the Internet is changing the world and bringing people closer. You can listen to the Night Diary show with our friend Игорь Меркури here (the music is towards the end of the show at 15:00).
It’s not bad either to have an entire podradio show dedicated to your band, like in yesterday’s show from Post It Cast with storm chaser Michael W. Moss. You also get to hear Lasse talk a little about the songs and Bus Stop Dreams.
Last week Radio Orphans also played our song “The Big One” in their 324th show. 324th! These are dedicated people, who beside promoting and presenting other artists also produce their own music. I think the best place to check them out is their page with music videos at Dailymotion.
Another artist who also like to present other artists is Gustav Nilsson at his blog Lyssningsknark, where he presented “The Kiss” video yesterday. Gustav is about to release an album and you can listen to some songs from it on his Soundcloud page.
And of course I can’t forget the excellent music blog Sunday Morning (in Swedish) where music philosopher Marcus Lindqvist presents music and stories.
As you can see people from different places with different backgrounds, just like you and me. I almost feel like stealing Nokia’s slogan: “Music – connecting people”. /Pär
I think it’s funny when you watch a supposedly “shallow” movie, when, in the middle of all the clichés and action going on, suddenly something profound is spoken, something that really hits you.
Like when i was casually watching “The Core” a couple of days ago. In a scene with the beautiful, extremely skilled, intelligent, successful space pilot (played by Hilary Swank) and her former commander, there is a discussion if she would be a great leader (for the important expedition). And he says to her, somewhat surprisingly, that, no, she’s not a leader yet. Because she has never failed in anything. A real leader knows failure, how to admit failure and deal with it.
It’s pretty obvious isn’t it? It’s easier to be a good leader when everything’s going fine and people are happy and cooperative, than it is to be a good leader when things are getting rough, peoples mood is at the bottom and everything seems dark. And things always get rough in one way or the other, sooner or later, and the leaders will of course be a part of the cause, the failure.
As I said it’s pretty obvious, but how often do you see in job advertisments: “Requirements: several documented failures”.
In our winner’s culture I think that failure is one of the most, if not the most, stigmatized words there are. If you really, really want to hurt someone you call him a failure, or loser. Admitting that you, you personally, have failed is one of the most difficult things there are. We fight like animals to avoid it, blaming everything in the world, rather than admitting and also realizing that we’ve failed.
Sometimes when I watch the news when a big crisis is up, and a politician or a business leader is responding to what have happened, I get a sensation sometimes that the world is longing for someone to step up and say “we took the wrong decision, we failed to sell our cars, we failed to…”. It would mean that they’re human, just like the rest of us, that they’re taking responsibility, that they have a notion of what to do about it. Doesn’t happen too often, though, does it?
I think that fear of failure is the main influence in a majority of the decisions we take. That’s what makes us stick to the rules when we know we shouldn’t, that’s what prevents us from picking up the phone to ask for a job/date/gig/sale, that’s what makes employers hire people with the “right education” instead of creative people, it’s what makes us reject change and it’s what prevents us from doing what we really want to/should do.
And isn’t it so stupid? We all know that there are no winners or losers. We all fail and we all win sometimes. And if we don’t dare to fail we won’t accomplish much. If I think about it, most of the people I really admire, among friends I know and also among famous people, are people who have gone through a lot of failures. They wouldn’t have been able to create what they did if they hadn’t failed. And many times the failures themselves are admirable.
Maybe it is the failures that make the world tick, that make us go forward? Wouldn’t it be nice to just realize a failure, to say “ok, it didn’t work, but at least I tried, but let’s move on now”? As simple as that.
Yep, it seems easy. Still, it’s something I struggle with everyday, to fight back that fear. There were even fears about writing this post. Should I really write this? Is this really interesting? What if it’s misinterpreted? But I did it. If it comes out useless, at least I tried, and then I’ll try to write a better post next time. /Pär
Today is the official release day of the two songs from the single “The Kiss”, the title song and “The Big One”. You can download the songs for free at our new music page and we’ve tried to make the songs as available as possible to fit your preferences.
To name a few other sites: Spotify, Wimp, Itunes, Amazon, Soundcloud, Emusic and many other sites. As you have seen before there’s also a video for the song “The Kiss” on Youtube, and in a week or two the music video for “The Big One” will be ready.
Well here it goes, we hope you love it as much as we do, and we’d appreciate any comment you may have, here or on Facebook or Twitter. /Pär
