Since we released the video for “The Kiss” on Monday we’ve had some airplay and some writings we’d like to share with you. First out was Michael Angel’s Cosmic Grab Bag, a podcast show where Bus Stop Dreams was the featured artist, a great honour of course. Listen to the show here:
It’s a Trap wrote about our new single yesterday, as did also Den Melodiösa bloggen (in Swedish), two music blogs that definitely are worth checking out if you haven’t done it already. /Pär
Today we published the video for “The Kiss”, starring Jan Johansen and his wife Pia Johansen. It feels really great to be able to show you an entire song this way, and it will be followed by the release of the the audio tracks on Thursday and later on a video for the second single track “The Big One”.
Knowing Janne and Pia, the theme of the song, the acting and all the video magic by Lasse, I have a hard time keeping the tears from falling down my cheeks. Love it! /Pär
I love movies, as I guess most people do in one way or the other. A little while ago I decided dig a little deeper. I felt that I too often chose the easy pickings, you know, the super hero stuff and other types of modern “easy” movies. I do still like them but wanted to see if there was something more for me in the old classics I seemed to have avoided before. I mean they’re not classics without reason?
I started digging at the start of the film era, with the silent movies, focusing on those that were recommended and considered classics. And did I find anything? Indeed I did.
Most of these classics are rightfully classics in an artistic sense, and not only because they gained merit because this or this movie was the first with a certain technique. If you can take the low quality these films often have, which I have no problem with, you’ll find that they can stand on their own feet with beauty, great stories and great acting.
Perhaps the most interesting part was that there were no real conventions they had to abide to in the beginning. Conventions that today most often, make the stories a little too predictable, and sometimes boring. A movie could be as short as 20-30 minutes or it could be 4, 5 hours, well even 9 hours long in some special cases.
Erich von Stroheim for example, made a couple of movies where there are really no likeable characters, something that would be almost impossible today, with all conventions in the way.
Today, when I watch Terminator 44 or something like it, I don’t react that much to special effects, I expect them to be there, and I don’t ask myself how they did it. Watching these old movies, I find myself marvel at scenes: “How did they do that!”
Some of these classics are available for free at Youtube, and if you’re interested you should watch the beautiful Sunrise, where every scene is a piece of art, or Buster Keaton’s Our Hospitality, if you want to laugh, or Chaplin’s The Gold Rush
Another interesting thing, watching these movies, is that they where made in the dawn of the mass media era, with the rise of movies, radio, and a little later TV. Anything was possible, and the world changed forever. And today, we’re in the dawn of a new change, which is changing the world rapidly, and these very mass media insitutions, that were born then, are crumbling beneath our feet. Is anything possible now? I hope so. But what do I know, I just want to produce some beautiful music.
Lasse’s post the other day, about the feeling about being naked with the release of our music, got me thinking about a quote from John Goodman, the actor. Seth Godin tells the story in his book “Linchpin“, that this experienced actor was offered a role in the play “Waiting For Godot” in 2009 and said:
I didn’t think I was up to it at all. I had no confidence in myself. So it’s just a matter of throwing myself under the bus and crawling my way out…
…I’d rather be here finding the goddamn part, and I hope I never do find it, because I don’t want to slide into complacency. What would I do then? Start cockfights in my dressing room?
This is not just about that he has bad self confidence sometimes, or if he’s afraid of failure in front of other people, this is about that he’s seeking out that place under the bus, because that’s where he want to be. Outside and unsecure and not in the personal safe area, where you don’t have to risk anything, where everything is run from recipes, but nothing really ever happens.
To create art you have to throw yourself under the bus, there’s no art to be done in the safe zone. And I’m pretty sure that all those artists we admire so much for their music and artistry feel this way, every time they create a new piece of work. And if some of them go for security, which happens sometimes, we feel their intentions directly, and we wait for them to get back there under the bus.
When you look at artists in this perspective one can understand that some have a hard time to cope with this; some quit, some never get started, some that don’t even have a safe zone, go under, like numerous jazz musicians and rock stars, and still others stop making art, play it safe and move into obscurity. Then there are some, like Bob Dylan and Neil Young for example, that constantly amaze us through long careers. And I think that’s where their greatness lies, that they can’t imagine being anywhere but under the bus.
Well, what we’re doing now may be safe areas for others but for us it’s not, we’re going to places where we haven’t been. But in the future, if we start sounding too self-assured, give us a kick when you see us at the bus stop 😉
Things are getting more and more ready for the first release on the 10th of September. Here, for example, is the final cover art for the single (click on it to view it a bit larger).
Songs are mastered and uploaded for distrubution on iTunes, Amazon, Spotify and all the other usual places.
Mails are beginning to be sent to blogs, podcasts and every media that can help us spread the word.
Yes, the tension is starting to build inside me. And it’s been more than one and a half year since I sent any music out in the world.
It is a good feeling, but it’s also a little bit scary. I love these songs and the way they came out, and really want everyone else to do that too. I know, it’s a big thing to hope to make a difference for someone else. But that would be the biggest reward.
Since both I and Lasse have quite some experience looking for great sites for music, I thought it would be a good idea to recommend some of them for you. There will be some blogs, some podcasts and some other sites.
If we’re talking about people who are passionate about music, you can find some of the most passionate among these bloggers, podcasters, writers and net radio people. Week after week they talk about music, the vast majority without any economic gain at all (rather the contrary), and most of the time they present music and artists they really like.
And that means that if you can find blogs or sites, where you share the same taste, you get served loads of great new music. Not like the newspapers where they often seem to have problems writing about music they really love. (don’t really get that; of all the million albums released every year, why don’t they choose what they like the best and present that?)
The first site I’d like to present is Allscandinavian.com, a blog where Peter Krogholm makes a tremendous effort scanning the music scenes in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland and Iceland. To his help he has some guest writers from each country that from time to time write some articles. (I sometimes write articles about Swedish bands there.)
Often you can listen to the bands, watch music videos and also download songs. A great music site with artists from various genres.
For the Swedes I can also recommend a music blog in Swedish, Esau.se. Esau started out in the beginning of last year and he really knows how to express himself about music and transfer his passion for music through his texts. Not an easy task, I can assure you.
Famous artists, not so known artists and everything in between, in quite a variation to his taste of music. Most often tracks to listen to and downloadable songs.
Hope you like it. We’ll be back with more tips later on.
