INDIENATIONAL VLOG PART III - "good morning sister"

11 October,
Hamburg, Germany

finally we left Sweden. not that I don't like Sweden but a tour doesn't quite feel like a tour until you leave your own sandbox. After a short boatride over to Rodby-Puttgarden we drove to Hamburg. The venue was called 'Astra Stube' and was a fun little spot on a corner of a big crossing. it was really nice sitting on stage while strong lights from all the cars flashed by outside. Thank you Wolfgang who encouraged me to play "Homesick", it's in the setlist now, promise.
We found a new friend in Nils who was responsible for us that night. he even took Christian to an old slaughterhouse to have Schnitzel 4 in the morning. i would have gone but I don't eat meat. it was a great night and it felt like a great "start" of the tour. hopefully we will pay another visit to hamburg on our way back in december.

12 October
Krefeld, Germany

in Krefeld we finally met our friend Peter who drove 70 km to go and see our show at 'Kulturrampe' in Krefeld. Thanks Peter, it was a real pleasure meeting you.
We slept in a little hotel room and we were desperately trying to find some original German dirty tv-shows....we found a wheel of fortune - only topless..

13 October
Amsterdam, Netherlands

after a great breakfast at III&70 we said goodbye to Kristian and Nils and started driving towards Amsterdam. I tell you, German highways are slow...auto-bahn my
a...traffic everywhere, moving 10km an hour.
While in amsterdam we met up with our friend Alma, a modern dancer from Sweden. together with all her dancer friends we hung out for the night and passed out in their attic.

14 October
Amsterdam, Netherlands

We met three great girls in Amsterdam. The first day we met Alma Söderberg and the second day we met Signe Tollefsen, a great singer/songwriter from Amsterdam - click the link and listen to her songs. We played a show at a place called 'Skek' and Signe jumped in to play a song with us.

15 October
Amsterdam ,Netherlands

This was quite a busy day. We had a show at 'Lloyd Hotel', an old big building that used to be a youth prison during the war that they had turned into a hotel. They had kept the rooms authentic with how they used to look then. creepy but charming. Anyway, before we played that show we went to 'Desmet Studios' to play live in dutch radio and web-tv. we played the following songs:

Seasons of Guessing - Gustav Haggren
Fragile me, fragile you - Helena Arlock
Frying Pan - Christian Cuff
Sing it out - Gustav Haggren

The show at 'Lloyd Hotel' was one of the best so far, 4 opera singers were singing before us, the room acoustics was beautiful, we got a grand piano, Vincent - the guy who ran the show was a great guy, free parking instead of 4.60€ an hour, we played for a mix of people from all over the world..although I think one japanese woman in the front row fell asleep towards the end. and we also met Larae, our third Amsterdam girl.

16 October
Amsterdam, Netherlands

We played a second show at Desmet Studio, tracklist was:

Silo - Christian Cuff
Bow Low - Helena Arlock
Homesick - Gustav Haggren
Pretty Floor - Christian Cuff

some of the desmet live songs are up on Youtube -
www.youtube.com/marilynrecords

After the show we had a big night out with Larae before we passed out at her living room floor. that red light district is interesting. Amsterdam is interesting, I'm going to sell a million records so i can buy a house boat in Amsterdam, next to Richard Branson's boat..

17 October
Kruibeke, Belgium

Our beloved gps "Jim" told us that it would take 1:45 to get to Kruibeke, Belgium from Amsterdam and I'm sure he was right...although there was a big accident so the lines were endless. 5 hours later we arrived otside of 'Cafe Carnot' where we would play the next day. The owners Jerome and Veerle were kind enough to let us come one day early since we had this day off. They told us that they opened Cafe Carnot two years ago and the reason they called it 'Cafe Carnot' is because that they met one night in France at a place called Carnot when they were drunk and in love. I liked that story.

18 October
Kruibeke, Belgium

This was a big day for the Indienational Tour. Our first show in Belgium was Sold Out! Opening for us was AHCH
this was a gorgeous night with a heavy afterparty. Me and Jerome started talking about playing a show at the Cafe Carnot 1,5 years ago and finally we did it and I knew that it would be great fun but this was over the top. Thanks Kruibeke for all the KWAK beer.

19 October
Kruibeke, Belgium

Unfortunately our show at 'Penny Lane' in Lille, France got canceled for no apparent reason. We had some great friends there we were hoping to meet but there was nothing we could do. Someone changed his mind without letting us know..
We shook the bad news off and ended up having another great night with our new friends Veerle and Jerome. Me and Helena made some famous Swedish vegetarian mashi-mashi for everyone and we all watched the mighty classic movie "Willow" gorgeous stuff.

Currently listening : Music for the Motion Picture Into the Wild By Eddie Vedder Release date: 18 September, 2007

Say you’re in the mood for a power ballad.......!

Sometimes people email me stuff, i thought this was really funny, especially since 'patience' was one of my favorite songs as a kid... this is an article about Internet radio, in this case the radio thingy called PANDORA.


Taken from KREN CW NEWS in RENO, USA

Say you're in the mood for a power ballad and enter Guns N' Roses' "Patience" as the seed song. Pandora will begin streaming similar songs that are slow, heavy on guitar, and cool sounding: "Distant Mornings" by Gustav and the Seasick Sailors, a Swedish rock band with slight folk influences, and "Hell Just Ain't the Same" by Theory of a Deadman, a Canadian band. It delivers surprises--you're tempted to dismiss Cat Stevens's "Hard Headed Woman" immediately, but then you find that it does sound kind of like "Patience." You also can direct Pandora. If, for instance, you want more power and less ballad, you can give Cat the thumbs-down or add another seed--say, Aerosmith's "What It Takes." Now the mix changes to Meat Loaf, U2, and, surprisingly, Guided By Voices and Dinosaur Jr., a pair of postpunk bands that fit in well.
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hamburg friends, don't miss our show at Astra Stube tomorrow!
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Currently listening : The Shepherd’s Dog By Iron & Wine Release date: 25 September, 2007

INDIENATONAL VLOG PART II - stuffed bird strikes back!

ok...Sweden tour is done. some good shows some not great..but it's been a gorgeous reunion so far for these Indienational kids.

thank you Swedish friends who came out to the shows. Germany is next and from now on we will sleep in the van, the bed will be built. yesterday we went to "Överskottsbolaget" to shop a bunch of cans with beans, sleeping bags, c-vitamin, and so on..we got some Swedish press...

Göteborg City
Helsingborgs Dagblad

September 28,
Kafe De Luxe, Växjö.

What we thought would be a slow and intimate coffee shop gig turned out to be us entertaining a nightclub crowd with our acoustic instruments. we pulled it off like troopers though. and the DJ was the best I've heard ever. thanks Kristoffer! the genius about this place is that they have backstage with beds just up the stairs from the stage.

September 29,
Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Ronneby

Sadly enough, Helena left us this day to go and play Loppen with Shooting John. With tears in our eyes we waved her off and she got the train while we went to Ronneby to meet up with singer/songwriter Malin Andersson from Växjö who joined us for the night. It turned out to be a fun night and I got to play a lot of harmonica.

October 3,
Best Wishes, Göteborg

Rikard greeted us when we got to Wishclub in Gothenburg with a smile. a beautiful night, great food, everything was good until we started driving to Stockholm that same night. We had agreed on that myself and Helena were allowed to drink and Cuff would stay sober and drive. I don't know why but I was positive that it was an easy 3 hour drive...I was wrong and this tour could have ended that night...

October 4.
Patricia, Stockholm

We finally arrived to Stockholm six o' clock in the morning, my childhood friend and composer Fredrik Wallberg let us in to his familys' summer house in Rönninge and we slept for a while until it was time to soundcheck at this boat called Lady Patricia..apparantly they famous for their gay parties at weekends. now we're back in Helsingborg, preparing for the big departure on Thursday..

INDIENATONAL VLOG PART I - caviar in a tube

finally we are back on track, back in the pit reaching for dawning skylines again,

Christian Cuff flew over from the US and landed in Helsingborg, Sweden somehow. Isn't that just fantastic? Me, him and the girl with the cello Helena Arlock have just started our European Tour. We played our first 2 shows in Sweden. We still don't know how we are suppose to support ourselves or how we can make this tour work but on the other hand we didn't know that before either so...there is still a bunch of dates to fill out so right now we are back in Helsingborg as I'm writing this, drinking coffee and sipping whiskey. three poor musicians with three poor laptops trying to act money and professional. it think it is funny...

at a show the other day a guy comes up and asks when my next blog will be posted..I almost cried. he really seemed to care so now I'm back on track. I will join the society of bloggers! and great news is that Helena has started to make Video logs too so now you get more out of it, making the effort to open this page. so here is Indienational Tour Video Log part 1.

September 26
The first show was at Hallands Nation in Lund, Sweden.
Good show, the audience was amazing. i played here once before but this time was just brilliant.

September 27,
The next day we played at The Tivoli, Helsingborg, Sweden.
Also a magical show, surrounded by friends and family. Childhood friends i managed to look up on facebook came out and heard me from the first time. I guess I needed a beautiful woman and an american to make it happen! No offense sailors, you are pretty too..

We will be back at both these venues in December.

it feel great to be back in the game of bloggers,

yours,

G.