Of transistors and The Ladybug: an interview with Gary Olson

2011 doesn't seem to be a bad time, music-wise. After some seriously horrible years during which it was hard to fill a top-5-list, this year has been generous with great records, one of which is the long awaited new album by The Ladybug Transistor: "Clutching Stems". A good reason to sit down for a chat with the band's singer/producer Gary Olson, innit? We talked about recording, the future of the music industry, Harry Nilsson and, naturally, the record (listen to it here).

Interview

The Bashful Dodger: Welcome to my humble home, Herr Olson, have a seat.

Gary Olson: Why thank you, Master Henning. Just let me swipe these cobwebs away from the loveseat. Shall I draw the curtains?

Q: I must apologize...my hoover broke. It's been four years since the last album's release – how long did you actually work on „Clutching Stems“?

A: Oh, we have been playing some of the songs for 3 years now and then slowly built up another batch. Once we got into the studio it was our usual 9 month process. Basic tracking, procrastination, writers block, mixing meltdown until we finally gave birth to our 7th child

Q: To my ears, the songs on the new album sound lighter than the previous records. Do you have an explanation for that? Or is it just me?

A: It's difficult for me to be the objective one, but yes there could be more than a few on the new album that are a bit less heavy in arrangement. It's also the first record where we've embraced some digital recording, so it may be a bit "cleaner" sounding then some of our earlier albums.

Q: The Ladybug Transistor's sound has changed a lot since the first album. How would you describe the road you've been down so far?

A: Well, the first two albums were really studio projects masquerading as a band. I was playing a lot of the instruments myself along with our original drummer Ed powers. By the time we recorded our third LP „The Albemarle Sound“, Jeff, Sasha and Jennifer were full time members and Ladybug became a proper band, writing together and touring lots. My role around that time shifted away from playing instruments and I began to focus more on my singing and the recording/production side of Ladybug. band membership has ebbed and flowed over time but we've had a pretty steady crew with me, Eric, Michael, Julia and Kyle for almost four years now… Kyle had been with us for six of those and Julia since the Albemarle days. Our newest recruit is Mark Dzula who partnered in writing a lot music for Clutching Stems. He plays guitar with us whenever he can.

Q: As a producer, you seem to have been pretty busy in the last coupla years. Crystal Stilts, Frankie Rose, The Cinema Red And Blue, … is there a record you'd say you're most proud of?

A: It's a special relationship with the Crystal Stilts. In my engineering work it's been wonderful to help them carry their vision to completion. We spent a lot of time on their last LP „In Love With Oblivion“ … about 6 months on and off. In that time they became welcome faces around the house. JB has great focus when they are mixing and is really a master at giving them distinct sound. I'm a big Comet Gain fan so of course it was wonderful to work with David Feck and the gang on Cinema Red and Blue. That record was recorded very quickly and really benefits from from the spontaneity. I love the sound of something coming together. I'm glad to have helped Frankie get things off the ground with her first single and it's nice to see that she's on to greater things.

Q: The records all sound from one another. Still I'd say one can hear the Olsoncraft. Would you say there's a distinctive Olson sound?

Ha, well it depends on the project. I recently did a couple records for bands who like to record live to tape with very few overdubs. That was The Beets, Beachniks and German Measles.   On those records you get a real sense of the room and feel the interaction of the group. It's a musical tightrope which brings a lot of immediacy to those recordings. It's nice to just let those situations happen and work with the limitations of 16 tracks of tape.

I do plenty of projects that are more layered and are recorded into Logic (recording program). It's a whole different approach with shaping and editing sounds but with using my usual microphones and preamps. I enjoy both ways of working.

Q: I've worked with producers who push musicians in order to make them do things they'd never thought of – and producers who hardly interfere in the songwriting and instead apply their magical musical skills when the band is done recording. How closely do you interact with the musicians?

A: It really depends on the group. A band like the Beets play three or four shows a week with songs bursting at the seems. In that case I really try to my best to make them at home in the studio and capture as much of their live energy as I can. Some solo artists come to me alone without much but a song and acoustic guitar. They want more input from me when it comes to color and arrangement and trust mixing to me. That's more of a case of building a song up one track at a time.

Q: What's the difference between recording with the Ladybug Transistor and recording another band? For you, as a producer.

A: It's harder to be objective with Ladybug as it's too close to me so I tend to work on something for a bit and then come back to it later for a fresh listen. I'm always writing as we are going along up until mixing so there is a lot of revision and honing of my vocals and lyrics.

Q: Are you a gear nerd?

A: Ah, somewhat I guess. I've been slow on purchases lately and more into working with what I have. Some of my favorites are the UA 6176 mic pre/compressor which I use on almost everything. My studio partner Bill just restored a 50s Neumann U47 and that is a truly gorgeous sounding microphone. I also love old Ampeg guitar amps… dark sounding with rich reverb and nice optical tremolo.

Q: Is it true you're running a hostel for Scandinavian musicians?

A: I think my phone number and address is written on the wall of the bathroom at JFK. Yes, we run a small bed and breakfast

Q: What's the most exciting recent record for you?

A: In two words: Tanks Amigo!

Q: Record companies have been in a crisis since mp3 made music accessible for everybody and for free. One cannot really expect big money from the companies these days. What would you say is the most viable option for an artist to be independent AND have control over where the money goes?

A: I really can't say. It seems the industry is in such a huge transition. No one seems to want to pay for mp3s. One of the only ways to make a significant amount of money for independent artists seems to be in publishing and ad work. We are starting to see a little bit of income from streaming services. It seems to be getting better. The way people listen to music has changed so rapidly that it's going to take a while for the industry to catch up.  Hopefully in a few more years it will be fairer to smaller artists.

Q: What's your favourite Harry Nilsson record?

A: I can't say I own a single thing. Would I like him? Maybe a bit to quirky for me.

The Bashful Dodger: Thank you for your time, Mister Olson!

Gary Olson: The pleasure was all mine.

Grass Widow: 7“ + Tour

San Franciscos famose Grass Widow (Kill Rock Stars) kommen endlich nach Europa. Auf dem Weg hierher holen sie noch ihre neue Single “Milo Minute“ ab; ich kann Ihnen sagen, das wird fabelhaft!

Die feine FSK-Sendung No Fish On Friday und die Honeyheads sind außer sich vor Freude, am 8. Juni die Hamburger Etappe der Tour im Goldenen Salon zu präsentieren. Gemeinsam mit Tape Life, bei denen ja auch Jonas von den vorzüglichen Sleeping Policemen spielt. Es wird ein Fest, das kann gar nicht anders sein! Die hönigliche Martina hat eigenhändig einen Flyer gebraten, sehen Sie sich das Prachtstück an:

 (Flyer by e_mol)

Grass Widow sind nach wie vor zu dritt, alle singen, die Instrumente auf Aufputschmitteln, die Vocals auf Downern, die Texte der Art, wie man sie auf dem Beiblatt mitlesen möchte, während man die Hausaufgaben bis zum nächsten Morgen in der Bahn prokrastiniert. Weil man sich diese fremde Poetik erschließen möchte. Muss. Die Musik und die Welt um sie herum, mit der man sich vollkommen zurecht das Halbjahreszeugnis verhagelt, klingt so:

Grass Widow - Fried Egg by killrockstars

Apropos Welt um diese Musik: wo wir es schon mit einer Kill-Rock-Stars-Band zu tun haben, sei an dieser Stelle Tobi Vail von Bikini Kill zum Thema Grass Widow zitiert: “Grass Widow are like the Raincoats or The Minutemen or even The Melvins in method, meaning they create their own formalistic, aesthetic universe with its own internal logic. They don’t sound like they are following anyone’s rules at all.”

 Und es sei, Welt-um-diese-Musik-die-Zwote, ein wunderbares Buch ans hungrige Herz gelegt, nämlich “Girls To The Front“ von Sara Marcus über Pop, Feminismus und DIY. Am Beispiele von Bikini Kill, Bratmobile und anderen. Homebase: Riot Grrrl, deren erstes Treffen von Bikini-Kill-Protagonistin Kathleen Hanna initiiert wurde. Womit wir also wieder bei Fanzines und Selbstmacherei angelangt wären. Bei Netzwerken, die nicht Seilschaften oder zwanghafte Selbsbereicherungsvehikel sind. Die das Wissen um die Produktionsmittel von der blöden Aura der elitären Geheimwissenschaft befreien. Die demonstrieren, dass alle ein Recht haben, hier zu sein und sich zu äußern. Dass vermeintliche Schwächen kein Makel sind. Die einem verraten, wie man eine Platte macht.

Grass Widow haben sich darauf verlassen, dass es irgendwie geht. Eine Handvoll Konzerte und Flüge gebucht und dann auf ihrer Seite gepostet, dass man noch an diesem und jenem Daten in dieser und jener Stadt suche. Manchmal muss man einfach fragen. Und unbedingt einfach machen.

Und anderen zeigen, dass es geht. Siehe hierzu auch dieses feine Interview mit den Damen, in dem man auch mehr zur Sprache der Texte, Gender&Musik und zum Spiegelei erfährt:

Grass Widow interview at Upset The Rhythm by ruthbarnes

Are the Martians gone? - a couple of questions to Stanley Brinks

Ein Tausendsassa und einer der letzten unabhängigen Vollzeitmusiker: auf die Ausnahmeerscheinung des Stanley Brinks habe ich bereits an anderer Stelle hingewiesen. Zusammengefaßt: Mr. Brinks ist Ex-Mitglied von Herman Düne, solo aber noch viel besser, einer der produktivsten Musiker (über 50 Langspieler in 12 Jahren) und einer der eloquentesten Texter dieser Tage. Ich habe mit ihm gesprochen über seine neue Platte "Yodels", das Verhältnis des Künstlers zum Werk in produktionsästhetischer wie wirtschaftlicher Hinsicht, über Marsianer und Unabhängigkeit.

Interview

Bashful Dodger: Good Evening, Stan! You just released a new album, entitled "Stanley Brinks Yodels". Does that designation just refer to your yodelling in opener? The cover photo also shows you with a big glass of beer, which looks quite Bavarian to me, especially in combination with the title...

Stanley Brinks: Obviously, yes. It's my most german album, it's got all my berlinisms in it. It's funny to look at Berlin as a part of Germany, and to look at Germany as the real birthplace of 20th century music. I think it is.

Q: How would you describe the sound of the album? I have the impression there's a hint of country music, both musically and sometimes also thematically (as in "Don't Drown Your Sorrows In Beer")...even though it's always the distinctive Stanley Brinks sound.

A: I wouldn't have thought so. I did think of Harry Nilsson's version of "everybody's talkin'" when i wrote Don't Drown... A few songs on the album have classic chord progressions, like folk music, country music, and schlager... I like the idea of a Stanley Brinks sound, when i need a reference i almost always listen to another album of mine.

Q: You've been recording with lots of different artists; on the new album, Freschard is playing the drums and singing backing vocals, and both of you do a lot with The Wave Pictures. With the latter, you also released an album (and David Tattersall told me there is one more to come, soon). Any other collaborations in the near future?

A: I've just recorded an album in Norway, with local folk musicians. There's a lot of fiddle and beer on it, and some west coast style jazz trombone. No drums, everything live and acoustic. Amazing musicians. I didn't play any instrument myself. It'll take a little while to be released, because it'll be on a label for a change, a norwegian one. It'll be on vinyl too, maybe vinyl only.

Q: On the album with the Wave Pictures, the Martians are mentioned, same in "In My Wildest Dreams" on "Yodels". A laser gun is also mentioned. Are you fascinated with science fiction? Or is it rather the position of the "alien", for instance in political and/or artistic respects?

A: I like martians a lot. I like calling all aliens martians too. Mostly i like talking about martians because they are the trolls of my time, the imaginary friends of 20th century kids. Of course they have an interesting weltanschauung as well.

Q: You seem to record stuff very spontaneously. Do you really record your songs as quickly as possible, or do you work on some songs for a long period of time till they're finished?

A: I work hard, of course. But i do it full time, so i get things done. It takes a couple of hours to write a song, and a couple more to record it i'd say. I don't know if you think that's quick or slow, but one album can be written and recorded in a week that way. The funny part is that mixing takes longer than that if you want to get it right.

Q: Are the songs you record very planned out, or does coincidence/accident play an important role in the recording process?

A: There are absolutely no accidents or coincidences of any kind. There is improvisation, the jazz thing. And sometimes the sound of something that fell out my pocket, or someone laughing, if that's what you mean. That's not planned. I'm into first takes, although sometimes i like a second one too, because i want the words to be very clear.

Q: You've been releasing lots of albums under various monikers. Are you keeping score?

A: I wrote a list somewhere, but i don't know if i can find it again. I've been sticking to Stanley Brinks for a long time now. The name changes are a thing of the past it seems.

Q: You release most of your songs on CD-R and as downloads. Would you say this is the most viable option for an artist to be independent AND have control where the money goes?

A: I'm not very good with business. I have the vague notion that the best way to be independent and have control is to work with a manager, a publisher, and a big record company. That's what i imagine. You tell them what you want and you don't have to think about all the crap yourself. I have no idea how downloads work, i don't do that stuff. I make CDRs cause i can't make vinyl records, and tapes take an awful time to copy. I kinda like the CD format too, come to think of it. It doesn't take much space but you can still look at it. I'll miss it when it's gone.

Q: The album with The Wave Pictures also got released on vinyl. Many music lovers still think it's the best, sonic and aesthetically. But its production is expensive. Would you say it's becoming a medium merely for enthusiasts which is dying out?

A: I do believe the sound of vinyl records is usually better, but it's not always true. Everything sounded better before the 80s though, and there were no cds. Maybe that's why records sound good, just cause the people who made the machines had better taste. Also, they weren't deaf from using headphones all the time. I like that records are big, and i like that they are from another time. I can't wait for the 78s to be back in style.

Bashful Dodger: Mr, Brinks, thank you for this interview!

Stanley Brinks: Thank you

7 Fragen an die Wave Pictures

The Wave Pictures - Now You Are Pregnant from Anousonne Savanchomkeo on Vimeo.

Die permanent tourenden Wave Pictures (siehe auch hier) sind nach meinem Dafürhalten eine der aufregendsten Kapellen derzeit - nicht zuletzt der begnadeten Texte David Tattersalls wegen. Trotz des ständigen Unterweggsseins fand dieser freundlicherweise die Zeit, mir ein paar Fragen zu beantworten.

Interview

The Bashful Dodger: Good evening, Mr. Tattersall, thanks for taking the time! „Now You Are Pregnant“ is, from my point of view, one of your best songs, full of both lyrical and musical surprises and unexpected rhymes. It even has some anthemic traits, and yet, it has only been released as a single. But you are frequently playing it live. Is it ever going to end up on an album?


David Tattersall: We don't have any plans to ever put it on an album. It's a song that seems to one of our more popular ones. I'm glad that people like it, though it's never been one of my personal favourites.


Q: Your next release is a single with Jonny singing this song and „Sleepy Eyes“, both originally sung by Dave. Was Jonny involved in the writing process of the songs and is getting his share now, or has he been taking posession of the song little by little? Is there more Jonny-on-the-mic stuff to be expected in the future?


A: No, Jonny isn't involved with the writing of the songs, it is more that he takes certain ones over little by little. But he does a great job singing them. The Wave Pictures don't make plans about things like that. The first time Jonny sang that song it was quite spontaneous. We usually like to go into shows not knowing exactly what we are going to do. We don't write set lists or discuss the set. We just wing it. Just make it up as we go along really. So, maybe there will be more of Jonny singing in the future, maybe not. I guess that I will always sing most of the material because I write it, but it's nice to imagine Jonny being a kind of Doug Yule figure to my Lou Reed!


Q: I read some pretty informative liner notes to the „Instant Coffee Baby“ album on The Line Of Best Fit. Would you mind doing that about „Now You Are Pregnant“ for me?


A: Well, I can tell you I wrote it in about five minutes, it just came right out of me really fast. Songwriters say those are usually the best ones, but I have never noticed that. Sometimes the best ones are ones you work hard at for a while, and sometimes the best ones come easily. It's the same with bad ones, some come quick and some come slow! But Now You Are Pregnant I wrote in about five minutes. I already had lots of different pieces and I put them together really fast. I had lots of notes laid out in front of me. I had previously, about a month before, written a song called "Jonny Cash Died Today", on the day that Jonny Cash died. That was a rubbish song, but there it was. Then there were three other elements to the story I guess: one girl I knew who worked in a shoe shop, another girl who had gotten pregnant very young, and thirdly a drunk in a bar in Glasgow who went on and on about Elvis. At the time I wrote Now You Are Pregnant, I wasn't a fan of Elvis or Jonny Cash. I appreciate them both a bit more now, but I still must admit I'm a much bigger fan of Chuck Berry out of all the rock n' rollers. I also wasn't in love with anybody, it just makes for a better song if you say you are. I just put these different things together, as if the girl in the shoe shop and the pregnant girl were one girl and made up a song very very quickly. It took about the same length of time to write it as it takes to sing it. The funny thing about the chord sequence is that it is cut off. It lasts six bars, whereas a normal chord sequence would be four or eight, so it would resolve, but Now You Are Pregnant doesn't resolve, it just goes round and round. It's a nice song to play on the guitar. I like to play it on the guitar and for Jonny to sing it. He sings it beautifully, much better than me. I don't relate to that song particularly well. For me, it's not one of my best, simply because I don't much feel like that guy in that song! It doesn't have a lot of my personality in it. But people like it, so that's nice. I like it better with Jonny singing it, his version is my favourite ever recording of it; it suits him better. The funny thing is that everyone assumes these things are totally autobiographical. They aren't. They have bits and pieces of your life in them, of course, but never the whole truth. I suppose it just means it's a good song if people think it is true. A good song, for me, is a song that is true to itself, not true to life. And audiences can mistake a song that is true to itself for being true to life. That's OK. I do that, too, with other people's songs. It would be nice to think that Now You Are Pregnant, or any of my songs, was true to itself. One other thing: some friends at the time who were first to hear it said I shouldn't call it "Now You Are Pregnant" because they said it is a sad song and getting pregnant shouldn't be a sad thing. I said "no, it shouldn't, but it is sometimes!" So I kept the title. The idea of the title is that it makes sense of the whole song, of everything said in the second verse, even though I never sing "now you are pregnant", knowing that she is makes sense of the whole thing. It becomes that the protagonist is going after this girl to help her, this girl who is pregnant by another man, which is an altogether more interesting idea than if he was just going after her because he loved her. It's quite beautiful in a way. He never quite makes his mind up about it, though, and at the end of the song you don't know whether he is going to go or not, which is a nice ambiguity. I got the idea of a title you don't sing from a great song by The Mountain Goats called "No Children". The song is a husband singing about how he and his wife have grown to hate each other. It's very funny and also very bitter and sad and beautiful. He never sings "no children" or "we couldn't have children" or anything, but then you see the title and it gives this whole extra depth and layer of meaning to the song.


Q: How do you select the songs that are going to be on an album? In the case of „We Dress Up Like Snowmen“ and the above-mentioned song, you opted to put them out as a 7“ and „I Shall Be A Ditchdigger“ from the last album is a pretty old song by your standards which had to wait until the fourth album...


A: It's usually new things I've written and maybe something old (like Ditchdigger) that has become new to us again after such a long gap, or something that we want people to hear who have never had a chance to. Then you're looking for the right ten or twelve songs out of the twenty or so you have recorded to create a unified whole - the album - which also has the best variety or the best feeling. Sometimes you pick a song and put it on an album because the guitar solo is great. Sometimes it's the right mood, sometimes it it the lyrics. It varies. Another reason we did those older songs was to get Jonny Helm on them. On the original, older versions it was a different drummer. And we were playing them live at the time and wanted a recording with Jonny on it. We like to do so many songs, I've written hundreds since I was about fifteen. "Sleepy Eye" on the new seven inch, I wrote when I was 16 years old. I'm 27 now! It's nice to keep as much going though, I'm proud of all of it, proud we have a big repertoire. It's nice to go on stage and know you can do so many different songs, and then to sing what you really feel. It's a very nice, nostalgic kind of feeling to hear Jonny sing a song I wrote that long ago. Then again, it's also important to keep doing new songs, and we have about twenty totally new songs we haven't released yet that we'll also be playing at new shows. It's good, I like the really old and the really new. I like the stuff in between the least! You have to wait for things to get old again, so that they become new again to me.


Q: You are all good musicians who are playing together all the time, but your recordings always have this certain edge of spontaneity. How do you manage to preserve this while many bands sound too professional on recordings? Do you do it all live, book a studio for one or two days and done you are?


A: Well, bands don't play the way we like, or sound the way we like any more. To my ears, the way we sound is a human sound. You can hear each of us playing our instruments, and you can hear us responding to each other, you can even hear the strings of our guitars. That's what I like to hear. Like The Velvet Underground's third album or John Wesley Harding by Dylan, or even things like field recordings and live albums, or older things from the thirties and forties. John Lee Hooker, Robert Johnson, Joseph Spence, Django Reinhardt. I don't really enjoy modern music because mostly it sounds fake to me. It sounds like a computer churning out robot music. Bands, too; not just pop but modern indie-rock is a pile of shit. It's very inhuman. It's people turning themselves into machines, because machines are perceived to better since they don't make mistakes. But it's not a sound of love. Machines cannot love! Humans make mistakes and are fragile but they are also warm and vital. I know that all sounds like a lot of bullshit! But it is what I hear. You can hear the technology taking over and replacing the human being. Because when you hear a Kings of Leon album, say, you hear a snare drum set through a computer to trigger off forty other snares perfectly in sync, it is neither the sound of one man drumming, nor of forty men drumming (which could never be perfectly in sync), it is the sound only a machine could make. It is the same with the guitars, they put hundreds on there, until it doesn't sound like a human with a guitar anymore. It's totally fake and unemotional to my ears. We record each of the players and try to get something rough and natural and something that feels and sounds like people in a room. You close your eyes and you can picture us in the room, you can hear the room and imagine where we are all stood. That's what happens if you listen to my favourite records, to "Tonight's The Night" by Neil Young or to Jimmy Reed or whatever, and that's what we aspire to. Ensemble playing. For me, something went wrong with recording in the mid seventies and it's never been good since. We're trying to swim against the current and I know most people don't agree with us. It's not to be retro or what have you, it's not a pose, it's just the sound we like to hear. I like it rough and ready. That moves me more. We always record live and we always do it quickly and we're looking for something, some spark you can't get any other way. You know, "Brown Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison, "La Bamba" by Ritchie Valens, "Like A Rolling Stone" by Bob Dylan, "I'm Straight" by The Modern Lovers... that's the ideal! That's a bunch of guys in a room and they made magic! It's all done live and I always hope I'll go back through to the control room and hear something like those records, but we've never managed it yet! But we'll keep going at it and maybe one day we'll get something that great.


Q: You've been touring and recording a lot, it actually seems like you're on the road almost all year. When you're not recording. Do you even have time to write and practise new songs?


A: Oh yeah, we work up things in sound checks and so forth. We have new stuff all the time. We like doing what we do. You find a way.


Q: This year, the Stanley Brinks & The Wave Pictures album was released, a Wave Pictures album and a David Tattersall solo album (with Freschard playing the drums, if my information is right). What's up next? New collaborations? A break from touring?

A: We are working on two Wave Pictures albums, one recorded by Darren Hayman, and one recorded partly in Leeds and partly in London. I hope to get both of them out over the next 18 months or so. And I made an album with Howard Hughes called "The Lobster Boat". Howard is the lead singer of French band Coming Soon. He and I made an album together. It's a really strong album, we are both very proud of it. I play some slide guitar on it, which I was happy to do again since I haven't played slide guitar for years. Ry Cooder style! We made that and that will be released in the upcoming year as well. Also, there is another new album of Stanley Brinks and The Wave Pictures called "Another One Just Like That", which I think is even better than "Stanley Brinks and The Wave Pictures". His songs are amazing, it's a great album. So we've got a lot of good things going on.


The Bashful Dodger: Thank you for this interview, Sir!


David Tattersall: Thanks.

What Time Can Do - ein Gespräch mit Phil Wilson

Phil Wilson ist der wunderbarste englische Gentleman - das ist die wohl präzisestmögliche Bezeichnung für einen witzigen, enspannten und unaufdringlich entschieden wirkenden Herrn. Sein letztes Album hat er aufgenommen, bevor viele, die seine Konzerte heute sehen, überhaupt geboren waren, doch das bedeutet nicht, daß er ein gesetzter Erzählonkel wäre. Im Gegenteil: sein jugendlicher Enthusiasmus für alles, was mit Musizieren und Musikhören zusammenhängt, ist immer erkennbar, und Mr. Wilsons Bühnenpräsenz ist nachgerade unheimlicher Natur, wenn er mit ein paar Tönen wenigen kleinen Gesten die Mundwinkel nach oben zieht und das Publikum in Bewegung versetzt.

Never gonna touch the ground

"Die Wave Pictures haben momentan die besten Texte der Welt, aber Still Flyin' sind die beste Liveband", sagte mein bester Freund neulich zu mir. Da mochte ich gar nichts Gegenteiliges erwidern. Als letztgenannte internationale Allstarband Anfang des Jahres in der Prinzenbar spielte, war es im besten Sinne kaum auszuhalten wie sehr die Crowd wallte, waberte, brodelte - you name it. Und das bei gerade ca. 30 zahlenden Gästen: ein an und für sich unmögliches Unterfangen, vor allem in Hamburg. Essentiell für die Livenergie von Still Flyin' ist zweifelsohne Drummer Yoshi, der vormals beim Aislers Set trommelte. Einer der Tightesten, die ich je auf einem Konzert gesehen habe. Jetzt einmal abgesehen vom Songwriting aus der Feder Seans, der wohl gar nicht anders kann, als Hits zu schreiben. Aber die überwältigende Feierei auf und vor der Bühne wäre unmöglich ohne eine Bandbesetzung, in der jeder und jede brennt. Seit die Kapelle vor ziemlich genau einem Jahr auf der MS Hedi spielte, rotiert die LP "Never Gonna Touch The Ground" heavy bei mir und vermutlich den meisten anderen Konzertbesuchern. So äußerte erwähnter bester Freund am Merchstand die Worte: "Give me...everything!"