Friday, November 30, 2001 i am back from my wanderings in scandinavia. for all who are wondering, all orders have been shipped out yesterday and today, including many backorders for psalters. my last few days in scandinavia were amazing. i was in umea, sweden visiting friends who are in skapet and soapbox. umea is the epicenter of scandinavian emo-core and the home of the legendary band refused. i was there for almost 2 days and then spent 12 hours riding on buses and trains to get to trondheim, norway. before leaving, i saw a special concert arranged by krister who is a music teacher for 7th/8th grade in umea. the music classes form rock bands and teach the students songs. several of these bands played. you haven't seen anything until you've seen 13/14 year olds play the hits from metallica, dio, and helloween. and you thought metal was dead. got an amazing record from umea's the female anchor of sade. oh yeah, that's the stuff. some of the members are in the screamo insane band asterisk on three one g. trondheim is home to my friend rolf who contributed a track to a velvet empire records (r.i.p.) comp a few years back. the kind folks from the lionheart bros. also live there. marcus (lionheart), rolf, rolf's broter auden (also in lionheart), and i went to see the fjords for a few days. you haven't seen anything until you've seen some fjords. beautiful sharp mountains jutting out from the land near the water. unbelievable. this was really a highlight of the trip. thanks to rolf for hosting me and to the lionhearts for helping to entertain me. thanks to the magical candies that are home to sweden and norway. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 03:38 PM CST Monday, November 19, 2001 in label news, the unwed sailor "firecracker" 7" are set to ship from europe on the 21st. i will add this to the on-line ordering section shortly and will be sending the orders out soon after i return from scandinavia. the 7" is on special extra thick 70g red vinyl, so it will be an important release to have on vinyl. i was back to norway this weekend and met up with emil, sondre, and asle. asle has an indie rock band called pooh the pendrulian and sondre used to play in the band as well. they are both members of eurotrash inc. which was unable to schedule a show for this past weekend. perhaps this coming weekend. marcus from the lionheart bros. was visiting from trondheim on friday and i saw him for a few minutes before his train left for home. i will be going to umea, sweden and trondheim, norway over thanksgiving. both are cities near the arctic circle. I'm getting ready for the cold. emil was busy being a rock star, and everyone else was working on exams for school, so i was on my own during the days. i visited a bunch of museums and saw the sights. i went to the edvard munch museum and saw many of his paintings and prints, including the very famous "the scream." i also went to an architecture museum, the viking ship museum, and an outdoor museum with relocated buildings from old towns in norway. some buildings were 800 years old. it was fun to be a tourist, especially to learn more about the vikings. at night, it was great hanging out, talking, and meeting more kind norwegians. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 08:19 AM CST Tuesday, November 13, 2001 in distro news, the damien jurado one-sided LP, "four songs," and the unwed sailor re-issue of firecracker on 7" and cd will both be distributed by the kind folks at secretly canadian. these releases will be widely available in the late january, early february time frame. the damien LP is available now through burnt toast vinyl and on the current damien tour. the unwed sailor 7" will be available direct at the beginning of december or so. don't forget to see damien and rosie rock the house in bryn mawr, pa this thursday. it's a shame i cannot be there. this weekend, i went to stockholm to meet up with krister and simon from soapbox/skapet. white trash inc. (orchestra) will be releasing a special limited edition split 10" picture disc with skapet sometime this winter. the trashys have to get their act together with recording. saturday was spent walking around shops, mostly record shops, of course. simon left us because he was meeting up with friends before going to india in the morning. i was insanely jealous because i was supposed to go to india and meet up with him and some other friends, but my ticket was on swissair and no longer good. so this is why i am in scandinavia. in any case, krister and i found flyers for a show and i just couldn't pass it up. we went to the university later that night to see atom and his package. now, adam (of atom) is from philadelphia and works for file 13 records. I've wanted to see him/them play on countless occasions, but had never actually gone for many varied reasons. it was a crazy good time and the show lasted until about 3am. it was really funny to watch swedish people slightly unfamiliar with his sarcastic type of humor. the spoils of my record shopping include the new album from swedish singer stina nordenstam. I've been a fan ever since last summer when one of her records was recommended to me. she's difficult to find in the US, but highly recommended if you are able. i bought a few other swedish albums that are unavailable in the US and am excited to see what they are like. this morning, i taught an american about the exciting wonder of caviar in a metal tube, a swedish specialty that must be tried. it's nothing fancy, though it seems that way. one of my favorite parts of traveling is finding different foods, especially different packages and different kinds of candy/chocolate. be warned, scandinavian licorice is entirely disgusting. i think you must learn how to eat this from birth. i forgot to tell the world that my mother was selected as health educator of the year in the US. I'm proud of my mom. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 07:55 AM CST Thursday, November 8, 2001 i am in sweden at the moment. i landed in oslo on saturday and stayed with emil from loch ness mouse and silver. monday morning, i traveled to copenhagen to stay with jan and sarah from glorybox. got to see lots of old friends there, as well. lots of record shopping and sight seeing has been happening. it is so great here. itīs snowing in sweden. i successfully managed to send out all of the damien jurado LPs before leaving. hopefully they will arrive in your mailboxes soon. tom will start to send out btv orders very soon. sorry about the unwed sailor/reels of white/denison witmer show change of venue. i think things worked out at the fire, or so iīm told. the fire is a great place to hang out and see bands, we just needed to power of denison to make it happen. iīm finding some new records, such as releases from copenhagenīs speaker bite me and diefenbach, as well as a new silver ep. there is a new stina nordenstam record that was out on tuesday, but it wasnīt to be found in denmark. iīll get it in her native sweden this weekend. iīll be in stockholm visiting krister and simon from skapet/soapbox. :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 08:20 AM CST Thursday, November 1, 2001 The exciting news is that the Damien Jurado one-sided LP, Four Songs, has returned from the factory. All pre-orders will go out by Friday. I will be leaving for Scandanavia on Friday and will return on 28 November. Any mail or on-line orders will be shipped when I return, so keep this in mind when ordering. Don't forget to see Unwed Sailor and Damien Jurado when they come to Philadelphia on tour...An e-mail update will go out later tonight... :::scott::: Posted by Scott @ 02:14 PM CST [ Archives ]