Sunday, October 12, 2008

Swedish Relics...Filips Klubbin, Stockholm

Välkomnande!












Now imagine if you will- Stockholm 1967. Somewhere in this city there was a place called Filips Klubbin. Filips was home to the psychedelic music scene of Sweden, and I wouldn't doubt most of Scandinavia at the time. I can't really find any information on this place! No pictures, no nostalgic websites, and definitely no Youtube footage. What I can find and what I do know is that Filips was the breeding ground for Swedish psych and all night drugged out jammin', and that Jimi Hendrix hung out there. The co-founder supposedly wanted a house band, so he asked 3 guys that were in another band at the time called the T-Boones to do it. They said yes and thus the Baby Grandmothers were born. Supposedly, The BG's released the
first hard-rock recording ever made in Sweden titled, “I Want You." They played Flilips quite often (I can only assume as the house band) but unfortunately they never made an album.












Thankfully in 2007, Dungen guitarist Reine Fiske assembled The Baby Grandmothers only pseudo album. Please do yourself a favor and find a copy of this in any way shape or form. Very Hendrix inspired, it's full of buzzed out theme and variation style extended jammies. Sometimes when I listen to this album, I think I'm in a cave with a druid makin' ceremonies, other times like I'm on some downhill acid burn... craggy mountain highway, convertible, top-down, going 100 miles outta my mind and shit!! Yeah it's like that. Fiske complied all of the tracks on the album in such a way that it actually sounds like an intentional full length release. Taken mostly from live recordings from Filips, what is clear is how important the "klubbin" was to their very existence. With this listen I am reminded of the essentialities of community centered venues, and really just public places dedicated to musical performance in general...how basements and bedrooms and sweaty kitchens shape sound and cultivate creations. In some times, in some places- ideas extend out of the energy in the room, and the moments are rarely replicated. Lucky we are to have such heavy, mystical, and improvisational sounds on record.

The band later went on to tour with The Experience on their 1968 Swedish tour and disbanded shortly after. The Baby Grandmothers are Kenny Håkansson (guitar), Bengt Linnarsson (bass), and Pelle Ekman (drums).

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