The Daily Madman

Just found two reveiws of Light scares. One from Sea Of Tranquility, where the reviewer clearly have a very good taste for music:

“…If they continue to release songs as good as this then their future is very bright indeed…”

Great luck for us then, because we have a lot of songs waiting to reach the world which definitly are as good as those five first songs

Then there were a review from Stereokiller… I know that there are nothing to gain by starting to discuss a single review. It’s the personal opinion from one person, which he or she definitly should express.

But isn’t it kind of strange how the reviewer use half of the review to write about his discontent about bands who try to write 70s prog music with no soul, and than end up by saying that The Rockford Heroes sounds like Styx or Asia (two band which the reviewer doesn’t like at all).

I suppose that the whole idea about that we might try to make “70s prog music” comes from the presentation where we say that “No matter if you like the very early hardrock from the end of the 60s, the more intricate from the 70s, the polished from the 80s or modern rock bands, The Rockford Heroes will have something to offer your.”.

I don’t know about you, but personally, I found Styx way of create music from so much different styles of music at least as progressive (probably more) than playing music with odd time signatures (which according to the reviewer is a totally necessary part of progressive music, along with guitar solos). Really, odd time signatures and guitar solos, how progressive is that?

But anyway, everyone have their right to express their opinion (freedom of speech you know…), but the reasoning here sound somewhat strange? Obs, that’s my opinion

If someone had told me last Saturday that I only one day later would be standing on a table in some mountain hut and dancing to Swedish House Mafia, Klubben, Ansiktet (and whatever we danced to, don’t really know…) I would have thought (if I was in a good mood) that this person must have missed something fundamental about my nature. If someone told me the same thing when I was hungry, I would probably have thought that this person was a true moron (I usually turn into a very bad mood when I’m hungry).

But no matter how unlikely that would have seemed to me, it was what actually happen. And not only one night, but three. It could actually have been four nights, but during the second night a head of hostel discovered what we where doing and threatend to evict us. Which I can understand. When he found us, we had four coffee-tables from four mountain huts in one of the mountain huts, which along with the kitchen table made up a very good dance floor. So on the third night, not table dancing. But on fourth it was time for it again, because we should leave the morning after anyway.

This might be a post that I maybe might regret that I ever posted, but I take the chance to post it anyway. I’ve been spending the last week on something called Student Skiweek. It was some years since I studied on the university myself, but it didn’t seem to matter. Only had to be a member of some kind of student’s association, which I am now. TUG – Turister utan gränser, on Södertörn university.

And how did I end up there? A friend of my is a senior member of TUG, and she called be about a week ago and wondered if I wanted to go on a ski vacation. There where available seats on the bus and in the huts she “and a couple of friends” had rented. With the hindsight of history I now know that she was kind of reductive with the information and details about this trip. To me it sounded like an ordinary ski bus travel. After all, I being skiing pretty much during the years. And even though I haven’t been partying myself, since I want to focus on the skiing, it’s nothing unfamiliar to me. And students maybe do party a little bit more than the ordinary guy. But this was way beyond…

Started to realize where we were going already when the bus left Stockholm. With a very few exceptions (we were 27 in total, exluding the buss driver), most people where already drunk or crapulent when the trip started at 9 a.m. on Sunday morning. And the longer we drove, people reached the state they would be in for the rest of the week.

I have no problems to admit that I wasn’t very comfortably with the idea to spend a ski trip in this way. Started to ask around if there might be more people in the bus who like me maybe would think of giving priority to skiing instead of partying, but no luck. About this time I also learned that I would be staying in the so called “chaos hut” and that “you don’t want to be the first to fall asleep”.

Started to worry, what should I do? Thought about possible solutions, e.g. I could turn around a travel back home, but finally decided to sort of roll with the punches and try to adapt myself to the surrounding environment.

And that was the way to do it. It was a very grueling week, even though I only managed to keep up with the rest of the gang during the first two of four nights. I blame it on my age, most people on the trip was about a decade younger than me, give or take few years. That was also something that the janitors noted. The first night out on, a janitor surveyed my ID card for some time, and than told me “You are probably the oldest guy here tonight”. However, I was in a very good mood, so I made a high five with him and bounced on. The second night out, no one harassed me, but on the third night another janitor winced at the sight of my ID card and let out a “oh!”.

I consumed a lot of bad dance music during those visits to the one and only local night club. House music must be something made by the alcoholic pressure group system with the only purpose to make people to drink. This is the only logical explenation, because the only way to enjoy it is to be drunk close to coma. The same songs which were great and inspirering to dance to during the first night was almost unbearable to listen to on the third night (when I almost ran out of booze pretty early on the night). Empirical studies are usually the most reliable.

But we actually spent pretty much time in the ski slopes as well. At least the most of us… And the skiing was more than great. I’ve only visited Vemdalen once before, when I did the second (and so far the last…) part of my ski instructor education. And that was in november with almost no snow, so there were only five slopes open. This time all slopes where open and the conditions were as good as you could ever hope for. About minus 10 Celsius degrees, clear sky and very easy-to-ski snow, which turned the skiing to a true pleasure, even though I felt somewhat stale. Hopefully I also made some people aware of alternate ways of skiing, e.g. by showing the so called “elephant turn”.

So in the end, it was great fun. But some parts have to be considered as simple cuffers which might as well never have happened. If there might be any proof like pictures, I will say as our king did, “it’s not me on the pictures”.

Many thanks to TUG for a memorable week!

Australian zine MayTheRockBeWithYou.com succeeded in the hunt to make the first interview ever with us. It was published in their section Best things you’ve never heard about. Great answers and great fun to answer. But I leave it to you to judge the quality of the answers… Read it here!

Except from that, the recordings of our forthcoming EP is going well so far. We are almost finished with all the vocals for three of four songs. Yesterday was almost completely dedicated to backing vocals. I think that session could be summarized with that I’m very glad I have a computer as the heart in the studio, and not som old tape recorder with limited amount of recordable channels.

As it is now, when we need an extra channel, just add it. And another one. And another one. And another one. And so on… As you might guess, there might be some somewhat bigger choirs on some songs.
 

MetalKaoz.com published a review of Light Scares recently. Link to the review. To sum up: They seemed happy about the album, and thus we are also happy