RADIO

4am is getting some rotation at Radio Munich. Check out the playlist/news here: http://www.radio19-4.de/progr/fr-index.htm

Love that all the other bands have real labels and with me they just type "Jack".

Listen to 4am at http://myspace.com/uhhuhradio.

A band that is actually signed to a label, though, is my group effort Aright! and Hearts beat strong (the 2nd single from our debut-EP "I can't stand the rain I am made of sugar") has been played 16 times this week. That's more than two times day! So medium rotation, I suppose!

Listen to Hearts beat strong at http://myspace.com/arightmusic

Teach an old dog to sit.

So after 15 years of playing guitar I took my first guitar-lesson a week or so back.

It was a bit too humbling.

I mean sure: I fumble on the electric guitar, there's no point denying that and it is of course the main reason for why I have enlisted the help of a professional. I feel I have come as far as I can on my own and I need direction in order to take my music to the next level.

(on that note I have some very interesting plans for the next Uh-huh-album...)

But still: Too humbling.

I consider myself an OK guitarist and I suppose I am when I play what I know (d'uh) or when I simply just play around but within the boundaries of music theory I am very, very lost. But it seems to yield results.

And it's funny because when I first started out I would have hated learning about notes, weird arpeggios or blues turnarounds. Now I find it exhilirating.

And by God I will master that stick of wood.

Here's two pictures that somewhat relate to todays post:

Swedesplease

I love Swedesplease.net.

Not just because Swedesplease like me, although that's a bonus, but because it's nice to see the music scene in my country from an outside-perspective.

Meanwhile, on another note...

If you're in Sweden and just in the vicinity of spitting distance of Stockholm the 27th of April you need to go to Bonden Bar and check this out.

Aright! will charm your socks off, rethink the world for you and even bake you cookies. Because it helps to eat something sweet after you've cried to something beautiful.

All of my heroes are dead pt1.

"We live in a world where John Lennon was murdered, yet Barry Manilow continues to put out fucking albums. God-damnit! If you're gonna kill somebody, have some fucking taste. I'll drive you to Kenny Rogers house."

"If you think drugs never did anything good then take all your favourite CDs, book and art. And burn them".

Do you know Bill Hicks? If not, I have some mandatory youtubeing for you to do.



Tom Waits called him "blowtorch, excavator, truthsayer, and brain specialist, like a reverend waving a gun around".
Others drive on the road that he built.
Bill Hicks died 13 years ago and is still the best comedian out there.

Ich bin ein Berliner.

Some words on "Bukowski's 'Women'".

The book by Charles Bukowski: filthy, alcoholic man has sex with filthy alcoholic women in a graphic way. And it's pure literature.

The song. My song: Is, like previously alluded, more about Berlin. The title is misleading that way. I have a tendency to go all over the place with my lyrics but only because sometimes I'm not trying to tell a story but simply put thoughts and feelings to paper. And my head is, as I suppose everyone's heads are, a messy place.
Bukowski's 'Women' is in the song though. It was actually the first line I wrote:

"Whenever I think of Sydney all I can think of are Bukowski's 'Women',
how someone so ugly and so plain had so many good things hidden in him"

See, it's not so much a fascination with the book but more of Bukowski himself. When I think of Bukowski I think of the drunks that hung around the liqour store close to where I grew up. Downtrodden and weary. Bukowski looks like he'd fit right in with them. It's a great reminder to think twice about first appearance. I mean, we all know not to judge a book by it's cover but it's easier said than done when all the musicians and actors we like look amazing. Even the ugly ones look great!

But back to the point of it all. Back to Berlin. The first line of the song goes:

"Spent a weekend in Berlin and gave every day 29 hours"

Everyday up until publishing the song I thought of adding more hours.

"Spent a weekend in Berlin and gave every day 32 hours"
"Spent a weekend in Berlin and gave every day 48 hours"
"Spent a weekend in Berlin and gave every day all my hours"

Actually, that last one isn't half-bad. Hmm. Anyway. Point: Berlin is an amazing city. I love it with all my heart and whenever there's a half-assed excuse to flee my country I'm there. This is why Kennedy gets to finish my song. Lines in his speech from 1963 take on a spiritual meaning today.

"You live in a defended isle of freedom", he say and today it's cultural. I go to Berlin and I don't think of boundaries.

"Freedom is indivisble and when one man is enslaved all are not free".
Simply put: more cities should be like Berlin.

"All free men, whereever they may live, are citizens of Berlin, and, therefore, as a freeman, I take pride in the words "Ich bin ein Berliner"".
So I'm swedish but, hell yeah, Ich bin ein Berliner too.

A noisy strat.

Strats, man.

Probably the shape most people think about when you say "electric-guitar" is the Fender Stratocaster (me, I say "electric-guitar" for no reason about two-three times an hour). John Mayer said somewhere that it took him seventeen years to pick up another type of guitar and it took me almost as long to realize that there existed other guitars outside of Fender Stratocaster and Gibson Les Paul.

My first electric was a strat. Not a Fender. Wouldn't be anything punk about that would it? No, the first guitar I tortured my parents with was a red and white Peavey Stratocaster and after two detours (a crappy Fenix SG and a not-too-shabby Tanglewood Semihollow) I'm now back to the

Peavey. I've painted it and switched the single coils to Chris Klein "Big dippers" so it sounds a lot better now but it's still as much fun to play as when I was 14.

The things with strats, though... They're insanely noisey. Big dippers, especially. It's not that noticeable on songs that have a thick production but if you do something scaled-back you'll have a lot of work ahead of you.

Two new songs uploaded to myspace today.

"Bukowski's 'Women'" is a piece inspired by Berlin more than Charles Bukowski. It features JFK as an outro.

The other song, called "In the candlelight", kinda betrays my more embarrassing musical roots. My very first two records that I owned were two Bon Jovi records. There. I said it. "Bon Jovi-records". Crossroads (a best-of) and These days.

It kinda shines through in this song which, in my defense, was written to prove to a friend at MTV that I, too, can write cheese balades. I do try to hide it in a low-fi Moldy Peaches-esque production. So at least there's that.

You can listent to both songs here: http://www.myspace.com/uhhuhradio

Enjoy!

Ode to A-minor.

This is the very first post in a blog that will statistically last no more than a few months. Most blogs don't. Most blogs open with a positive statement: "Hi! I've finally started blogging now! Woo" and then die a quiet death not long after. I'm doing pretty much what everyone else is doing but bare with me for a minute and I'll try to hide it as gracefully as I can.

I can't start off joyful. I named this blog "rants in A-minor" and even though there's chords much more depressing (E-minor, for instance, yikes!) and much more harsh (I'm looking at you C-sharp minor) A-minor is not a chord to start a party with.

If you've heard any of my songs you've most likely heard A-minor kick off "Lily Allen", flavour "4am" (D#m in the guise of a capo) and most recently add drama to "54 days since I wrote something". It's not an exuberant, joyful chord but it happens to be the chord by which I build most of my songs and I love it. It's sort of a guilty pleasure. Most musicians probably wouldn't condone it since it's considered a pretty dull chord. But I love it. I love the shape, the drama, the vibrations and the extra notes you can pick out of it.

My name's Jack by the way. I operate under the nom de guerre of "Uh-huh, Radio".
I first started making music under that name 4 years ago when I saw Lily Allen play a local venue in my hometown and was captivated by her bounce, her sounds, her voice and sheer playful attitude towards music. It inspired me. I can't make music like hers and I never aspired to but I wrote a song called "Lily Allen" and it defined the musical style for my first few years: distorted, filtered guitars, drum-machines and easy, melodic synthesizers. Moreover I gave myself the freedom to do whatever. I'd played in a band for a long time and this was my project for making music-making fun again.

Those experimentation days have recently been collected and released in the album "1." Available everywhere.

But I've got a new record out soon. It's called "Make strange love & then War" and it's about writer's block, Berlin, what to do with your youth, more writer's block and perhaps somewhere in there there'll be something about love aswell. It's a much more brooding album than before. I aimed for "mood" this time more than "noise".

Look for shameless self-promotion on this space and everywhere else I reside. At the very least I currently live here:

http://www.myspace.com/uhhuhradio
http://numberonemusic.com/uhhuhradio/
LastFM

So tune in.

Jack