Fikamusikkonsert-In-The-Fields

One of the many things I love about
our Swedish cousins, is the fact that they’ve
a word in their lexicon which roughly means
“to meet-up with friends and drink some coffee”.
And that word is fika. Some fika. To fika. It’s fika time!
Now strictly speaking, a fika isn’t really a fika without
the accompaniment of something sweet on the side.
A cinnamon roll perhaps. Or a saffron bun.
Or, in tonight’s case at least, a low-key gig
in a church dedicated to the patron saint of outcasts.
Better known by the pseudonym Loney Dear,
Emil Svanängen is a multimember home-recording
one-man-band phenomenon, who appears
very much at ease up on the pulpit this evening.
For whilst other Scandinavians of his age were out
meeting girls, drinking snaps and smoking herring,
Emil was in his parent’s basement in the city of Jönköping,
armed with a minidisk microphone, various instruments and his PC.
In a recent interview, Emil described his albums as being a bit like cakes.
The kind of cake this brings to mind
is a traditional Swedish Prinsesstårta;
multi-layered and dusted with sugar.
A light green falsetto exterior giving way
to a rich swollen centre of whipped
percussion and butterfat handclaps.
If he doesn’t hook you with the spiraling glockenspiel
in ‘I Am John’, he’ll no doubt ensnare you instead with
the whistling refrain that underpins ‘I Was Only Going Out’
or the singalong section which enhances ‘The Meter Marks OK’.
Your sweet-tooth smile widening with each new overdub.
Outside, afterwards, fika-time over for another day,
we lean against the gravestones for a while
and suck on cold beers whilst a steward
sweeps-up cigarette butts at our feet.
Loney Dear has a plane to Boston Massachusetts to catch in the morning
I’ve got a radiator that needs bleeding.


Loney Dear play live on Band Busking Dotcom

Filmed In Mexico In Panavision

So there’s me, Chuck Heston,
Richard Harris, Jimmy Coburn Junior,
Warren Oates, Rodeo Slim Pickens,
L. Q. Jones, Cannonball Taylor
and Robert Golden Armstrong.
Out on the High Road, pursuing renegade Apaches.
Out on the High Road, pursued by French Irregulars.
Bloody Sam's trademark catsup red
staining the arroyo and the whinstone
and the waters of the Rio Grande.
Claymore and Colt and mini-howitzer.
Mules and buzzards and howling prairie wolves.
Mariachi guitar, south-of-the-border harmonica
and some of that old-time bareknuckled sucker-punching.
I know they don’t make them like this anymore,
just as surely as I know that
my heart is broke right now.
It needs time alone in the hot white sun.
Time to wallow in the charcoal of old cookfires.
For she is my scar tissue. And beyond doubt my Achilles Heel.
Leaning forward, I spit into the dirt,
wipe my mouth with the back of my hand
and, taking up the trailing reins,
ride up through the low juniper
to rejoin the column
as they turn and ride on towards
the crumbling walls of Durango.

Trailer for Sam Peckinpah's 'Major Dundee'