The Doors and Jim Morrison lovebug inside my head.

I was born about six months before the American Prayer album came out, and seven yrs after Jim Morrison died in that hotel room in Paris. Safe to say I did not experience The Doors during their heights, nor did I ever get to see Doors-like acts until I saw the movie about the band by Oliver Stone and it just hooked itself onto my main nerve and made me a Doors fan for life.

The poetry of Morrison had a huge impact on my life as a teenager, in that post-Doors movie area when it became cool to listen to and idealize the band once more in what seemed like a second coming. Well, it might not have been as that much like a new wave, Morrisonaries have made their pilgrimage to Peré Lachaise long before the movie came out, with that “going to Paris to write poetry” kind of thing being a mission in life for so many people, ever since his death. But to me, The Doors revelation was it, it was the first serious stone laid down in the foundation of my own writing.

I did not understand too much of what his lyrics or poems was about in those days, might not understand much of it today either, but it was the way he used his words as rhythm in a playing matter. It was fun to read the poems and American Prayer, when it was re-released on CD around 1995-96 or something, let me experience the poems with the power of one of my favorite albums of all time. It just lifted the words onto a new level.

Jim Morrison was so printed into my life as a teenager that I felt a psychic connection with Jim and a lot of my writing was inspired by his poems. A mental nutcase maybe, but that was what it was like. Jim was everything to me and he was in my head. I typed out his poems on an old typewriter, framed them and hang them on the wall, read The Lords and the New Creatures and the two collections of his poems in Wilderness and The American Night, read the biography “No one here get out alive”, saw the movie again and again. Then later, in my late teens, acid made me understand the concept of the movie way better and I reconnected with Jim in a totally new way, I felt like I had figured him out in a way you cannot do without letting your brain taste that meltdown of the brain. No, I do not believe in any opening of doors with acid, it felt more like burning bridges. But it was fun to get closer to him by trying to understand the acid experience.

But anyhow, I am waiting for the new movie, “When You’re Strange”, to hit town or to get released on DVD. But in the meantime, I am still a huge Doors fan, I listen to Ray Manzarek on Spotify, combined with the American Prayer album these days and it makes me send waves and waves of “thank you”s to the man on the keyboard . Listening to Ray tell his tale of the Doors and spinning off on the everlasting love and fame of Jim Morrison just makes my day a stroll down the old Jim-mania alley that I used to go down so many times in the past. I was even a pilgrim myself, taking a picture of his grave and hanging it on the wall, blown up to a full size poster.

I am not quite sure what this entry is actually about but it feels like a tribute to The Doors, to Jim Morrison and a thank you to Ray Manzarek for recording his story of The Doors and Morrison on the CD called “The Doors: Myth and Reality”. The band made a huge impact on my life and I am glad I discovered them when I was young enough to get totally sucked up in a Doors/Morrison zone that sent me on this journey that is my life. I guess everybody has their own trip with similarities and easy comparable elements, and it all seems genuine when you're in the midst of the intensity.

Roskilde 2010, looking back.

It was a week of weed and Jäger, total lack of paranoia and being sunburned with the look of a lobster during the high-season. It was great in every aspect of the word and the sweet pleasure of freedom grabbed me like a horny servant. Legions of crazy campers roamed around like mental patients on the loose, dressed up as Super Marios, in that famous Borat bathing suit or completely naked, dirty smelly bastards and grown children on the run from a birthday party where being dressed up as a cowboy was the thing.

By nighttime you fell asleep exhausted and fucked up, freezing and pulling the sleeping bag around you, dreaming the lucid dreams of a stoned teenager. When you woke up it was like a heat wave had struck your tent and all you could do was gasp for fresh air and pull franticly at the tent zipper to let piss infested oxygen flow into the sauna you were sleeping in. The first thing you notice when your lungs are filling up with that disgusting smell surrounding the tent area, is a broken deck chair, two used condoms with semen so fresh that sperm cells are still swimming around in it and some neighbors dick hanging out in the open, marking the owners territory.

I stepped out of the tent and looked around at the madness. It was camp flags and sex dolls waving in the air, drunk lunatics snoring in the surrounding tents. The whole place was like a gigantic havoc of yesterdays party, trash everywhere and tents blowing in the wind as far as the eye could see. Say what, like 70-75.000 campers, something around those numbers, where making the best of the situation by being as fucked up as possible. Beer for breakfast, joints for lunch and booze for supper, projectile vomiting as a reverse midnight snack.

Walking around on that grand field and observing this scene, you can hardly believe you are a part of it. I mean, who can? How can you believe that some weirdo has tried to give himself a haircut in the middle of the night and are now standing in front of you in the food cue, looking like he’s been manhandled by a hairdresser on acid? Whatta fuck is wrong with these people? Nothing, they're just letting everything from normal, stuck-up society go and releasing every went, letting steam out, having unconditioned fun. And I am digging the whole scene, the nakedness, the dressing up, the music, oh god, the music.

Dirty rockers from Iceland; Solstafir, and the gigantic monster of a prodution by Damien Alburn; Gorillaz, some chick holding down the preasure of vomit pushing its way up from an overfilled wine belly, nothing but a drunken swine, probably letting it all go in the crownd somewhere, the old grunge wave with Alice in Chains in front but lacking the overdosed and long gone Lane Staley and how I miss his voice, punk fun and insults at the NOFX gig and a huge disapontment watching Them Croocked Voltures, three men having spelled success for you in ever way up untill this point, the surprise gig being The Mexican Institute of Sound, tequilla infested party style and a jumping crowd, joints in the air and kisses in the wind, and at last the grand finale; Prince, the old hag making magic in the cold evening of a Danish summer night.

But of course some seen - some missed, like Motörhead and Prodigy, Staff Benda Billili, Speed Caravan and Moderat, Robyn, LCD Soundsystem and Jack Johnson. Well, you can't see 'em all, you just can't. 18 concerts was enough and what was seen. We spent a week at the Great Festival and crawled helpless home to the boring life of everyday, back to the dead ends, back to the vacuum created in our lifes after spending a week in Sodom, a week in Gomorrah, a week in heaven. Next year? Who knows, maybe we'll find a hole and dig our way down to hell. Who knows. Fuck it.

Ear drums blood beaten by Skambankt. Whatta pleasure!

The first time I heard Skambankt it was like a shot of heroin rushing through my veins, shooting a stream of ecstasy from ear to brain to body and soul. Far away from the realm of Kaizers Orchestra a distant cousin sledgehammered its way into the Norwegian platform of dull music and their demand to be heard was far more a seduction then a hostage situation. Or maybe like an erotic hostage scenario where your musical crouch was wet from pleasure and aching for more more more.

That’s kind of how it was for me the first time Dynasti blasted through my radio at work and blew me away. I just had to find out “who tha fuck” these guys were. What I found out was that the band, at that point, had two albums and an EP available. I got hold of all three and played them non-stop in the car. Even my son at age 4 or what he was at that time wanted to hear the music on the short drive to the kindergarten. He even commented on the dialect of the vocalist, saying he had something in his throat (you know, like when you’ve got a cold and slimy stuff is stuck down there), that’s how intense he listened to it.

I have had the pleasure of seeing the band live 3 times. Not many times if you compare to a travelling fan who have almost lost count but all three concerts have been an explosion in my ears. A wonderful supernova splitting sound molecules and leaving my heart pumping like a mad machine when the last tone has died out and the last syllable is uttered.

The only disappointment came with the last album, Hardt Regn from 2009. It sounded like too much of the autopilot was working overtime while the band just had a good time making music. It was down a notch, but that was just because they had delivered music on such a high level up to that point. It is quite natural to lose a bit of your pace when you run along the track. What’s important is that you gain speed again and pump that magical shit out like a canon shot, a shot that only can be found in the wilderness of Snowmobile Land where Skambankts sound belong.

If Skambankt is a new thing to you, which is close to unheard of today with the bands success, you should start with the debut album and work your way forward. Take your time with each album, listen to it like a pack of over-religious people listen to the priest and let your musical soul fall in love with a band that has no intention to be anything else but the best, a monument in Norwegian music history. If they can keep up the quality of the self-titled debut, the EP Skamania and the second album Eliksir, this will be one of the greatest rock bands Norway has produced. And yes, we can believe in that mania!