ONE HELL OF A NIGHT!

When I first started coming to Sweden I was in love with the way rock* was like a living breathing entity that was everywhere and thought how wonderful it would be to live among this atmosphere.

*rock in the loose term to cover most guitar based music.

However after living here a while I started to become very disillusioned and found it to be much more mainstream and unimaginative that I first thought. It was lacking a certain passion that I was used to.

So, a few months ago my partner in crime Kristoffer and I were at Wisers, our local pub having a chat to the landlord and came across the idea of starting a rock club night at the pub, but one that played mostly "non-mainstream" rock, punk, metal or whatever! Basically just good music that we liked. We decided to have just a simple set up, play music in the pub on a Friday night and see what happened.

To be honest I think that we knew that because we were going against the mainstream a lot of people may turn their noses up.

No Tiakeda or Creed? No Nickleback? No Enter Sandman or Ace Of Spades? But what about Highway To Hell? ...is there other songs or sorts of music?

Once our wheels were in motion we came up with the name "HELLOFAKVÄLL" (in English this translates roughly to "a hell of a night") and set up a Facebook group to see if anyone was interested. Within a week were over 100 members and interest became very strong.



What hope we suddenly got in the music scene that maybe this was a much better idea than we thought it would be, and soon people were requesting bands and songs that they would like to hear.

Bring Me The Horizon, Cradle of Filth, In Fear and Faith, Job For A Cowboy, Mastodon, The Mars Volta, Amon Amarth, Rancid, Rob Zombie, Rancid, Raised Fist, Deathstars, Slipknot, Caliban, Static-x, Devildriver, Disturbed, Chimaira, Ventana, Devildriver, Lamb of God, Municipal Waste, Tankard...

OK, someone didn't quite get it and requested KISS, Rainbow and Queen but otherwise it was a very pleasant surprise. The location for the night was even upgraded to the restaurant "Divine".

The big day came, we got a bit in the local paper and we went down to our local radio station to do a short interview.

How happy we were when our "alternative to the alternative" brought in nearly 400 people!!

ROCK IS DEAD, LONG LIVE ROCK!



People, the music world, the real rock world is working it's way up, or back, however you want to look at it. People are doing a good job discovering their own stuff and the kids are out there making a scene.

Everyone was super nice and super cool at the club, which is kind of what we expected but it was still nice to be proved right! Our only let downs were:

*People trying to order beer from us all night.
*People asking for songs repeatedly after we said that we didn't have them.
*A guy that got aggressive towards me after I told him that I was the DJ and not the barman. He flipped me the bird and threatened me, I got the bouncers and kicked his ass out.

But of course the good sides way out weighed the few hitches. So many people enjoying the night and the music - it was way cool, we look forward to the next one.



The best bit of the night for me was of course when my friend Robert jumped up on the bar and pulled down his pants to reveal his new tattoo....my face on his ass! How cool is that! I watch him poo forever..