OLD NEWS FROM THE EARLY TSP WEBSITE... 5/4 1999 The Sun about The Soul Preachers lyrics: "Don't look at this it's horrid" I took a peek at The Soul Preachers guestbook one day and saw a message from a guy from England. He told that he had red the lyrics of "Dunblane" at a paper. I wrote back to the guy and asked what paper he had been reading. He replied (a copy of the mail): From: "Mr Unhappy" <unhappy_guy@hotmail.com> tis 19:01 Subject: You sick little monkeys!!! Hi, There was a few lines of lyrics in "The Sun", the biggest newpaper in England so loads of people saw them and the letters section was full for the next ten weeks!!!! I have never heard of you guys until I saw you in the paper so I thought I had to check you out. It's one of those bad publicity things whare they say "Don't look at this its horrid" and then everyone checks it out. Do you have any .WAV files of the song so I can hear it? Where are you guys from? Bug. Very interesting! So the people in England are horrified over The Soul Preachers lyrics. Cool! What do you think? Check out the lyrics Mr Unhappy is talking about: Dunblane 13.3.1996 If anybody else have seen the Sun article or some of the letters about the song, please tell us about it, or the better, send us a copy of the article! snail mail: The Soul Preachers, P.O.Box 55, S-64030 Halleforsnas, Sweden Thank you. 29/7 1998 Still in the studio - but the recording session will soon be finished Over three weeks in the recording studio now - trying to get the perfect sound takes time, we've noticed. Well, it's not going to be perfect (I'd guess it's impossible) but it sounds much better than we've ever achieved in any studio before. Yet the studio gear we've using is nothing but expensive. The seven songs (see the news article below) have been recorded as planned. There's still a couple of things to put on tape, guitar solos and acoustic guitars and stuff. But 90% of the stuff is already done and we think it sounds great. Pasi, the original drummer, listened to the raw tapes (not mixed at all) and he was impressed. We'll see a bit later what you, dear The Soul Preachers friends think of the stuff. It seems that the quality is good enough to be released on CD. If nothing unexpected happens, the recordings are complete and mixed at the end of this week. You will be notified. We would like to thank Timo Raita at DSL (Disco Sound Lightning, Eskilstuna) for kindly borrowing us compressors, effect processors and microphones during the recording session. We have been able to use the (quality) stuff at no cost for several weeks now. 7/7 1998 The Soul Preachers in studio plan to release a new CD We started a recording session at the It's Alive! studio yesterday. At the moment, only Fredde and I have been in the studio, soundchecking and injusting the instruments. Jörgen and Pelle will join us later, when we think we are ready with the sounds. Maybe tonight? Normally we have always had such a hurry to start recording that the sounds have not been that great. We try to do it better this time, let's see if we have the patience to continue injusting the gear until we are satisfied. Yesterday we spent several hours injusting the drum kit - changed drumheads, tuned them and stuff. Fredde's bass guitar needed some injusting, too. We're getting there... We plan to record the songs we think are good for the moment - that's the songs we played at our first gig in April. Maybe there will be one or two additional songs, but we haven't been rehearsing that much since then. That's the stuff we can play with the new line-up. We like to record them before we get sick of them and want to play brand new stuff instead. The songs we plan to record are: Looking For America, Holy Cow, I Will Kill You, Wishing Well, I Want You, All The Songs She Writes, Meatballs Only Make You Cry. None of the songs we plan to record are brand new, some of the songs have already been recorded earlier, with Pasi on drums. A couple of the songs have been recorded at jam sessions, some of them with other guys playing the instruments, some of them as demo recordings by myself. This time it's for real... The plan is: If the stuff that comes out is good enough, the recording session will result to a new CD. Some of you guys have been demanding a new The Soul Preachers record for some time now. As you know, we don't have a record deal so it propably will be released by ourselves. Hope you'll like (buy) it then so we get our money back, at least the most of it. What about Pasi, our former drummer? - He's still around, we have jammed with him a couple of times, just for fun. The Soul Preachers still has two drummers, but Jörgen is the one that "counts" at the moment. Pasi is still having vacation. 7/5 1998 Over 150 000 visitors on our Geocities mirror site! What's going on? I just took a look at our Geocities mirror site to see if it was still there. The last time I looked (months ago) there were only a few visitors and I haven't updated that site for ages, I just put a link to our Swedish site there, to the site you're visiting now. To my BIG surprise the counter showed me that there had been over 150.000 visitors on our site. Incredible! I'm not sure if the counter's just gone mad or if there really has been that high a trafic. If the number's not a joke by someone, I'd guess I'll have to start to update that site, too... And if the number is true, does anybody know why there has been so many visitors??? E-mail me. 27/4 1998 First gig with the new line-up The Soul Preachers played it's first gig with the new line-up at Saturday. We played two sets, the first one with original songs: Looking For America, Holy Cow, I Will Kill You, Wishing Well, I Want You, All The Songs She Writes, Meatballs Only Make You Cry. That part of the gig went very well, I think. When we later played covers, it wasn't that exiting. The audience wasn't carried away with it and neither were we. Good thing was that the other band playing there, Texas Snowboards, could save the rest of the evening. Part of the audience were boiling to them. They were really good. The covers we performed were: Pale Blue Eyes (Velvet Underground), Dancing Barefoot (Patti Smith), Greenback Dollar (The Kingston Trio), Guns Of Brixton (The Clash), Passenger (Iggy Pop), Rocking In The Free World (Neil Young)... and maybe a couple more. Don't remember. Oh yes, later at the night, when Jörgen, the drummer, had already gone home, Tero Larsson from Dorian Gray took the drum sticks and Petri Liikanen from Gherkin Fly my guitar (I had the same morning bought a mint condition Yamaha SG 3000S guitar), Fredde played the bass and I (Jarmo) just sang. Pelle gripped his guitar and was supposed to play too but I don't remeber if he did. Skitsamma. We played a couple of covers, too. Waiting For The Man (Velvet Underground) and House Of The Rising Sun (The Animals). Then I think we improvised some blues stuff or something. At the end there was only Tero playing the drums and I ad-libbing with a microphone in my hand. And a beer in the other hand. I'm glad the first part of the gig went so well, the one with The Soul Preachers originals. I'm also glad I drove 160 kilometers early in the morning to buy my new black beautiful electric guitar. If you're interested in Yamaha SG 2000S or SG 3000S click here. 13/1 1998 Uffe has moved again. We have not. We received a post card today from Uffe. He notified us that he has moved to Växjö (Småland) again. He writes: "I'm here now". That's all we know of him. And now you know exactly as much as we do.Pelle and Jarmo has started to collect material for a book about every rock and pop band in Flen there has ever existeded. Everyone reading this and having some kind of information to share, e-mail Jarmo. If you understand Swedish, you can even visit the home page of It's Alive! There's more info of the project. The tryout rehearsal with the new drummer Jörgen Danielsson turned out very well. We will rehearse again tomorrow. It seems that Jörgen's one of us now. 6/1 1998 Uffe erased from the band members list? New drummer? Two versions of the band? What is going on with The Soul Preachers? We haven't spoken with Uffe Enokson, the bass player, since last spring. We haven't been playing together for almost a year. We haven't even seen him. We think it's time to say that he is no longer our bass player. Shit, it's going to be a hell to change everything on our home page... But there's more changes to come in the line-up.Doctor's Special, the cover band with line up: Jarmo Haapamäki (lead guitar, lead vocals), Pasi Taskinen (drums), Fredde Larsson (bass, backing vocals), Pelle Holmgren (guitar), will propably change it's name to The Soul Preachers. We have been rehearsing for months now and have started to write (or jam) own stuff now. No more just covers. And that's not all. Pasi Taskinen, the drummer, has told us that we can start looking for a new drummer. He thinks he cannot put his whole soul (!) to the band because of his work and his family and stuff. It came as a chock to us. But after a couple of weeks of concidering we contacted this guy we knew, Jörgen Danielsson. He lives in Flen and is formely known as the hard-hitting drummer of Pope On Dope. He is willing to try. And we are willing to put something together with him. This is very new stuff. We phoned Jörgen today. Pasi will propably continue playing the drums with us every now and them (not that often) but there will be two different bands and Jörgen will be the drummer of the "serious one". 16/11 1997 We have not moved but we have a new, easier URL: come.to/the.soul.preachers It's easier to remember. Every time someone asked me of our net address I had to say that I don't rember. There's too many numbers. http://home3.swipnet.se/~w-36234 is the real URL. It can now be reached by typing come.to/the.soul.preachers . Much easier. If you want to directly to the LIVE PIX section, then type come.to/live.pix . My Finnish site Hunajaa can reached with URL come.to/jarmo . The new addresses were provided free by come.to. Works just fine. 16/11 1997.Doctor's Special lived through their gig at Heda in Hälleforsnäs - as Spice Boys Yes, we played at Heda. Covers. Songs of Pixies, Velvet Underground, Patti Smith, David Bowie, Rolling Stones, Hawkwind, Johnny Cash, The Clash, Iggy Pop, Nirvana, The Kingston Trio... It went alright. Not better, not worse. I think. The audience seemed to enjoy it. We played under three different names. None of them was Doctor's Special. The first band was called Spice Boys. (Fredde was Sporty Spice, Pelle Dirty Spice, Pasi Horny Spice and I of course was the Smart Spice...) After a brake we called ourselves Flowerpower Andy and His King Kong Balls. The last group was called Horny Devil and His King Size Penis Orchestra. The main attraction who says they are the sexiest band in Sweden, they never came... 10/11 1997 Doctor's Special gig: Saturday 15/11 1997 at HEDA, Hälleforsnäs Doctor's Special "on the road" again: on this Saturday the 15th we play at Heda Värdshus in Hälleforsnäs. We have more songs now and... eh, have rehearsed also a few times more. And have more songs. It will be a success, be sure of it! Be there! It costs 40 SEK to come in. Doctor's Special will climb (?) on the stage around 22.00 and the last tunes will be played around half past twelve at night. As I said already: BE THERE! 24/10 1997 Uffe sent us another card from Gothenburg. We think he studies there. A few weeks ago we received another note from Uffe, The bassman of The Soul Preachers. He has really moved to Gothenburg (Göteborg). He sent us another note, written on a unemployment security coupon. He told us he's studying history and astronomy... Living in a student village... Reading many books... We think. His way of writing is kinda poetic. Here's the card he sent us for those who understand Swedish: So, what happenes now to The Soul Prechers? Who knows. It isn't impossible that the guys in Doctor's Special take over. We will come back to you. 8/7 1997 Uffe sent us another post card... He's not in Greece anymore - he has moved to Gothenburg. Uffe Enokson - you know, the guy with a bass we used to play rock'n'roll with - seems to have moved to Gothenburg (Göteborg), west side of Sweden. We received a post card from him today. We could read his new address and "What are you doing there while I'm here?". We wonder, what the heck is Uffe doing in Gothenburg??? At least he's not in Greece anymore. That's a relief. Gothenburg is not as far away as Greece... 6/7 1997 Doctor's Special first "tour" was a success, they say. We had fun, anyway. Doctor's Special (yes, that's the name we decided to use) played it's premier gigs. We promised to tell you how it went. Well, we try. Pelle Holmgren was really nervous before the first gig. He has been playing guitar for four months, that's not a very long time. Pasi and I have been playing for ages and Fredde has played bass for years as well. But Pelle has guts and he won't give up. He's been rehearsing like hell, I'd guess we should do the same. He puts the rest of the band in a shade, soon. The Hälleforsnäs pub, Heda Värdshus, was full of people who were eager to hear Doctor's Special. There had been an article in a local newspaper, Eskilstuna-Kuriren, a couple of days earlier. Tomas Uddin wrote: "The doctor comes with speciel medicine for the people in Hälleforsnäs on Friday night. The medicine we're talking about is a journey through the history of rock music with songs of for example Stooges, Kim Wilde and Patti Smith." and so on. Deep stuff... The people came anyway. Ten o'clock in the Friday evening we started the engine. At first we thought we'd start with full throttle - Search And Destroy. But we didn't have the guts then. We took another Iggy Pop song instead: Passenger. Pop instead of earthquake. Well, the audience liked it. We thought it sounded alright. Calle, the former Soul Preachers guitarist, sat in the audience and he said it sounded really good. "It doesn't matter how slow or soft the songs you play are, it sounds hard and intense anyway. I love it", he said. But he didn't like the climax of the consert. Full throttle: Search And Destroy, followed by Territorial Pissing (Nirvana). Calle couldn't stand it, he said his ears were hurting. It was too damn loud. Well, it might have been. A little. Don't know what else to say. Well, the audience didn't seem to be as exited as in the "good old days". We didn't really know what songs they liked. They clapped their hands and so on but... Something was missing. We played a bit carefully because of that. Except for the two POWER songs... We played three sets, maybe seventeen songs alltogether. Saturday night's gig was more fun, really. The audience was wonderful, they started to dance and sing along and slide and everything from the first tunes. It was cool to see people headbanging to Patti Smith's beautiful Dancing Barefoot... It didn't sound as good as it did in Heda, we didn't hear each other so well and the bass amplifier (not ours) was much too small. Pelle complained later that he was too drunk the second time we entered the stage. Sometimes he didn't have a clue of what chords he might play at the moment. "Well, I learn of my mistakes. Next time we play I will be sober" he said. We'll see... Doctor's Special's first "tour" is over. Many people from the audience came to us afterwards and thanked us. They said we were great. You could call it a success, then. 25/6 1997 Doctor's Special is ready to rock! In Hälleforsnäs and Flen to begin with... Doctor's Special (or whatever name we choose to have, does Spice Boys sound stupid enough?) has agreed to go to a "tour" in couple of weeks. On Friday the 4th of July we play in Heda, which is a small quarter pub in Hälleforsnäs. The day after, on Saturday the 5th of July we make noise in Flen, at a private party. On our repertoaire we (If you don't know what the heck Doctor's Special is, check out the news from 24/5 1997) have covers like Milk And Alcohol (Dr. Feelgood), Little Red Ridinghood (999?), Kids In America (Kim Wilde), San Quentin (Johnny Cash), Guns Of Brixton (The Clash), Search And Destroy (Stooges), Greenback Dollar (Kingston Trio), Dancing Barefoot (Patti Smith), These Boots Are Mades For Walking (Nancy Sinatra)... and more stuff like that. We will tell how it went to you all who couldn't come to hear us. But please come if you can! And book us if you have beer and some money to offer... We play anywhere there's audience that likes good music. 13/6 1997 Uffe is alive (Wasn't that the news just a few weeks ago?...). He's in Greece this time. The news is: We received a postcard from Uffe today. He wrote: "Kalevala. Har av outgrundlig anledning hamnat i Grekland. Det är ett land. Ett strandland. Det finns berg i mitten så att alla rullar ut till kusterna där de ligger och solar. Uffe" Which is Swedish and means something like: "Odysseia. I don't know why but I've ended up in Greece. It's a country. A beach country. There's mountains in the middle, which makes everybody roll out to the coasts where they lie and sunbathe. Uffe" 4/6 1997 Uffe has dissapeared again - now to some Eastern European country (we think) It's not easy to get started again with Uffe. He's never here. Now that his school termine ended and he had to give up his appartment as well (the school owned it) Uffe simply dissapeared. He mentioned earlier that he may spend the summer in some cheaper country, perhaps in Hungary or somewhere else in the eastern Europe. Well, now he's gone and we don't know where. He never told us. Pasi and I will continue playing in Doctor's Special - with Fredde (Fredric Larsson) and Pelle (Per Holmgren). It feels all right to play cover songs but who knows - maybe we start making songs of our own. It feels like a real rock'n'roll band, not just four kids having fun on a friday night. We'll see. Right now we want to go out and play live before audience. We have only about a dozen good songs rehearsed, but that's enough, isn't it? Watch out for the details and don't miss our gigs. We sound harder than steel and more beautiful than a wild rose. When we want to... We'll see what happens to The Soul Preachers when (if?) Uffe comes back to Sweden. Right now everything with The Soul Preachers goes real slow. 24/5 1997 Dan Pettersson is alive - now he's playing "Johnny B. Goode" with WB Band Fredric Larsson and Per Holmgren, Pasi and I, Jarmo, have formed a cover band a few weeks ago. We call ourselves Per Keles or Doctor's Special or Johnny Clash or whatever. We have loads of fun.). Last night I was in Flen with Fredric and Per. We went to a restaurant called Loftet, there was cover band playing and there might be nice girls, too... Well, the girls were nice and beer cold. But that's not what I want to tell you. It's this: The Soul Preachers bass man anno 1988 was standing on the stage and playing guitar with the cover band! I didn't recognize him first but Ramme, also a former bass player in The Soul Preachers, pointed him out. I hadn't seen the guy since 1988. He moved somewhere to the north then, but now he's living in Stockholm and working as a sound engineer. So he told me. I asked him if he ever got a copy of the record we made. "Yeah, I got four copies." Well allright. I thought we never gave him a copy... It was nice the meet the bloke. But it's funny, though. Nine years ago he was playing in a rock band called The Soul Preachers in Hälleforsnäs. Now the man is playing "Johnny B. Goode" (well, he told it was highly temporary) in a second-rate cover band from Vadsbro. Is it progress? 3/5 1997 Uffe touring with a theater group - another new song composed After Uffe the bassman came from Equador, where he had carried stolen wood in the jungle, he wrote a theater play about the land. Now he is touring with the play in Sweden, mostly schools and stuff. Why? His journey in Equador was part of his education in human help or something and the play was their groups school project. This weekend Uffe took some time off from his studies and came to happy Hälleforsnäs. They jammed a lot and made a lot of new material. At least one of the tunes sounds great and will be one of the strongest new The Soul Preachers songs. The lyrics aren't ready yet, but they called the song She's The One. 31/3 1997 New songs rehearsed - a new record coming? After the rehearsals of the weekend can The Soul Preachers announce that they have many new songs to perform. Because Uffe has not been playing with the guys for a long time, many new tunes has been written and some of them even performed with other guys on bass guitar. We're talking about songs like Looking for America, Belgian Blue and Love Will Tear Us Apart (ok, the title is the same as the Joy Division song. We know.) They played even Finnish songs like Perse, Tiukka Pillu and Impin Pimppi. Those hilarious songs were formerly performed by Noppikoski Home Boys, Fredric Larsson on bass guitar. What about the recordings for the compilation CD? It seems like the songs will be I Will Kill You and Cunthunt. Both songs are already recorded and mixed. That means that The Soul Preachers have finished recording their contribution to the CD. Now they are planning to release another record of their own. There'sa bunch of perfectly good songs waiting. Unless any record company shows interest, the band pays the bills themselves. 24/3 1997 Uffe has returned from Equador. He is alive. Uffe, the bass man, called us by the phone a moment ago. He is in Stockholm now, alive and well. He had been in Equador for the last two and a half months, doing --- something --- there. Maybe he can explain it better when he comes in Hälleforsnäs, we're not really sure what he has been up to. We talked about kicking our instruments for a while the next weekend. Uffe hasn't heard our latest recordings after december - and never with a real song and stuff. I said he could listen to the song I Will Kill You through Internet. I Love Your Mama isn't ready yet - maybe it never will. It has some qualities but... We maybe decide to re-record it. It sounded better when we recorded it live in our rehearsal-room with a normal tape recorded and two microphones in the middle of the room. The song was more alive then, somehow. We know more (and let you know, too) after the Easter. 7/3 1997 New recordings with The Soul Preachers The Soul Preachers is working in a studio with a couple of songs: I Will Kill You and I Love Your Mama. The group is planning to release these two songs on It's Alive! compilation CD that has a working name: "0157". TSP started the recording of the new songs in It's Alive's own recording studio in Hälleforsnäs just before the new year. The drums, guitar and the bass was recorded in couple of days (they also recorded a couple of extra songs, Dunblane 13.3.1996, Mr. Brett and Alcohol, mostly for fun). A couple of days later went Uffe, the bass man, to Equador for two months. The rest of the band is still waiting to hear from him. Maybe he gets out of there alive. The lyrics for the songs, I Will Kill You and I Love Your Mama, were just rough sketches by the time the main instrument were put on tape. Jarmo, the singer, started to write down somethings that hopefully didn't sound all too stupid. About a month later, in the beginning of februari, he was ready with the first song. A day later the song was recorded and mixed (by himself). Sounds a bit like Frank Black, a bit like Iggy, not so much the old Soul Preachers. The early TSP was more punk rock, today's TSP is more rock or pop. Slower tempo. Lyrics to I Will Kill You can be read in another location on this site. The next song, I Love Your Mama, is starting to take form now. The work is rather slow now, Jarmo tells that he has got difficulties with writing the lyrics for a longer time now. "I have realized that I've got nothing to say, really. Yet I've got to stand for the lyrics and want to be proud of my work." Now that Uffe is coming back from Equador (or is he?) the band will be working together again and hopefully soon get ready for touring. LOOKING FOR FRESH NEWS? - CLICK HERE!