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Take a pinch of 60's garage punk, mix with a healthy amount of surf punk,
plenty of power pop and just a few grains of the band's homemade Happy Metal brand.
Add sweet harmonies, a generous dose of homour and frantic no-holds live action. Voilá...
(fanfare) THE PSYCHOTIC YOUTH!But, you wonder (now don't you), how did it all begin? Well, we have to go back all the way to the autumn of 1984. Up in the tiny town of Kramfors in northern Sweden, 18 year old ex-hooligan Jörgen Westman, fed up with wrecking cars and playing guitar in mediocre new wave bands, decides to start up a new project, inspired by the then-somewhat-fashionable 60's garage punk revival. Westman recruits workmate Kent Sjöholm (who turns out to be a dynamite drummer as well as a nice fellow and all-around good guy), persuades his friend Anders Nordstrand into buying a bass, and manages to lure mad Dane Nils Lund-Larsen, top guitar player of neighbouring town Härnösand, into it all. The band is called the Ratfink-A-Boo Boo's, after a song by the Nomads, which pretty much tells what it's all about. The 60's punk collection Nuggets makes a handy manual; covers of songs by the Sonics, the Standells and the Strangeloves are mixed with original Westman compositions in a similar vein. After changing the name to the Psychotic Youth and recording a flexi disc for Jörgen's fanzine Straight from the grooveyard, multi-instrumentalist Gunnar Frick from Örnsköldsvik (yet another small town in the area) is brought in as a organ-player in the autumn of 1985. |
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Playing
rock'n'roll in northern Sweden was a struggle in its own. Gunnar reminisces:"Every second Sunday I used to get up at 8 a.m., bring the organ on the bus 100 kilometres (!) south, where Jörgen was waiting with his ratty old Opel for further transport to Nyadal, a small village outside Kramfors, where we rehearsed in the local folklore centre. Nils, if he could afford the ticket, came with another bus from fifty kilometres to the south, changing to ferry (!!) before finally meeting up with the rest of us. These days, I find it nuisance not to be able to walk to rehearsals..." These Monty Pythonesque conditions ("My family lived in a shoebox on the motorway...") notwithstanding, the band manages to stay together and develop. Gigs in northern Sweden being sparse, the band's main activity in 1985-1987 is recording for various local labels, First out was the EP "Devils Train", and after that, notably, the aptly-titled debut LP FASTER!FASTER!Jörgen writes the songs; Gunnar works the studio magic. Although the 60's punk revival is petering out, they do attract some attention, not so much in Sweden as on the continent, where Swedish garage punk is still considered hot. For instance, the single "Just like me/Stop waistin' my time" is released in France and Spain only. The second LP ANYTHING FOR A THRILL is not reviewed at all by the Swedish press (except for the reviews band members write themself for local papers); nevertheless, it is released in Holland and other foreign places. In the summer of 1987 Jörgen moves to Gothenburg, by and by luring Kent and Gunnar along. |
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Having tried their luck in various combos, they restart the Psychotic Youth in January,
1988. Fellow exile Northlanders Magnus "Nypon" Nyberg and Erik Danielsson
join on guitar and bass, and the band gains some local reputation as a fine wild live
act. However, the new bass player suddenly disappears without a trace (nobody's heard
from him since) and so Gunnar trades in his Farfisa organ for a Rickenbacker bass.
As a four-man unit, the Psychotic Youth embark on their first real tour in November,
1988. Jörgen tells about it:"It was totallly incredible. For the first time, we were treated with respect. We had a tour manager and got to sleep in hotels! The clubs we played had real PA systems, and they gave us unlimited amounts of booze! Besides, we met with amazingly good response. There were actually people coming to check out an almost unknown band from Sweden." In January, 1988, the band feels ripe to get into the studio again, for the first time in almost two years. Chips Kiesbye (of famous band Sator) agrees to produce the record, originally mostly as a favour to his fellow Northlanders, but pretty soon realizing the potential of the songs. One night Chips brings his bandmate Kent Norberg along to sing harmonies, and everything falls into place. The Sator laddies succeed in persuading their record company, Radium 226.05, that "this is the hottest thing since Elvis"; an additional ten songs are written and recorded at a furious pace. The single "Julie" brings some media attention, and radio man Lars Aldman, the closest thing Sweden's got to a John Peel, gets his eyes on the band. An album called SOME FUN, mixed in five days at the Music-A-Matic studio by Chips and Michael Ilbert, is released in the autumn of 1989, for the first time establishing the Psychotic Youth on the national rock scene. The label "surf punk" firmly fixed to the band, members are forced to practice harmony singing for hours and hours in order to be able to play the new songs live. The problem is solved by reinforcing the live act with singer- showman-teen heartthrob Per Dahlberg. The story continues on the next page... |