Updated blog with some music

In the right-hand rail, you can now see some links to songs that I've posted on the internet using the iPhone app called Audioboo (free for uploading audio under 3 minutes).

I've organized them into songs in English and songs in Swedish. Take a listen and let me know what you think!

The Berlin Wall

I don't remember much about the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was 10 years old at the time, and I remember that a few weeks later - probably over the Christmas holidays - a classmate of mine went to Germany with her family and came back with a piece of concrete.

"What's that?" we all asked as she showed it off in school.

"It's a piece of The Wall," she said.

The wall was, of course, one of the stops on my trip to Berlin in 2001 when I went with my friend Jenny (above). Part of it still stands, showing a clear division of East and West that is not easily forgotten.

Apparently, when it happened, I wrote a song about the wall coming down. My grandmother just reminded me when I spoke to her last week. I vaguely remember hitting some keys on our old, out-of-tune piano and trying to compose some ugly notes on a sheet of home-made music notation paper.

My grandmother, who had just been released from the hospital after a back surgery, remembers laying in bed as I played and sang to her from across the room.

"Oh, I wish we had recorded it," my grandmother said.

All I can remember is that I - when I was 14 or 15 - found some badly written piece of pink paper, and when I tried to play the notes on it, it sounded like the theme song to "McGyver." I tossed it on the spot and never thought about it again.

What they’re singing about

I’ve always had a hard time understanding American songs, or any song sung in English. When I was a kid, a popular song by Swedish rocker Jerry Williams called “Did I tell you” to me translated into “delateljo,” which in Swedish, of course, doesn’t mean a thing.

I once bought the sheet music to Sarah McLaughlin’s “Angel” because a friend insisted there was a line in there that said “a star called Othello.” I claimed something else – perhaps it was “stark, old bordello,” I can’t remember – but it turned out we were both wrong. McLaughlin was singing about a dark, cold hotel room.

“We’re in America, man,” turned out to be Grand Funk Railroad’s “We’re an American band” and the weird song about a woman’s “Hawaiian eyes” turned out to be “Lyin’ Eyes” by the Eagles (and while googling it, I found out this is a very common misconception).

When I was younger (in Sweden) and people referred to Survivor’s “Eye of the Tiger,” I always thought the song was actually called “I am the tiger.”

My boyfriend, sorry – husband – now listens very carefully to me singing along to the radio in the car to see if he can get a chuckle out of my interpretation of popular songs.

He got the biggest laugh out of me singing along to “mama’s got the squeeze bugs, daddy never sleeps at night.”
“The what?” he asked, almost pulling the car over.
“The squeezebugs,” I declared. “You know, when people squeeze you really hard. The people who will never stop hugging you.”
Albie laughed even harder now.
“No, that’s not it. They are singing ‘squeezebox.’”
Me: “Well, what the heck is a squeezebox? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“It’s an accordion. She’s playing it… in and out… see?”
Me, now with arms folded across chest: “I like my lyrics better.”
Turns out, of course, that Albie is correct. “Squeezebox” was recorded by The Who in 1975. Apparently, it can also be slang for vagina, and the band at the time was trying to find out what they could get away with in the recording studio.

The other day I was driving home from work and heard a popular song from the 60s that I eagerly sang along to. Then I stopped and said to myself “wait just a minute! Is it supposed to be ‘hang on, stupid, stupid hang on!’ or ‘hang on Snoopy, Snoopy hang on!’?” Again, turns out it was neither. The song by The McCoys released in 1965 actually goes “Hang on Sloopy, Sloopy hang on.” It was written for singer Dorothy Sloop, who used the nickname “Sloopy” on stage.

All I can say now is, thank God for the Internet. Otherwise I would never have known what people are actually singing about.

Wordless Wednesday

"Med en enkel tulipan"

("With a simple tulip")

Chorus members sing a song

to congratulate me and Albie

on getting married.

No regrets

If I could go back in time and change things that I have done, that I am not happy with, I don’t think I would.

All those things shaped me, made me what I am today, and that I have to say I am pretty happy with what I have become. Of course there were stupid things, situation where I wish now that I had acted differently. But if I had acted another way, I probably wouldn’t be where I am today.

Say, for example, that my grandmother had let me play the piano, which was my wish when I was seven. Or that she would have let me go horseback riding with some of the girls in my class.

Perhaps I would have become really good at playing the piano, and I would have never left Sweden. Or perhaps I would have ended up struggling so much it would have turned me away from music altogether. Instead, I played the violin up until the day my grandfather died. And I sang in the chorus, which I still enjoy doing.

I also ended up taking piano lessons – from a real pro. They didn’t last for long, but at least I can say I tried.

Perhaps I would have enjoyed horseback riding so much I eventually got my own horse. Then I would have never been able to leave him behind to come to the United States. Or I could have been thrown off a horse as a girl, gotten really hurt and never been able to walk again. You never know.

And because of my grandmother’s fear of horses, I was always fascinated by them and all other animals. That’s what led me to live on a horse farm in Bethany. It’s what led me to my overwhelming love for animals.them and all other animals. me away from music altogether.

So by telling me I couldn’t play the piano or ride a horse, my grandmother changed the course of my life. Of course, she probably regrets it today when she doesn’t get to see me as often anymore. But I don’t regret a thing.

Homesick

If I ever get homesick, I just go to YouTube and watch Carola sing the national anthem.

Or I can watch a video from the 1983 national music competition, also with Carola. As a pre-teen, I would sing this with a hair brush in front of the mirror in my upstairs playroom.

It's ice cream time

I don't like heat, and I don't like humidity. But I do like ice cream.

In fact, I eat it all year. Summer, however, brings to mind ice cream trucks. So I started wondering about other countries and what they hear in the summertime.

When I grew up, my trained ear was taught to run down the block to the end of our road when I heard this.

(I once did an “on the job” feature with a girl driving an ice cream truck. She had to play the song 5 times at each stop, for a total of 320 times in one night. It wasn’t such a joyful song after that.)

In the United States, at least in the New York area, you hear Mr. Softee's ice cream song. Mr. Softee himself, James Conway Sr., died in 2006. The song was also disputed in New York City for causing a disturbance.

Other American ice cream trucks play "The Entertainer," "Lips Stained Blue," "Pink Panther Pops" or a Ghetto version called "Hello." (Most of these courtesy of WFMU’s Beware of the Blog).

In Britain and Australia, ice cream trucks play the famous tune “Greensleeves.” Some newer ones (Cornetto) play “O Sole Mio” or “Girls and Boys Come Out to Play” in England. Here you can hear another Australian version.

So take a listen, dream of ice cream and enjoy. That's what I'll do now.

The music of the night

Music has amazing powers.

A few measures of the Swedish pop group Kent's lyrics streaming from my speakers, and I am a teenager again. "Nobody can get this close," they sing (in Swedish). It is 1995, and I'm walking the streets of my hometown on a warm summer night. My friends are there, chatting and laughing; we are on our way to the bus stop after a long evening of partying.

"Stairway to Heaven" brings me right to the party. Guitar afficionado H.B. is playing, and everyone else is humming along. Someone is getting drunk off of homemade rhubarb wine and two other teens are making out in a corner of H.B.'s mom's living room.

Bryan Adams' raspy voice sings "Thought I died and gone to heaven," and I am laying on the couch in my childhood bedroom staring up at the ceiling, wondering why nobody loves me. My feet are hanging off the end of the yellow and brown piece of furniture, because it is just a little bit too short for my 165 teen centimeters. Papers are spread out all over my desk and floor, and a black travel typewriter sits in the middle of the orange rug with a blank staring back at me.

When the famous A minor chord of the "House of the Rising Sun" starts to play, my mind takes me to the radio studio at Virginska Skolan, my high school. Nina and I are recording our first demo tape. Running between the small half-moon shaped studio and the control room, we manage to record ourselves without outside involvement. From children's songs to drunkards at a New Orleans brothel, our selection ends up being quite interesting.

Two feet from Bryan Adams

Dressed in a black T-shirt, dark jeans and black boots, Bryan Adams took the stage at Toad’s Place in New Haven Monday night.

“This will be a little bit like watching me in my living room,” he said, armed only with a guitar and a harmonica, “except, a lot stinkier.”

The famous venue didn’t smell familiar when he walked in, he said, even though someone had told him he may have played there before.

“I think I’d remember a place called ‘Toad,’” he said, eliciting laughter from the crowd of 96.5 WTIC radio listeners and select members of the press.



Adams made a stop in New Haven as part of his intimate “11 days in 11 cities” tour promoting his new CD “11,” coming out in stores May 14.

“We love you, Brian!” a group of women shouted between two songs.
“What was that?” he asked, while tuning his second guitar.
“We love you, Brian!”

Perhaps the yellow lights made Adams hot, or else he was blushing. He definitely seemed to enjoy the intimacy of Toad’s Place.

From “Can’t Stop This Thing We Started” to “Cuts Like a Knife,” the crowd was eagerly singing along to each tune. Adams ran through “Heaven,” “Oxygen,” “Run To You” and “Walk On By.” Requests were shouted out, and he tried to please the crowd as best he could.

“It’s not the right time yet,” he said when a group in the center of the dance floor requested “Summer of ’69.” But they got what they wanted 20 minutes later when the famous chords of the ’80s tune filled the room and got the masses moving.

Adams declined to play other suggestions, saying they were “band songs” and that he wouldn’t be able to pull them off by himself.

“I can try it,” he said about “Kids Wanna Rock” from his “Reckless” album, and then began strumming on his guitar. After completing it successfully, he added, “I made up some new words in that version. It’s the 2008 version. You’ll find the new words on my web site tomorrow.”

Adams didn’t have to do it all alone, however. Halfway through the 90-minute set, his old friend and drummer Mickey Curry stepped up to join him. Curry, a New Haven native who now lives in Guilford, said he used to play Toad’s “a bunch of times” in the 1970s with Scratch Band. Curry has also played with Hall & Oates, Cher, Tina Turner, Alice Cooper, David Bowie and Elvis Costello.

Between two songs, Adams pulled a digital camera from his back pocket and started snapping photos of Curry on the drums.

“I’ve been around for a long time,” he said. “You may think I look young, but underneath this façade is an old fart.”

After Curry left the stage, Adams ended the set with “Please Forgive Me,” a slow rock ballad from 1993.

He made a brief stop on the floor to hug his friend Curry good-bye. He then headed out to his tour bus, where two pies of New Haven pizza were waiting for him.

All things Swedish

I always bump into Americans who want to know what it's like to be Swedish in a foreign country. Isn't the U.S. so different, with excitement and more freedom than anywhere else in the world? they ask.

My answer, usually, is "no."

We have McDonald's, Seinfeld, Friends and David Letterman in Sweden. There are Volvos, Saabs, H&M and IKEAs here. The United State is less different than one might think.

When I first came to this country nine years ago, I looked around critically, judging things. There are so many things we do better in Sweden, I thought. But despite the differences that stem from too many religious conservatives in power, it is easy to find a little bit of Sweden in the United States.

Not counting California and Minnesota, where there are more people claiming to be Swedes than in Sweden, there is plenty of Sweden here to make me feel at home.

The first college I went to - Westchester Community College - was located in a little town called Valhalla, N.Y. Now, those of you who know your Nordic mythology know that Valhalla is a place where slain vikings go to party. I was therefore not surprised to see the name of the school newspaper: The Viking News. It took a while before people realized the irony of it all when I became the editor, but it later became a great topic of conversation during job interviews.

One summer I walked into the giant bookseller Barnes & Noble to pick up a book or two. When I passed the rows of new books in paperback, Liza Marklund's "The Bomber" (Sprängaren) caught my eye. It had a hand-written label next to it, and I walked closer to the shelf to see what the note said. "Our staff strongly recommends this book." Since it is one of my favorites, I quickly grabbed it and decided it would make a great gift for someone.

A Thursday afternoon in 2003 I sat down on the couch to skim through the local newspaper and came across a brief that said "Swedish spring concert this Saturday." Not only were three Scandinavian choruses set to perform; the performance was in Hamden, where I was living at the time, less than five minutes from my apartment. Two days later I went to the concert and realized none of the singers knew Swedish. But I got to hear "Sköna maj" and "Studentsången."

After that, I signed up to join them for the next year. I have now been singing with the Scandinavian Women's Chorus of Connecticut for four years, and I am one of two people who speak Swedish.

A few years ago, IKEA opened a store in New Haven, about half an hour from where I live. I addition to furniture and accessories, all foreign IKEA stores have a Swedish food shop where you can buy Kalles Kaviar, Dajm and knäckebröd. Of course, you can buy Wasa knäckebröd and Ballerina cookies in the regular supermarket now. And what Swede could live without them?

Another famous thing here is Swedish Fish. It's made by Swedish candy company Malaco, I think, but in Sweden we actually have several different flavors and colors. Here, the fish is just red.

Often, you can hear Robyn, Ace of Base, ABBA or Roxette on the radio. Another hit, if you listen to the right station, is Björn Skifs' "Hooked on a Feeling." At some New York Yankee games, they play the country-Eurodance hit "Cotton-Eye Joe" by Rednex.

Sometimes the Swedish things are temporary, and sometimes they are here to stay. One this is for certain: It is nice to be a Swede in a country where Annika Sörenstam has made history. At one point, she was compared to Jackie Robinson.

If Annika can, I can. Or at least, I can try.