I'm very happy to announce the new lineup of K2:

SO,
At last me and the band are coming to beautiful Italy for a show, the 27th of March we're headlining the "Rock 'Til U Drop" festival at Stazione Birra in Roma.
Although I wasn't planning to play in Italy until this fall, I decided this would be a really fun gig to do, even though it's a one off concert.
Now I'm getting a lot of angry mails from people who are wondering why I didn't add dates in other Italian cities …
I promise to make it up to you next time. There honestly wasn't enough time to organize a more extensive tour this time ... For those of you who think it's a little unfair that we're just playing in Roma;

LISTEN, JUST TAKE THE BUS, THE TRAIN OR A FUCKING CAB AND SHOW UP AT STAZIONE BIRRA TO SEE THE DAMN SHOW! IF YOUR JOURNEY WAS LONG AND TOUGH I'LL EVEN BUY YOU A FUCKING BEER! JUST GET YOUR ASS IN GEAR AND BE THERE!
I PERSONALLY GUARANTEE YOU WON'T REGRET IT!

Yours truly
//Kee

Hey there friends,

Finally it's out on CD!
It's been a hell of a ride tryin' to make this happen. It's been something we wanted to do for a decade, but it's been taking years just to make Sony BMG get their ass in gear.
I shouldn't actually be downtalking them, they eventually made it happen, and I know from my own experience how unreluctant most major labels are to license their vintage records. It's a little like that story about the man being to mean to let go of his own shit!

I've had conversations about this with a lot of A&R people (I believe the abbreviation stands for Anal Rententiveness) and they often explain that they don't feel like they wanna release something if it doesn't mean a fantastic promotion plan and them getting a big advance.

I actually quite recently was discussing this about a specific album that I've been wanting to license for years with an A&R at one of the biggest majors here in Sweden, and he was ice cold about this, he said; - "you musicians might think that it would be fair if you had a say in licensing these records, but you don't own the rights, we do! We don't see a reason to license or rerelease this record unless an obvious promotion happening brings the record to the fore again."
I replied; - "well, what kind of "promotion happening" would it take? That one or two of the guys in the band dies?"
Then the shithead goes; - "I guess so." (!!)
That's bringing anal retentiveness to a nano level!

Anyway, I shouldn't be wasting any energy being mad about this. In a matter of years the majors will go out of business and the A&R people will be looking for new jobs!

Just don't come to me for favours!

//Keeman

WHEN EGO and bassplayer Alex Tyrone met Zinnie J. San at the RITZ (The infamous hangout for punk/glam/sleazeheads in Stockholm) in 1983, we instantly knew that he was exactly the kind of frontman we were looking for. After a number of beers and some persuation he agreed to tag along to Alex's apartment in the suburbs where he eventually ended up singing on some 4-track demos we were working on ("Number One" and "Rock Things Out", if my memory serves me well). Although his singing finalized the agreement, the first impression was the first draft.
Ever since the start of the NOICE tour, me and Alex had been commuting between Stockholm and London on days off in search of the musicians we needed for the new band we were forming.
In London, the decadent post-punk goth/glam scene was flourishing with bands like THE SPECIMEN, KILLING JOKE, BAUHAUS and THE SOUTHERN DEATH CULT (later renamed THE CULT) and clubs like the BAT CAVE and CAMDEN PALACE were where it all really was at.
We spent our days in a room at Trident Studios (BOWIE and MARC BOLAN made records there) where we were writing and demoing. The owner, Rusty Egan (drummer of THE RICH KIDS, Glen Matlock's first band after leaving SEX PISTOLS with Midge Ure from THIN LIZZY and ULTRAVOX on the guitar) believed in our ideas and was supporting us with shelter and input.
In the nighttime we thoroughly did the club scene in order to get the vibe of what was happening at the moment. We had meetings with singers and at one point, we approached the drummer of The Specimen (his name was Jonathan I believe) and tried to win him over to our project, which he seemed interested in.
All and all, it felt like we were finding what we were looking for and prospects were looking grand.
After going back to Sweden for some NOICE gigs, we jumped right back onto the train to London to continue our pursuit; only this time we both fell asleep at one point, and somebody stole all our cash from a suitcase.
At the time, the UK immigration office wasn't exactly looking between their fingers with young punks they suspected of sneaking into the country to work illegally, and since we had zero cash to present when asked to prove that we were self supportive, they locked us up and put us on the next train back.
That stunt put us on the immigration black list. (I remember still being nervous about whether I was going to be let into the country the first time I came back to the UK on tour with Europe!)
With absolutely no cash we were all but starving on our 40-hour long trip back to Sweden. Since we weren't exactly rich, we were always buying the super-discount tickets. This one was called Transalpino, and it took the route through Denmark, a radical detour up to Hamburg, Germany, to take an abrupt turn down to the Netherlands to Hoek Van Holland, for the ferry over to Felixstowe in the UK, continuing down to London!
The starving wasn't half as bad as the crude revelation that we weren't going to be able to fulfill our dream, everything we planned for and dreamed of was in London, and now we were blacklisted, unable to return.
Back in Stockholm we slipped into severe depression for a couple of hours (it's amazing how fast you recuperate at that age!) before we decided that the dream wasn't dead, it was..merely reloading and refueling!
THAT NIGHT we went down to the RITZ for a couple of beers, little did we know that before the break of dawn things were going to fall into place in a big way..

(to be continued)

Check out Easy Action at MySpace!

Hey friends,
I just discovered that the mp3 of THE HARDER THEY COME was in mono! Since this is the 21st century I thought mono felt a little off. Now, when I attemted to upload a stereo version I accidently erased the entire thing, so I had to start from scratch by uploading data, lyrics, photo, etc.
This is in case you're wondering why the playbacks are so few when there should be thousands!
It was worth it though, it sounds so much better. Or can you really hear the difference?
Rock in stereo
/Kee

Hey friends,
Me & friend/cowriter Mikael Wikström wrote this song for our local hockey team; Frölunda Indians. Mikael's got a day job being a film director, mostly doing corporate movies and commercials, and the company he works for; Stark Film & Events, have been producing the intro films for the team (it's shown on the big screen when the team's entering the rink during their home games) for some years now.
"The Harder They Come" is the music for this years movie. We wrote the song for last years movie too(it was called "Do It Again"), but this time it feels like we manage to nail the kind of music I wanna do on my next album!
The rawness and simplicity of it appeals to me, I wanna do something very straight forward on my next release. If you're into music you've probably heard this seemingly contradictory statement before; "it's very easy to write a complex song, but really hard to write a simple song". This is so true, however, I would like to further develop that line of thought; "to write a simple song which is really heavy and dark is even harder"! What I'm suggesting is that it's really easy to lose your way between the harmonies,disharmonies and the heavy riffing and end up with a song that noone understands.
It feels like "The Harder.." has that kind of "straightforwardness" I'm looking for, maybe because it was written with a film story in mind? I don't know. I don't have the key to how to write songs like that, but I sure recognize them when I hear'em!
Best
/Kee